Gaining your first million subscribers can feel completely daunting, whether for a newsletter or social platform. But one online media master says it’s easier than you think. 

Sam Parr is the founder of The Hustle, a newsletter and community for young entrepreneurs and business leaders that boasts 2M subscribers. He also hosts the podcast, “My First Million,” where he and his co-host Shaan Puri break down different business models.

Sam recently joined us on the “Organize Chaos” podcast to talk about building his online community. And in this episode, he shares five value-packed tips for building a vast audience. 

1. Consistency is the most challenging but critical piece.

Sam’s newsletter first began as a marketing tool for a conference he created called The Hustle Con. But once he realized how much people loved his content, he decided to launch a daily newsletter to reach more business leaders. 

“At the end of the first year, we [went from 10,000 subscribers] to 100,000,” Sam shared. And while building that size audience is hard, he also says it’s not complicated. Because it mostly takes sheer consistency and discipline to meet daily deadlines. 

For example, Sam wrote and sent out a new email almost every day for nearly five years. He says it wasn’t easy having a deadline every day. But without consistency, there’s no way to gain any real traction and make your audience grow. 

“People think [gaining your first few thousand followers] is the hardest part, but growing from 100,000 to millions is way harder.” –  Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle and “My First Million” podcast co-host

2. Find where your audience gets its content.

Once you’re committed to being consistent, your next job is to find where your audience lives.

That’s where you should share your steady stream of content and pull new subscribers to your website. “I thought [The Hustle readers] lived in a couple of subreddits and on Hacker News,” Sam told us.

Sam then researched what topics and headlines would get his readers’ attention by seeking out forums with a lot of engagement and comments with many reactions. He gathered at least 20 different topics and started working backward to pump out the content. 

“What topics and emotions are popular [for your readers], and how do [you] fit [your] voice into that framework?”

Once Sam completed an article, he shared it on the subreddits and Hacker News. But to avoid scammy self-promotion, he used several online personas to post as different people. “I had a female one, a biohacker, and someone into book publishing, but [they were] actually me.” 

3. Set a growth goal and dissect the data along the way.

For the first few years of The Hustle, Sam wrote and managed the newsletter by himself. But eventually, he built a team of people and decided to set weekly growth goals, so they could keep track of conversion rates and dissect what happened along the way. 

“[Every] Monday at 10 a.m., [we would see if we] grew our subscriber base by at least 3%,” Sam explained. And if they didn’t, the team tried to understand why they missed the mark and what they could do to get better. 

“To grow by 3%, you need to have so many website visits, a certain conversion rate, and [number of] people to click on the article,” Sam added. And the data helps The Hustle identify why some pieces work better than others — whether it’s a wrong topic or bland imagery.

“If I get a million to come to my website and get 3% of them to convert, that's 30,000 email subscribers.”

4. Hire first for what you don’t love to do. 

Despite doing a ton of writing for many years, Sam doesn’t enjoy crafting content. “I didn't enjoy the process, but I enjoyed the results,” he explained. And soon after launching the daily newsletter, he knew it was time to hire people to do the writing for him. 

After hiring his first writers, Sam was able to publish more content without losing his mind. And because he delegated the writing work, he had even more time to focus on growing the newsletter.

“I [wrote] out of necessity. But some people are obsessed [with the writing process], and that's the type of person I hired first.”

5. Copywriting is the most important practical skill.

Besides consistency, Sam says that copywriting is the most crucial skill for building an audience. “[You have to] understand what motivates someone and communicate it [in a way] that convinces them to take action or feel something,” he explained.

Sam says it doesn’t take a writing degree or extensive background to learn how to write well. Because you can easily learn from a practice he calls copy work, “I would literally copy [the best writing samples] by hand for hours to see the recipe and patterns.”

For Sam, this recipe comes down to two main ingredients: 

1. Know what motivates your reader. 
2. Get them to do what you want them to do.

As long as your copywriting achieves these two goals, you’ll have a better chance of attracting and engaging new readers. And that’s how you continue to build a large audience or following.   

It’s no easy feat to gain your first million followers. But it’s also not an incredibly complicated process. It just takes good copy, consistency, and patience to see it through.