Using influencers, SEO, and affiliates (for newsletters).

Omid G, the creator of Marketer Milk, has a passion for marketing and plenty of great advice to share with beehiiv creators on SEO, newsletter growth, working with influencers, and getting started in affiliate marketing.

Omid’s initial love for marketing expanded to a passion for SEO while working at Webflow. Feeling inspired by his newfound interest in SEO, Omid decided to use a sabbatical from his professional career to rebuild his Marketer Milk website into an SEO-first media company. The idea to attach a newsletter to the website was inspired by newsletters like The Hustle and Morning Brew.

"I was hearing the founders of both newsletters in podcasts talk about how much they were making from that business, and it kind of blew my mind. I didn't know you could make millions of dollars yearly in the newsletter business."

Today’s key takeaways:

• How to think about a newsletter as a magazine (and why it helps).

• Working with affiliates to earn income on top of ads and subscriptions.

• SEO, SEO, SEO (so many great tactics).

• How to leverage influencers for continued growth (even after the initial transaction).

Many useful tips in this post. Make sure to read it.

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Marketer Milk:

Omid created something lighter and easier to digest than the standard content-heavy newsletter. In an effort to fulfill his objective, Marketer Milk shares news and resources along with riddles, an 'ad from the past,' and brief marketing insights.

"The newsletter is where I have creative freedom. I can have fun with it, do my riddles, or post ads. My vision for Marketer Milk was originally a print magazine, so I view my newsletter as a little edition of a magazine every week."

Like a print magazine, Marketer Milk keeps its format light and visual. "It's not paragraphs of content-heavy stuff. I try to make it like a giant curated feed of stuff that people can browse through and click on whatever they want. One thing I love about beehiiv is the way it handles embeds. I put the link, and it displays a little image. It looks really nice."

Omid's method for building the newsletter has been to drive organic traffic to Marketer Milk through SEO optimization, then invite visitors to subscribe to the newsletter to create an owned audience that he can engage with regularly.

"My goal was to create a newsletter [that’s] interactive [with] embedded links and polls. That was a big one for me — I want people to have a reason to click on this email, and the poll seemed like a very good way to increase the click-through rate."

After trying a couple of different platforms and finding them to be a poor fit, Omid discovered beehiiv. "I saw the company name published in a newsletter and thought, 'What the heck is this?' So I looked up who were the founders of this beehiiv company. I was already sold because the founders were early employees at Morning Brew.

These guys have grown a newsletter to millions of subscribers. They know what features it takes to make that happen."

A Unique SEO Strategy for Affiliates

While monetization often involves ads and premium memberships, affiliates are another (potentially lucrative) opportunity.

"I've been on [beehiiv's] affiliate platform since it first started. Actually, before beehiiv even had an affiliate program, I reached out to Tyler [Denk, CEO of beehiiv] and pushed for it.”

“I signed up on day one, as soon as the program went live."

Omid followed a unique SEO strategy to create a post about beehiiv that would attract lots of high-converting traffic.

"When I create content on my blog, it's either designed to drive affiliate commissions or to get the attention of a market [who might subscribe to the newsletter.] That post about beehiiv was focused on revenue."

But it wasn’t easy:

• Omid’s site was new.

• The “email marketing” 'keywords were competitive.

• He needed a non obvious way of ranking.

Exactly What He Did:

"I knew there was no chance I was ever going to rank higher than them to rank on the first page, but I really liked beehiiv as a platform, and I wanted to promote it."

"I tried to figure out what I could write that might rank and get a lot of traffic because, with affiliate programs, you need a decent amount of traffic if you want to make a decent amount of money. It's a numbers-driven game. So I had to find the balance of a keyword I could rank for, but that has a high enough search volume where I'll make decent money."

"I started using an SEO strategy where, instead of using a keyword research tool, I'd open up Google in an incognito window and type in 'best newsletter…' and then I hit the space bar and see what would auto-populate."

Pro tip from Omid: add the word “best” into your titles. “Best” lists are generally the highest converting for affiliate commissions.

The first auto-populate result he saw was "best newsletter platforms."

"I searched that and saw that every article on that first page were the articles that were ranking for 'newsletter software.' None of them were optimizing around 'best newsletter platform,' and I had an intuition that if I created this and optimized for the term, it would rank.”

Rule of thumb:

• Auto-complete gives you something to work with.

• But, content with the same keywords/phrases exists.

• That’s an opportunity for a post.

More Advice for Affiliates

While acknowledging that earning a full-time living as an affiliate requires a lot of traffic, Omid thinks it's possible for creators to earn several hundred to a thousand dollars a month as a beehiiv affiliate — especially if they have a good social media presence.

"For example, the best newsletter article I have gets, let's say, a thousand visitors a month. You can create a Twitter or LinkedIn article that goes viral and gets 5,000 hits. If you have your beehiiv link [in the post], you could get a thousand clicks. That one post did the same amount of work an article did in an entire month."

If you’re curious about how he writes, you can subscribe here.

"Social," Omid says, "is huge. Especially when you think about b2b, there's huge opportunity on LinkedIn. I would have a website with links instead of going on LinkedIn and linking straight to beehiiv from there. Consider making a valuable resource and adding your link to it. Don’t make the post about the link, but an addition to already good content.

Maybe, for instance, you create a LinkedIn article about the framework or templates some of the best newsletters use. Write a blog post on your own website, so you can collect their email and then send them your beehiiv affiliate link, or put the link in that article."

According to Omid, building affiliate assets can be very organic. For instance, if a creator talks about their newsletter, it's easy to add an affiliate link and let beehiiv sell itself.

LinkedIn isn't the only platform Omid recommends. "YouTube is another big one. If you were to create videos around the top newsletter platforms, or how to start or grow a newsletter, you can show beehiiv and how you use it to do polls and create a referral program."

