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MyGolfSpy: Hitting 200,000 Subscribers After Switching to beehiiv
Breaking Down Adam Beach’s Migration to beehiiv & Early Success
Kanishka & Brandon Storey
January 8th, 2025
Advertising is everywhere.
How do you judge which products are truly the best?
Many people turn to Consumer Reports, a non-profit organization that provides unbiased, independent product testing and reviews.
They evaluate a wide range of products like cars, electronics, and more.
But, what if you’re a golfer?
That’s where MyGolfSpy comes in. It’s essentially Consumer Reports but for golf.
In this case study, we’ll break down how founder Adam Beach grew the MyGolfSpy website to 2 million readers and 200,000 subscribers.
MyGolfSpy is one of the most popular golf websites and newsletters in the world.
Adam shared, “Anything golfers buy, we test.”
Every day, Beach and his team send out a newsletter sharing test results of different golf equipment to help golfers make educated and informed buying decisions. They also provide investigative journalism for the golf industry to keep golfers up to speed with the latest in the game.
Now, let’s dive into how MyGolfSpy switched to beehiiv and has grown to 200,000 engaged subscribers.
Table of Contents
MyGolfSpy Backstory
Every great company begins by filling a gap in the market.
So, how did Adam Beach start MyGolfSpy?
He shared, “There were no checks and balances in the golf industry. The media was owned by the advertisers… heavily influencing what the journalists in the industry were writing and what the media covered.”
In other words, the major brands had a monopoly over the golf media. So, consumers weren’t really able to make informed choices on the products they purchased.
Beach continued, “I thought it was completely biased. Golfers needed somewhere they could go that would have their back — to publish information, data, and content that was consumer-first focused.”
Next thing Beach knew, he decided to launch his very own Consumer Reports, but for golf. And within just a few years, it’s grown astronomically.
He shared, “We now have about 20 million readers and close to 200,000 people subscribed to our newsletter.”
Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. I run Storey Time, a newsletter where I teach people how to become full-time copywriters. Feel free to reach out to me on X anytime!
Why Adam Beach Launched a Newsletter
While Beach was confident it would work, he didn’t realize it would be this big, especially on the newsletter side of things.
He explained, “It was amazing. I didn't know that people were gonna want this content when I first started.”
Beach continued, “Somebody reading an article is one thing. But somebody deciding to give their email tells you that you're providing some service they either need or really want. It confirmed that what we were doing was something that was needed in the industry.”
Beach didn’t have a newsletter at the beginning of MyGolfSpy but, he soon realized it was the safest way to truly own his audience. There’s simply too much risk in strictly relying on different channels like social media and Google.
Regarding newsletters, Beach commented, “If you're going to succeed in this world, you need to take control of your own destiny. And what I mean by that is, you can't wait for people to knock on your door, you need to go knock on theirs.”
He explained, “If you've got all this great content but no one knows about you, it's really hard for people to get that valuable information. So, very early on, we knew that setting up our newsletter and having ways to get people onboarded would be very important.”
Switching to beehiiv
Beach didn’t start his newsletter on beehiiv. But, he eventually realized he needed to find a new solution as his previous software wasn’t cutting it for him.
He recalled, “It was a nightmare situation. You should want both sides to grow. We were with a company called Sailthru and it was very limited. The more emails you send to people, the more you have to pay. It was 10x what beehiiv is.”
With the exorbitant cost, Beach started to see that his time was soon coming to an end with his former email solution.
He shared, “It was a double whammy. It kept our growth stagnant and it cost more than it needed to. So by moving to beehiiv, we've accelerated our growth and saved 90% compared to what we were doing before.”
Beach explained how he was confident in his content, but he just needed new ways to make it easy for people to sign up for his newsletter. That’s when he found beehiiv.
Beach also mentioned, “We lost a lot of money using Sailthru. And, with beehiiv, it's already paid for itself and then some. So that's a plus.”
Why beehiiv
Beach, like many business owners, has experienced shifting algorithms from big tech that make traffic drops commonplace.
He shared, “There's a lot of shake-up in Google and things like that. So we needed to be able to contact our readers more effectively.”
Beach explained, “beehiiv helped us diversify and make things more modernized. When you first sign up for a newsletter, you get a bunch of emails that you don't really want. It doesn’t seem like the real world either- it’s a very one-way communication.”
“With beehiiv, the future is taking control of our own destiny. For example, having a poll, more engagement in the newsletter, and making it a more two-way communication platform, rather than just us talking down to people, has been really effective.”
Plus, Beach is bullish on beehiiv’s long-term outlook.
He shared, “I look towards the future. So when you move to an email service provider, one of the main things you need to look at is that you don't want to be changing these every month. So this is a long-term strategy. beehiiv has a bunch of cool tools that are forward-thinking, and they’re modernizing the newsletter space.”
He continued, “You can see from Morning Brew and all these other newsletters that you need to be at the forefront of technology with deliverability and features. beehiiv, so far, has proven that they're one of the definitive leaders in the space.”
Results: Growth & Monetization
So, what kind of results have Beach and MyGolfSpy experienced on beehiiv so far?
Two things: a bigger list and more revenue.
Beach shared, “In 2024, when we switched, the plan was just to migrate over, get things restabilized, and come up with the strategies on how we're going to help golfers get the information they want at the time they want it. So a lot of the stuff we've been doing has been building towards 2025.”
