From Newsletter Operator to Beach Club Winner: Matt McGarry's Passive Income Strategies

Money trees do exist — at least, for beehiiv partners like Matt McGarry (the subject of this weeks Creator/Partner Spotlight).

This is one of our more in-depth Partner Spotlights so here is a quick TLDR:

• Matt's Top Prize Triumph: Discover how Matt snagged the beehiiv Beach Club's top prize and what's next.

• Growing The Hustle: Delve into the journey to 2 million subscribers, learning the detailed tactics behind this success.

• Mastering Strategies: Uncover Matt's unique methods, including selecting the right niche, orchestrating great giveaways, and promoting like a superstar.

• Earning Big with beehiiv: Learn the ins and outs of maximizing commissions with the beehiiv affiliate program, and how you can do the same.

• Exclusive Access: Get a firsthand look at Matt's playbook for success and how to join the beehiiv Partner Program, all in an easy step-by-step guide.

beehiiv’s Partner Program is one of the most lucrative affiliate programs on the internet.

Partners earn 50% commission for 12 months on all revenue they refer.

That means if you refer 5 people per month, you could earn $20,000 per year – on autopilot.

And, at the beginning of Q2, 2023, we cranked up our partner program to make it even sweeter.

How?

We added a giveaway called the beehiiv Beach Club.

Our very first winner of the giveaway was Matt McGarry. As the top-performing beehiiv partner, he and a +1 will be off to the luxurious Atlantis resort in the Bahamas to relax and indulge for an entire week.

In this beehiiv partner spotlight, we interviewed Matt, founder of GrowLetter and Newsletter Operator, to break down how he was able to climb atop the leaderboards, securing the Atlantis all-inclusive trip.

Keep reading to learn the exact strategies he used to refer dozens of his audience members to beehiiv, so you can earn juicy commissions as a beehiiv partner (and possibly even secure Beach Club’s Q3 2023 prize – a trip to Maui)! Or simply grow your newsletter in general.

beehiiv’s Partner Program Overview

Before we dive into Matt’s journey and strategies, let’s cover the basics of the beehiiv partner program.

beehiiv has one of the most generous partner programs today. By joining (for free), you'll have the opportunity to generate recurring commissions while promoting one of the fastest-growing platforms.

Earning Opportunities:

• Substantial Commissions: Earn a 50% commission for the first 12 months.

• Unlimited Earning Potential: There's no ceiling on the commissions you can earn.

• Growth Potential: beehiiv is growing at hyper-speed, and you can ride the wave up.

• Generate Recurring Income: Leverage our platform (and growth) to create a dependable income stream.

Thanks to beehiiv’s Partner Program, Matt McGarry has been able to generate thousands per month passively.

Our Partner Program is a fantastic opportunity for beehiiv newsletter creators to tap into new revenue streams by recommending the platform they already use and love.

beehiiv’s Partner Program is a great opportunity for beehiiv publishers to earn additional revenue streams by simply recommending the platform they already use and love.

beehiiv Partner’s Beach Club: Round Trip Vacation Every Quarter

What’s better than a trip to a luxury, tropical resort for a week?

Getting to go for free.

Introducing the beehiiv Beach Club:

At the end of every quarter, we’re giving away an all-expenses-paid, weeklong trip to a luxury resort in the tropics (airfare included). Every three months, the top-performing beehiiv partner and a friend will get sent to an incredible luxury destination – the sweet icing on their beehiiv commission cake.

The inaugural contest launched in April and ended on June 30, 2023.

By becoming a beehiiv partner, you’ll automatically enter the current quarter’s Beach Club competition to climb the rankings with the chance to be crowned the winner.

Not only will you be swimming in partner commissions, but you could also be swimming with dolphins in paradise.

So what did he do to secure the prize?

Our first-ever Beach Club winner is Matt McGarry. He’s got two roundtrip tickets to Atlantis in the Bahamas thanks to his performance in bringing in new beehiiv users through his referral link.

We asked Matt about his business to find out the answer.

Matt shared, “I run a business called GrowLetter, which is a newsletter growth agency. I also have a newsletter called the Newsletter Operator, where I write about how people can grow and monetize their newsletters.”

Basically, Matt is the newsletter expert.

Not only does he run a newsletter agency where he helps people grow their newsletter businesses, but he also runs his own newsletter – and he doesn’t just talk the talk. He also walks the walk.

