Andrew Kamphey is an entrepreneur and content creator who’s launched a variety of projects, from web apps to online courses. He founded and later sold Influence Weekly, a newsletter aimed at curating influencer marketing research and analyzing the influencer marketing industry.
In January 2022, Andrew started working here at Paved as a publisher success manager. He spends his days making Paved more effective for publishers and making sure that all publishers are successful.
This article is an installment in our How I Sold My Newsletter series. Check out more interviews here:
- How I Sold My Newsletter: Derick Sozo Ruiz
- How I Sold My Newsletter: Jeff Possiel
- How I Sold My Newsletter: Juris Kristobans
What newsletter did you sell?
I sold a newsletter called Influence Weekly, where I wrote about new developments and trends in the influencer marketing industry. Along with a newsletter, I had built a database and mapped the industry. The newsletter had 7,500 subscribers, most of whom were high net worth individuals and C-level roles. That alone could have been valuable, but the base on which to build was by far the biggest selling point.
How did you sell your newsletter?
I was first contacted by Nii, who ultimately bought the newsletter after being introduced by a friend. That friend also created newsletters and Nii had reached out by Twitter to discuss the newsletter.
Once I had the idea of selling the newsletter, it was all I thought about. It came at a perfect time in my personal and professional life.
While Nii initiated the conversation, I could have decided not to sell at any point. I was running it day to day and had big plans to keep running it. The plan at the moment was to create a paid community of professionals, and to use the newsletter to keep marketing the community and core database.
Why did you sell your newsletter?
At the moment that Nii approached me to buy it, I hadn’t thought about selling the newsletter. In fact, I was ramping up a membership offering and planning to build a data center for the industry my newsletter covered: influencer marketing.
At the same time, I was building a SaaS with a cofounder and found it difficult to push forward extremely quickly. Having two projects meant that my time was split. And having a newsletter that I had to create, with nobody else, was always something I enjoyed doing, but it was difficult as I sought out days and weeks of flow state to build.
One other thing was happening but not an immediate problem. I quit my job over a year before. No projects other than the newsletter were profiting me much. As a bootstrapped founder, I found it hard to monetize anything other than selling ads in my newsletter. The newsletter itself was paying part of my bills, but my savings suffered. I sold the newsletter in late 2020. In late 2019, I invested in a property to put on Airbnb, and then the pandemic hit. Even though I had a year of runway, I felt like I was in dire straits.
In 2020, two things happened that literally saved my life. My side project started taking off via AppSumo, and I sold my newsletter. In one sale of the newsletter, I recouped the entire investment I made into a property. Therefore, my runway immediately went from 1 year to 3+ years.
So while the pandemic hit, and hit hard, the sale happened. That wasn’t in spite of the pandemic but because of it.
Why do you think buyers were interested in your newsletter?
Nii was very forward and honest with me about why he wanted to buy the newsletter. He was getting ready to launch his own influencer marketing project and wanted to get a leg up on the competition. I had created an asset that he could immediately put to work.
I had done two things badly, and those were opportunities for a buyer with skills. 1. I had done Facebook ads but did not have the capital to pour money into them for growth. 2. I had done absolutely nothing for SEO, yet ranked mildly.
Nii saw the SEO opportunity immediately and knew how to conquer this. I had the assets, information, but not the skills to do this. And Nii was an absolute expert in Facebook Ads. He saw my personal growth tactics and could pull a lever so big that it overshadowed my initial contribution.
He saw that I had worked on this for years and that it could provide him a jump start. Now I’m writing this, and everything Nii planned has come to fruition.
I had gotten 7,500 subscribers in 2 and a half years. Within a year he doubled it to 15,000. And now has surpassed 20,000 subscribers.
I am so glad he bought the newsletter and look forward to seeing it grow even more.
What single action did you take that moved the needle the most?
For subscriber growth, the single thing I did that made the biggest difference is Influence 100. I launched it in 2018 and doubled my subscriber count from 250 to 500 within a week. Then I did it again in 2019 and got another 700 new subscribers in a week. Looking at the graphs of subscriber growth over 2 years, it’s relatively linear except for those two inflection points.
For engagement: I talked to readers. This seems so foreign to some newsletter writers, but it was exactly what moved the needle. Every week, I got on the phone with at least 1 or 2 subscribers. It was nearly always a CEO, but sometimes other roles as well. We talked about their business. We talked about the industry. I asked simple questions and got deep answers.
For monetization: running ads was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had done a bit of sales years earlier, but doing sales on a weekly basis gave me the right motivation to get my sales pipeline in order. With that, I was able to figure out the lingo and the methods I wished to use. Not the methods that “best worked,” but what worked for me.
What are you working on right now?
I work at Paved now for publishers on our platform.
While working on my own newsletter, I launched a tool for newsletters to easily monetize with ads. I worked directly with a few newsletters. But now with Paved I wish to take it further. Help more newsletters get paid more.
The opportunities that came from working on my newsletter included consulting on M&A, getting writing gigs, getting paid for ads, getting to talk to CEOs who possibly could have hired me if I was looking to go back to work in influencer marketing.
I think my skills in selling ads myself, working on an app to sell ads, and writing for fellow newsletters gave me the biggest opportunity possible: to work at Paved and help publishers earn more.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Find me on Twitter @Kamphey. My DMs are open. I also love to help newsletter writers publicly. So if you have any questions, tweet it, tag me, DM me, and email me. I might be on hiatus from Twitter from time to time in 2022. Digital detox is a must right now.
One last thing I wish to say: If you are a newsletter writer thinking about selling, then I hope this interview gave you some light at the end of the tunnel. Just know you have more options than you ever thought about. I’m willing to let you know those personally.
You don’t have to burn out. You don’t have to stop forever and just wind down your newsletter. I’ve written about options before. In summary, you can do nothing (just don’t publish). Take a break, get a guest writer, share old editions, switch to curated content (if you write), or sell your newsletter.
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