He explained, “Our newsletter has grown by tens of thousands of subscribers already. It's also grown from a revenue standpoint.
And, more importantly, it's allowed us to deliver information in a way that readers actually want to digest. So, it's just nice to be able to have the features that beehiiv allows us to deliver to the consumer.”
Migration Process
Migrating your newsletter can be one of the scariest things for newsletter operators, especially with a bigger email list. The process takes days or weeks (depending on your provider and your list size), but there can be deliverability issues if not done properly.
Beach shared, “Anytime you switch to a new software, it's a little bit. When you first look at a new back end, you go, ‘Oh my gosh, I don't know how to do anything.’”
Thankfully, for Beach, it was a smooth process.
He shared, “It was pretty easy. For a newsletter the size of ours, we had a beehiiv rep that helped walk us through that whole process. It can be very labor intensive for a non-expert so it was great to have a rep there, with a white glove service to handhold us through that process.”
“It took us a couple of weeks but we’re up and running and haven't looked back.”
Favorite beehiiv Feature #1: Engagement Tools
So, what are Beach’s favorite features in the beehiiv platform?
For him, it’s all about engagement.
He shared, “I think beehiiv polls and surveys are really interesting. It's something simple. But no one else had really pulled it off that well.”
Beach explained, “Surveying consumers at a scale like that — 200,000 people, every day — you can get so much constructive information and data that’s applicable to improving your business. And for us, as a consumer reports type model, I can ask the masses what they like and what they don't like, and then publish that now and repurpose that as content on our website.”
Beach runs surveys and polls frequently to get feedback from his audience and optimize his content (and business).
He shared, “We just published a newsletter called ‘The Stock Ticker Brand Survey’. We’re basically turning brands into stocks and saying, ‘Who’s up? Who’s down?’
We're doing that by being able to poll people in our newsletter. It’s great for consumers, because they go, ‘Oh wow, I didn't know that brand was trending up or trending down’, It’s a pretty powerful, simple tool.
Favorite beehiiv Feature #2: User-Friendliness
Beach doesn’t just love beehiiv’s engagement tools, he’s also impressed by how easy beehiiv is to use for newsletter operators.
He shared, “It’s kind of like working at McDonald's. Franchises create systems that make things more readable and applicable to every location. So, if you put a 13-year-old or a 28-year-old behind a register of a McDonald's, they can work it on day one because they've simplified the register in a way that's more user friendly.”
While beehiiv doesn’t serve up fries and burgers, it helps both seasoned email marketers and beginner newsletter operators easily launch, scale, and monetize their newsletters.
Beach shared, “If you want to start a business, whether it's just a newsletter business, or a blog, or whatever you want to call it, —and you wanted to sign up for beehiiv — you’ll need next to no experience in writing and putting newsletters together, or HTML or coding. You can have a business up and running the next day.”
Growth & Monetization Goals for 2025
We asked Beach to share his goals for MyGolfSpy heading into 2025. His plans?
Double down on growth, engagement, and start tapping into more monetization with beehiiv’s Ad Network.
He shared, “We’ll create more ways for us to monetize our business. With beehiiv, we're sending out to 200,000 people. A lot of businesses would want to advertise and that allows us to do so. For example, Netflix or some golf companies can directly put their ads into our newsletter. That helps us monetize it.
Plus, Beach’s planning on tapping into new levels of engagement through beehiiv’s audience segmentation features.
He explained, “We’ll create more ways for readers to engage. beehiiv has allowed us to talk to our readers in a more one-on-one personalized way. And there's going to be a bunch of ways we do that in the new year. Like segmentation, which is a bunch of nerd talk for being able to talk to you, specifically, rather than just a large audience.”
He continued, “For example, if you are a left-handed golfer and you only like these two brands, we could be sending out emails only to you when something happens in that space, like a left-handed club released by only that brand at the price you want. So that's powerful messaging.”
Next on the menu for 2025 is even more newsletter growth.
He shared, “First off, we’ll be doing recommendations, where we can advertise in other newsletters to sign up for ours. That's a huge growth strategy for us- to advertise in other media outlets that are lateral to us.”
Recommendations allow you to organically recommend other newsletters the moment a subscriber signs up for your list. So, you can partner with other newsletters to help each other grow simultaneously.
Beach continued, “For example, 1440 is an unbiased newsletter, but not anything to do with golf. Maybe our readers would like more of that information. So we can put ours into 1440s newsletter and we can do the same for them.”
In terms of monetization, Beach has his sights on Boosts and the Ad Network.
He shared, “Boosts have already made good revenue for us. The new CPM Ad Network deals that you've done will be impactful for us in 2025.”
Beach explained, “beehiiv is also just allowing us to put out a better newsletter that is more streamlined. More people enjoy it, which means more people tell their friends through word of mouth, which grows our newsletter too.”
Advice for Anyone Looking To Start a Newsletter
Have you been thinking about starting your own newsletter?
Well, we asked Beach to share his advice for someone considering diving in.
He shared, “One thing I'm pretty confident in is newsletters. For a business, it’s going to be one of the more important growth areas and predictable areas. I think it's definitely going to grow over the next three to five years. The sooner you start, the better you're going to be.”
He closed by stating, “If I were to tell a 25-year-old what they should be doing, ‘I would start investing your money now even if it's five dollars a week,’ because it's the same as starting a beehiiv newsletter. Don't wait until it's too late. Right now is the prime time to be in the newsletter business.”
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