Beehiiv locked me out

Grow A Newsletter
January 05, 2025 • Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Welcome to the 7 new subscribers since my last post.

Beehiiv, the tool I use for my newsletter and website, locked my account for two days this week because of suspicious, bot-like activity.

Really? Apparently, this newsletter is growing too fast. 🤣

That was a bit frustrating because I’m excited about this newsletter, but we’re back now.

All is good, so let’s get into it.

Growth

Spent $26.55 on Meta ads last week → gained 10 new subs at $2.66 per subscriber. Not bad.

Here’s the ad most of you probably saw before signing up: https://www.instagram.com/p/DENk1RpsZZI/

Nothing fancy—just big text, plain backgrounds, and some memes.

Why keep it basic?

I can’t design anything better.
Don’t want to hire a designer.
Fancy ad designs are overrated. Simple works. Keep reading this newsletter and you’ll see.

I’m also considering using AI UGC-style video ads.

I looked into a few tools: Ad Creative AI, Creatify, Captions, and Synthesia.

Verdict: Promising but clunky.

Synthesia feels like using 2005 PowerPoint.

The others? Slow rendering, weird outputs. Too much effort for now.

When the AI tools improve, I’ll give them another shot. Until then, back to the basics. Simple ads, steady growth.

$0 so far. I’m still not eligible for Sparkloop’s affiliate network yet (I need to send 3 newsletters first).

I should get approved later this week after I send my next post, so revenue will start trickling in then.

$48.05 total. About half of that was spent on a domain and custom email. The other half has been on Meta ads.

I thought I paid $99/mo for Beehiiv, but I realized I’m actually on their free plan. That was a nice surprise.

Down $48.05 since I have no revenue.

My Profit & Loss doc contains all income and expenses to date.

Thanks again for reading. Talk tomorrow! 💌

—SS

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