Check out some of his newsletter stats:

• 9,500+ active subscribers

• 59.1% open rate

• 23.3% click rate

His engagement is incredible, so he certainly knows what he’s doing with his newsletter.

But when it came to securing the victory to claim the Bahamas prize, he shared how he didn’t see himself winning it. He just thought it was a good fit to promote within his own businesses.

He mentioned, “When I first heard about it, I wasn't really expecting to win. I was promoting it, and then halfway through [the quarter], I was in second or third or fourth place. And I was like, ‘Well, I've got a shot at this.’ So I got to actually push and win.”

Matt also mentioned how despite winning the Beach Club, he’s more excited about the commissions he’s earning thanks to beehiiv’s Partner Program.

“It feels good to win – almost like half of what I did is just to win rather than actually for the prize. I’m a competitive person, so that's half the reward for me. So it was fun. I loved the contest. Honestly, the core of the affiliate program itself is if not more exciting than winning Beach Club – just the compensation you get from that commission. So I'm really excited for that, especially when you start to see the recurring affiliate commissions come in every single month. It really starts to add up.”

Before we dive into the exact strategies and tactics he used to claim victory in the Beach Club Giveaway, let’s back up a bit and journey through a bit of his backstory which helped lead to his success.

Growing the Hustle to 2 Million Subscribers

Although Matt started using beehiiv in February 2022, his email newsletter story began while working at The Hustle, one of the largest business newsletters in the world.

Matt shared, “I worked at The Hustle, which is an email newsletter that's grown to like 2 million plus subscribers. Towards the end of the stint there, I discovered beehiiv, and I was like, ‘This is really cool. It's built by the people behind Morning Brew. I started using the product. beehiiv is allowing us to do things that we built an entire engineering team at The Hustle to do. It's making this accessible to newsletter operators for a very low cost. And it's much easier to do”

At The Hustle, Matt was in charge of all things growth, primarily leveraging paid acquisition.

“My main role was leading newsletter growth for The Hustle, so basically helping them grow their email list and get more opens and clicks from the email list. We started at like 1.3 million subscribers. I helped them get to over 2 million by the time I left there using probably 95% paid acquisition.”

He continued, “I was involved in all the growth marketing. But, especially because of churn, when you want to add over a million email subscribers in a year, really the only way to do it is with paid acquisition. There's just no other organic channel that can get that type of volume, so we did a lot of paid ads.”

GrowLetter: Starting a Newsletter Agency

After his time at The Hustle, Matt decided to start freelancing before eventually starting his own newsletter agency. Shortly after, he started noticing some of his clients were using a new email service provider called beehiiv. One of his early clients was Milk Road, an early beehiiv success story and one of the fastest-growing newsletters on the platform.

He shared, “I started freelancing — helping other newsletters with growth. So I started working with the Milk Road, and that's where I first started using beehiiv to actually grow a business (not just dabbling around and exploring the product).”

Matt spoke about how using beehiiv made him realize how complicated other newsletter platforms were. It became one of those things where once he started using it himself, it didn’t seem like there were any other all-in-one options that matched up.

“[beehiiv] was super helpful in that, with the Milk Road and what we were doing. We were driving a lot of growth with paid acquisition; and if we used another email service provider, the amount of add-on tech and more manual stuff we had to do to make that happen would be so much more difficult.”

“So I kind of fell in love with the product back then in February of last year (2022) when I first started with Milk Road. And then I started working with other beehiiv newsletters, like Exec Sum and many more. Then I started using the product myself for my newsletter and have been recommending it to other clients over the past 6 to 12 months.”

Want to read more on the Milk Road story? Only 10 months after launching, the newsletter grew to 250,000 subscribers before being acquired. You can read the full case study here.

Partner Success Strategy #1: The Right Niche

Now, let’s get to some of the strategies Matt used to climb the rankings.

We asked him to share the specific tactics he implemented, so you can apply them as a beehiiv partner and earn more referral commissions.

Matt started by mentioning how he had an edge up in the Beach Club strictly because his niche is highly relevant to promoting beehiiv. Since Matt’s audience is people with a newsletter, or those looking to start one, promoting a newsletter platform couldn’t be more ideal.

