Case Study: The Drop by Gannon Breslin

Gannon Breslin started out in newsletters before there was a newsletter business. While attending the US Merchant Marine Academy in Long Island, NY, Gannon, known for his self-taught stock trading prowess, regularly sent out investment advisory emails to other students.

The emails contained market updates, investment strategies, and stock tips and were sent out to anyone who signed up. Fast forward to a career in which he continued to pursue both interests, sailing commercially AND getting his series 65 and working for a data analytics start-up, Gannon ultimately returned to his love of writing and now has two newsletters on beehiiv.

We caught up with creator, Gannon Breslin, to talk about his move to beehiiv and how to find your niche in a crowded market.

The Newsletters:

 The Drop and Rebelmarkets

Gannon’s co-founders on The Drop’s

Kayla Kilbride, Tiktok finance star

@cryptoVonDoom, an anonymous OG NFT influencer person

Top posts to check out

Coachella NFT Pass

$1.7 Million USD Stolen in OpenSea Phishing Hack

2022 Goals

To at least have 50,000 subscribers and a referral program that is Web3 orientated in nature.

Advice for other writers

Write about things you enjoy, if you write about something you aren't truly passionate about you will burn out and/or get writer's block.

Favorite beehiiv feature

My favorite thing about beehiiv is that I am just an email away from a new feature. The beehiiv team is all about putting your thoughts about design and features into action.

Many of the suggestions I have made for the newsletter have sprung into life less than 24 hours later and it has been amazing to feel heard.

Advice for anyone considering a switch to beehiiv

One of the biggest worries people have about moving is that something is going to happen to their engagement or to their subscribers. I’ve switched two newsletters over and was confident that I wouldn’t lose anyone. The migration was incredibly easy and felt like it was over before it started.

The beehiiv team was so professional and made sure the process went as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

Tell me about The Drop

The Drop is bite-sized news about the entire NFT space straight into your inbox. We know the Web3/NFT space is confusing because there are so many changes and things being built that it can be overwhelming.

I always say that 1 day in the NFT space feels like 1 year. Our goal with The Drop is to make sure that you stay up to date on all the news, upcoming projects, and culture every morning.

When and why did you launch a second newsletter?

We [Gannon has two co-founders] started the newsletter in October 2021 because we felt that nobody in the NFT space was writing a daily newsletter that is educational, vetted, free, and accurately covering all the major news in the space.

With Rebelmarkets, I was a small fish in a big pond of finance writers. I saw that everyone was following the same stories and anytime there was big news, no matter how on top of it you were, someone had an article that was exactly what you were going to say.

The market was saturated. I’ve always had an interest in art and started investing in crypto in 2017 and sold an NFT last year. A friend suggested I write about his NFT project and I immediately saw more engagement and more organic traffic.

I realized that no one was talking about it and the number one recurring thing with NFTs is that everyone is lost and feels confused.

Tell me about the move from Substack to beehiiv?

I got my good friend Kayla Kilbride involved in developing The Drop. Through her friend, we heard so many great things about Tyler Denk and I reached out to him and was instantly hooked. It was clear beehiiv was all about the creators. I had been frustrated with the Substack structure, they don’t care about free newsletters. I appreciate that beehiiv actively works to build products and features with free newsletters in mind.

The team cares about the success of every newsletter under the beehiiv umbrella and is open to hearing how the platform can be made better and putting new features into action in the blink of an eye.

If we hadn’t been with beehiiv in launching The Drop, we wouldn't have grown to 18,000 subscribers in six months.

Too many newsletters on Substack look exactly the same and have no way of being able to stand out, something that beehiiv has done an amazing job with. The ability to customize means that every newsletter has a voice. The colors, heading, and other design features help formulate that voice.

I have received many emails with compliments about the look and feel of our newsletter - something that we simply couldn't accomplish on any other platform.

Why was it important for The Drop to remain free? How do you plan to scale and monetize the newsletter?

I always wanted The Drop to be free, to remove barriers to learning about NFT. It’s important to bring more people to the NFT space. Growth will come from connecting with our community more than ever. We have an 18,000-person strong discord and we run a lot of raffles and giveaways. We are incredibly excited to integrate our referral program.

Offering a referral program is unique to beehiiv and the program itself is very seamless. Being able to facilitate rewarding our community is a huge part of our scaling strategy.

Besides the reward system, being consistent is the most important thing when scaling a newsletter - writing every day is hard! But keeping to your schedule is crucial.