Upselling subscriptions and custom tech stacks with Henry Johnson of RocketShip Jobs

About this episode: In this week’s episode we have Henry Johnson of RocketShip Jobs. His newsletter is unique in that it’s at the intersection of a job board and curation. We’ll dive deep into how he’s upselling subscribers to a paid version of the newsletter and how well that’s been working for him. We’ll then move into his custom tech stack which enables him to customize his website so that he can add features like upselling. He’ll give us an amazing explanation of why he moved from Substack to his custom solution. Then we’ll end off with his marketing strategy, how he grew his newsletter to over 500 subscribers and his next growth goals. This episode is paramount for anyone looking to really build a real newsletter business.Newsletter Crew Membership (20% discount): https://newslettercrew.memberful.com/checkout?plan=53407&coupon=PODCASTJoin the Newsletter Crew and get access to a community of successful newsletter creators that know what it takes to build a newsletter business. You’ll get access to the forums, chat, and the private podcast stream. There are some amazing things happening that you don’t want to miss out.Key Notes:Henry uses many different tools to gather his jobs. Some include Crunchbase, VCs of Twitter, communities he’s apart of, other newsletters, podcasts, exploding topics, etc.His premium version includes extra information that anyone interested wouldn’t want to pass up. That’s where the critical and most important information is.When someone subscribes to the newsletter they are redirected to an upsell page telling them all of the extra features they will get by becoming a premium member.Henry switched over from Substack to his own custom newsletter stack to own his traffic, gain SEO, have customizability in his newsletter signup flow. Also he didn’t want to bother the user from having to get their credit hard out again to signup if he even decided to switch later.Substack does not provide the customizability that many newsletter creators are looking for.It’s not as easy as people think to build their own custom newsletter solution.RocketShip jobs newsletter tech stack: Webflow for the landing page, Memberful who’s paid vs not paid, ConvertKit for the emails, and Stripe for the payments.Substack does not have any integrations yet, which makes it hard to even add basic functionality.RocketShip Jobs primary marketing channels include Twitter and being featured in publications. Other marketing channels being looked into include a referral system and ads.SparkLoop is the referral tool being used.The number one tip Henry gave for anyone that wants to start a newsletter is that to pick something you want to write about and where you’re learning as you go.Important Articles:Introducing the Not Boring Homepage: https://notboring.substack.com/p/introducing-the-not-boring-homepageGuest + Newsletter Info:RocketShip Jobs: https://www.rocketshipjobs.com/Henry Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talktohenryj/_____________________________________If you’re interested in purchasing the Profitable Newsletter course, please use the link below to help support the show.Profitable Newsletters Course: https://kintuhq.podia.com/a/hdixbNewsletter: Join the newsletter to get amazing curated content on how to build, run, and grow your newsletter. Go to https://newslettercrew.com/newsletter.Twitter: https://twitter.com/newslettercrewPatreon: if you’re interested in supporting the show, become a patron here https://www.patreon.com/newslettercrew. We’ll be reading the supporters each week.