He mentioned, “I don't have a huge audience. But I have a very good audience match for beehiiv, and I think that helped me a ton. Whereas, with others, it's a little bit more difficult, so I was kind of lucky in that way. Honestly, the strategies I'm using are not really groundbreaking. It's just kind of lucky to have a good fit there.”

If your audience has nothing to do with newsletters, there are still dozens of ways you can promote beehiiv to earn partner commissions. For instance, you could share the success of your own newsletter with your followers on social media. Or, you could start a blog, YouTube channel, or social media account to document the success you’re seeing with beehiiv.

Partner Success Strategy #2: “The Giveaway Bonus”

Matt’s second secret to success is what he calls the “Giveaway Bonus Strategy.” This is a unique strategy where he promotes beehiiv and also offers a bonus to his followers if they sign up using his referral link.

He shared, “What drove 80% of the referrals was a giveaway bonus strategy. I did one, maybe 15 days before the quarter ended. And I did one 30 days before that. It's basically me saying on my newsletter and on Twitter that I will give away three rewards for anyone who purchases beehiiv through my affiliate link. To get those rewards, people forward me an email with a receipt.”

Matt shared how the bonus he was offering his followers was a private coaching call with him, as well as courses that were really relevant and valuable to his audience.

He shared, “For the big push, it was a 30-minute coaching call, a course I built on how to do Facebook ads for newsletters, and a course I built on how to set up and grow your newsletter. I think that the coaching call helped drive a lot of that traffic because a lot of people want to talk with me about their newsletter growth. That was probably the biggest selling point of this giveaway.

Matt also spoke about how the Q2 deadline for the Beach Club giveaway pushed him to promote intensely as it got closer to the date, so, in turn, he used the same “limited-time” selling techniques to promote the bonuses he was offering for signing up through his link.

Matt continued, “I've been doing a bunch of these coaching calls recently, and that worked well. I think, especially doing it as a limited-time thing helped, too. So I did it 15 days before, and I said it ended on the 30th. I got 40% of people coming in the last 48 hours, purchasing them. Having that urgency and scarcity definitely helps.”

Matt mentioned how he didn’t come up with this brilliant strategy on his own, though. Rather, he saw what was working well for others with affiliate programs in times past and decided to apply it to his own business.

He shared, “I saw [this strategy] originally through a ClickFunnels affiliate program, which was maybe a good inspiration for this because I think it's been really successful. I saw ClickFunnels affiliates doing that years and years ago, and I just thought something similar would work.”

This is a key point here you should take note of if you want to win the next Beach Club. One of the main reasons Matt succeeded in the Beach Club and claimed the first title was because he looked at what made others successful and took action.

Matt explained how this bonus giveaway strategy was the thing that propelled him to the top of the Beach Club giveaway and ultimately helped him win the entire thing.

“I think I was in second at one point, and that took me to first. And that's really the only reason why I got there (other than just having like a great audience that was a good match for this).”

Enjoying this Spotlight? Learn how Victoria Kurichenko of Self Made Millennials earns $500+ per month as a beehiiv Partner. Read the full Partner Spotlight here.

Partner Success Strategy #3: Organic Promotion in His Newsletter

Matt shared a third secret to his success as a beehiiv partner – organic promotion.

While he greatly leaned on his highly promotional bonus giveaway strategy, that wasn’t the only thing he was doing. Matt set himself up for success from the start by ensuring he was organically sharing his beehiiv referral link through his newsletter any chance beehiiv was mentioned.

He recounted, “The other way I've been promoting this is just kind of natively. I write a newsletter about newsletters every week. Every time I mention beehiiv within it, I'll link to it. Sometimes I'll do a short plug, just contextually within the newsletter and within my blog. I also do it on my newsletter thank you page.”

Advice for beehiiv Partners To Earn More Commissions

We asked Matt if he had any advice for creators looking to become successful as a beehiiv partner. Here’s what he had to say:

“There are a couple of things. I think one is figuring out what your unique angle is and how you can help people, and that will depend on your audience. So if you have an audience of content creators or newsletter operators and media companies, what do they need that would help them sign up for beehiiv, help them convert to become a beehiiv customer?”

He continued, “That could be a review that's focused on their industry. For example, beehiiv for content creators or media companies. That could be a custom course that you give to people after they purchase like I did with the bonus reward thing. I think that's a good idea for most people — doing some type of bonus incentive where they join through your link, they forward you the receipt.