Curious about the affiliate program?

Focus on Getting the Attention

For those hoping to build affiliate income, Omid recommends creating great content and SEO first. It is best practice to focus on creating high-quality content that your audience will want to engage with and then adding your links later.

For example, he says, "I had an article that was getting a decent amount of traffic. It was one of those best-type list posts, and I had no affiliate links in it. I completely forgot about it.

Then, seven or eight months later, I noticed it was ranked number two, suddenly getting a lot of traffic. So I went back to the first company in the list, applied to their affiliate program, and replaced the link."

Adding that link to an established article was powerful. "In the past month, I made a quick $700 — from a simple 2min action.

I was leaving money on the table because people were already clicking on it.

There’s a ton of opportunity for creators who share links from other companies that’s quick, costs nothing, and can easily fit into their existing workflow.”

Growth Through Interaction

Despite his background in affiliate marketing, Omid says it's not the main focus of his blog.

"The newsletter, for me, is the main thing. The blog exists to attract people to the newsletter. Some of it is affiliate, but I try not to do too much selling. I just want to create really good content based on my own experience. I know that if I create really good blog posts, they rank well, and then people read them, and are more likely to subscribe to the newsletter."

Omid's goal is for Marketer Milk to keep growing but in a steady, balanced way. "Seeing this community slowly growing is making me happy. The newsletter is very personal to me, so I've just been taking it slow."

Rather than creating social media content or a personal brand, Omid is more interested in interacting with people and collaborating with partners to grow.

Newsletter Partnerships:

"For example, I like to sprinkle in some elements of personal development in my newsletter. So [one growth strategy might be] to find a personal development newsletter of a similar size and shout each other out."

B2B Shoutouts:

"For example, if I agree to share a link to the blog posts of a SaaS company in my newsletter, then I can arrange for them to share my website in their newsletter or shout out my newsletter on their social media. Another idea is getting on podcasts."

Appearing on Podcasts:

Omid has a unique approach for getting featured on podcasts. "I feel like everybody is lucky in some way. I'm truly lucky that I worked at Webflow and led SEO at Webflow, and there are a lot of sites now built in Webflow, especially in the SaaS space. And a lot of them need SEO help. So it's pretty easy for me, compared with someone who doesn't have that background, to email the CEO of one of these companies and hop on a call with them to share opportunities for their marketing strategy."

Offering Consultations Through The Newsletter:

Omid offers these CEOs a brief consulting session, often prompting the recipient to offer him something of value in return, like an introduction to someone else, a guest spot on a podcast, or a webinar project.

"The way I look at it is just being very selfless... If you know something really well, and you can identify a company or person that could benefit from your knowledge, just reach out to them. I love marketing and branding, so I can always talk about it. And when I see a really cool opportunity for a company, that makes me excited, and I want to tell them about it without asking for anything in return.”

“I don't expect anything, and most times nothing really happens, but occasionally something will happen where they want to do a webinar or some partnership that brings more visibility to my newsletter."

Working With Influencers

Another growth strategy that Omid has experimented with is a sponsored placement on YouTube.

"I knew I needed a marketing audience. This YouTuber was kind of a micro-influencer, but they had OK amount of engagement. They had a video when COVID first started around a day in the life of a marketing manager, and it blew up."

Omid emailed and asked about a sponsorship rate for reading his newsletter online. The price was very reasonable, and the results were good.

"This was around the time when beehiiv launched a feature of tracking where subscribers are coming from. So it was good timing."

"To this day, months later, a trickle of subscribers still come from it. If I was an intense startup growth team, I'd double down and keep doing more of that."

For creators who have never worked with influencers, Omid offers some tips for vetting opportunities.

Working With YouTubers:

"With the YouTuber I found, I saw they had sponsored other companies. That was a clear sign this person was open to sponsorships. Also, you can't always expect a response. People just get too many emails. I reached out to four or five people, and only one of them got back to me. So start with a list of 10 micro-influencers that you want to work with. Be super personable when you reach out, and expect a response from one or two. "

Omid also has advice on measuring the engagement rate of a YouTube creator. "Make sure the views-to-likes ratio is at least 10%. So if they're getting a thousand views on a video, you want that video to have a hundred likes and a handful of comments. That shows they have an engaged audience."

Look for small but highly engaged audiences for the most bang for your buck. "Smaller audiences that are highly engaged are more likely to listen to the creator's recommendations."

Authenticity and Integrity

Omid's approach to marketing is to always lead with authenticity and integrity.

To Omid, collaborating with the YouTuber resulted in a win-win-win scenario for himself, the influencer, and the audience. "In my heart, I feel this person's audience [of college students] will get value from this newsletter."

Centering the needs of the audience is critical to Omid's marketing philosophy.

"People don't like to be sold to. And I don't like promoting stuff that feels like lying in my marketing. So, for instance, if I didn't love beehiiv, I wouldn't promote it. I wouldn't put it at number one in that listicle [on my blog] when there have been other companies that have reached out [to request that spot]."

That kind of outreach from companies is common, Omid says. "Even outside of affiliate stuff, if you have listicle articles, some companies will pay you to put them in the number one spot and pay you a monthly retainer to stay there. It happens a lot. The money could be nice, but I know if I start going with a money-first mindset, then I'm not going to resonate with people."

Marketer Milk is poised to be one of the great success stories in the space. With a clear focus on the audience, tactics that drive engagement, and steady growth, Omid is building an incredible business that will continue growing.

If you have any questions, reach out to the beehiiv team anytime.

Thanks for reading!

For more great marketing tips and news, check out the Marketer Milk website and recent newsletter content, like Our Day 1 SEO Strategy or What Makes a Top 0.1% Marketer.