He made sure to mention that the thing you give away as a bonus needs to be relevant to your audience. It needs to be something they’re already interested in that solves a real pain point.

“I think [the bonus strategy] is a good idea for most people, but it has to make sense. It has to be desirable. You can't just give away anything. If it's something valuable that people need or maybe that will help them on their beehiiv growth journey, that would be a good bonus, but I don't think people should shoehorn things that aren't really a fit.”

Matt also mentioned how there are simple, yet practical ways to earn commissions almost passively. “Every time you mention beehiiv on your site, link to it. Have a recommended resource page where you link to whatever products you recommend, including beehiiv — things like that. Those are more of the standard things that aren't as unique but are important to do as well.”

Matt’s Favorite beehiiv Features

As a newsletter publisher and a newsletter agency owner, there’s no doubt that Matt has worked with his fair share of email newsletter platforms, so we asked him what kind of features led him to choose beehiiv over the dozens of other options. He mentioned how beehiiv conveniently just came out right around the same time that he started his agency, and he quickly saw how it had a leg up on the competition.

He shared, “Luckily, when I started my agency in February of last year (2022), beehiiv was around. Early on, I worked with some of the larger beehiiv newsletters like Exec Sum, the Milk Road, and Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life, so starting there helped solve a lot of problems. But for my other clients that are not on beehiiv, there are quite a few issues.”

He continued, “One [issue with other tools] is analytics. When you’re driving subscribers from different sources, you want to see the subscriber quality by source. If you're spending money on a Facebook ad, you need to see the open rate, click-through rates, upgrade rates, and unsubscribe rates of subscribers from Facebook ads. A lot of email service providers just can't do that.”

“You're looking at your overall open rate and your open rate by send and other metrics. And if you’re trying to grow a newsletter by paid acquisition, [these analytics] are just a must-have, so you would have to either add on additional tools or export things and build analytics in like Google Sheets, for example, to do that, which is really a pain. So that's really a huge unlock right there.”

Matt shared how subscriber reports is his favorite beehiiv feature.

He recounted, “I think that's the thing I check every day for my newsletter and other newsletters. Just being able to segment within that really easily, just type in a UTM source, or click on us on a different growth source and look at the metrics by that source.”

Matt also mentioned how many newsletter platforms are a bit clunky when it comes to finding everything you need in one place. Almost every platform requires switching between various tools, which can slowdown your productivity throughout the day.

He explained, “Another thing is just having everything in one spot, so you're not using a ton of different tools. For example, we can use the beehiiv landing page instead of a landing page builder. We use the beehiiv referral program instead of a separate referral program. We use the beehiiv newsletter template builder instead of a separate HTML template builder.”

He continued, “The good thing about beehiiv is you're not really sacrificing quality. Maybe you can do some more custom things with a custom landing page builder, like Unbounce. But you really have everything you need with the custom beehiiv landing pages, so we use that with clients instead. You also get better analytics with the custom beehiiv landing pages.”

“So the subscriber reports, the segmentation for analytics, and then having all the key growth features in one place is a huge unlock. There's more, too, I'm sure I'm not thinking of, but those are two features that help a lot.”

beehiiv vs. MailChimp vs. Substack

Matt doesn’t just recommend beehiiv to his newsletter agency clients because he gets a sizeable commission. In fact, he was already recommending it before he found out about the Partner Program.

He encourages his clients to use beehiiv because it’s more powerful than alternatives (and it makes his job as a newsletter agency owner easier since beehiiv is easier to work with.)

He shared, “What I think about is just the limitations of other platforms. So if I have a client using something like MailChimp or Substack, which is common, we just can't do the things we want to do for those other platforms. I don't want to pick on just those two, right?”

He explained how other tools have similar features to beehiiv, but they’re not easy to use. “On MailChimp, you can do subscriber by source a little bit, but it's really difficult to do. With Substack, you can't do that at all. With MailChimp, you have to build a whole separate landing page. With Substack, they have a landing page, but it doesn't track conversions from an ad properly.”

He shared that as an agency owner, beehiiv makes his job easier. “For me, it's all the tactical and strategic things we do as an agency. beehiiv allows us to do all those things to the full potential without the limitations that other email service providers may have on us.”

Matt shared how beehiiv’s able to improve his agency’s return on investment (ROI) since it streamlines his workflow. “That’s how I think about the ROI of beehiiv. If you want to work with [my agency], you probably need to use beehiiv because we need to do these things to maximize your growth. If you don't have beehiiv, we're limited in how we can help you.”

Future Plans: Onboarding Agency Clients to beehiiv

Matt has two primary audiences in which he can promote beehiiv to earn commissions – his newsletter audience and his agency clients. He shared that the majority of his beehiiv earnings have come through his newsletter since his audience is much bigger, but he plans on promoting it more to his agency clients.

He mentioned, “The agency (GrowLetter) has about 20 clients, and there's an opportunity for converting people. But I haven't pushed people too hard into it. There will probably be a lot more of that in the future as we start to add more clients and grow the agency more quickly. We're going to start working with more people on beehiiv.”

While he hasn’t earned many commissions through his clients, he mentioned how nearly half of his clients are already using beehiiv.

“We’re already working for a lot — probably at least 25-50% of people — using beehiiv with my agency. We'll start to do more of that. We’ve already been recommending beehiiv, but I think I want to work to be like, ‘Hey, this is a big newsletter.’ Let's introduce them to beehiiv, and I'll help onboard them as the agency and have them join through the affiliate link that way.”

He mentioned, “It's always kind of hard to convert customers and clients, so I don't want to force them to sign up through a link. But, if there's maybe more of a concierge process for a large newsletter that I can recommend, that would be helpful.”

Matt shared how he plans on ramping up his efforts to promote beehiiv to his clients since there is a relevant fit there.

He explained, “So there'll be more of them in the future, but I don't think I have any client referrals yet. I’ve got to work on the process there. Hopefully, there will be bigger referrals to it because there willl be maybe Enterprise plan signups or at least the Scale plan. Most of the people referred from the newsletter are on the Grow plan, or they just start with a free plan and they upgrade later.”

Advice for Anyone on the Fence About Using beehiiv

We asked Matt to share what kind of advice he has for someone considering using beehiiv (Hint: You should take notes on his approach to convert more referrals to beehiiv).

Matt shared how he would tell someone on the fence, “Just go in there and create a free account and test it. If it's someone I can jump on a call with, I'll just kind of demo on my phone and walk them through the features.”

“I'd also kind of nail into how they want to grow and monetize their newsletter and talk about how beehiiv would help them. For example, if a client wants to do a referral program, I might dive into how beehiiv has that feature built in, and it's really easy to set up. It takes 10 minutes to set up a referral program. If they want to monetize, Boost is built in. That takes 10 minutes to set up too.”

He continued, “I’d just talk about whatever they need for their business or for their growth and monetization plan. There's probably a beehiiv feature or reason why they should use it versus another platform because of that, so kind of aligning their need to what that feature is in beehiiv.”

To follow along Matt’s journey, you can follow him on X (Twitter) or subscribe to his publication, Newsletter Operator. In it, you’ll receive practical strategies and tips from an expert in the field to grow your newsletter business.

Earn Passively With beehiiv’s Partner Program

The beehiiv Partner Program is an incredible way to earn passive income by sharing about your favorite newsletter platform.

At beehiiv, we made it our goal to make it one of the most generous partner programs online, giving you 50% of all revenue from referrals for 12 months. That means for the entire first year after someone signs up through your link, we’ll give you a 50% commission!

What’s even better is that we won’t cap you on your earnings. Whether you refer 5 users or hundreds, you’ll still receive a 50% commission. The income potential is truly limitless.

Since the average beehiiv customer pays $87 per month, if you get 20 people to sign up in a year, you’ll earn $10,440! If you get 50 people to sign up, that’s $26,100!

It’s easy (and free) to join the beehiiv Partner Program. Just click the button below; and in a few minutes, you’ll be fully set up.

Plus, when you sign up, you’ll get access to our beehiiv Partner Program playbook for a simple step-by-step guide to succeed.

The Next Beach Club Giveaway: Maui (Q3 2023)

If you missed out on last quarter’s Bahamas trip, don’t worry. We’ve got a brand new prize on the horizon. Our next Beach Club winner (and a friend) will be heading to Maui for a week-long, paid-in-full vacation.

Check out the video below to see what you can win.

Join the beehiiv Partner Program today!

The contest ends on September 30, so be sure to join now for a shot at the Maui getaway.

We’ll catch ya on the beach! 🤙