How This Sneaker Newsletter Was Acquired in Less than a Year

Cha-ching!

That’s the sound that’s been ringing in Leqwane Lynch’s ears for just over a month.

Why, you might ask?

On July 12, 2023, Leqwane posted this on X (Twitter):

He signed a deal, sold his newsletter, and received a major payday.

In this Creator Spotlight, we interviewed Leqwane Lynch, the founder of The Alerts Daily newsletter to explore the tactics he used to grow his newsletter to 35,000 subscribers, why he chose beehiiv, and how he ultimately cashed out through a newsletter acquisition in just 11 months.

Leqwane was happy to share how leveraging some key partnerships, carving out his own space in the industry, and staying focused on his goals brought him success early on.

If you’re thinking of launching a newsletter, you’re looking for new growth strategies, or you’re curious about what it’s like launching, growing, and selling a newsletter on beehiiv, then keep reading.

The Alerts Daily Backstory

In August 2022, Leqwane Lynch launched his very first newsletter: Alerts Daily. The newsletter

was all about culture, lifestyle, and the streetwear industry. Leqwane shared how “it took 11 months to build out the newsletter property before it was purchased by Overtime.”

We asked Leqwane to tell us how he decided on beehiiv and the impact it had on the growth and sale of his newsletter.

He shared, “beehiiv is a newsletter platform that I use mainly as a content management software for my newsletter. So I was able to use it to create the newsletter from scratch on just a blank page and go from there to make the design for the that I used to create the newsletter.”

He continued, “The platform allowed me to track a lot of the analytics on my subscribers, the newsletters that I was putting out. It also acted as an archive for the newsletter content that I did put out. I found that very helpful because I was able to reference it across social media which was definitely a big aid in directing traffic to our website and growing the list over time.”

Like many other creators who eventually made their way over to beehiiv, Leqwane found out about the platform organically. In fact, as a reader of other newsletters himself, he started to notice something at the bottom of his favorite newsletters: “Powered by beehiiv.”

He shared, “One of the interesting touch points that you guys have is through other newsletters at the bottom of it. I was subscribed to a couple of newsletters across the industry, especially Milk Road. I saw the [beehiiv branding] at the bottom.”

He continued, “I checked out the platform, followed Tyler Denk, and kept a close eye on it before launching. That was one of the first introductions that I had to beehiiv as newsletter management software and it definitely inspired the idea to start my newsletter.”

Leqwane shared how beehiiv made it easy to go from ideation to launch since it was free to start on beehiiv.

“I found out about you guys and signed up. It’s cool that the account is free — that I could just start the newsletter and play around with the design and kind of chart out some ideas on how I’d execute once I started a paid plan.”

Niching Up: Discord to beehiiv

Initially, Alerts Daily initially started out as a premium community for sneaker enthusiasts (collectors) and sneaker resellers in the space.

Leqwane shared how the premium community existed for five years before he launched the media wing and built the newsletter with inspiration from Milk Road. 

He explained, “Within the group, we were putting out social content across our platforms on Twitter and Instagram. The types of things that we were covering within our group were very proprietary as well as helpful information that someone within our industry could benefit from.”

But, Leqwane started to realize there was a problem with his niche: there wasn’t a truly organized way to communicate with his audience to keep them in the loop.

He shared, “The only issue with social media, as well as sneaker blogs and sneaker news sites, is they're slow, unorganized, and not as consistent and people can't really trust them.”

That’s when his beehiiv-powered newsletter was born.

“To basically provide a broader service, I launched a newsletter to give people that were interested in streetwear, the culture, and the lifestyle around it — day-to-day updates on what's happening, what's dropping, what the major brands are doing, and the news that's going on in the community.”

Leqwane shared how inspiration from others like Milk Road fueled him to launch his own newsletter and even expand his audience base.

He recalled, “There was a lot of opportunity for me to launch the newsletter and to serve a broader range of people than just the collectors and resellers that were interested in paying for our private community.”

While Leqwane ran his community through Discord for a few years, it was really niched down to a small group of people.

He shared, “Initially, the communication with our community was done through Discord. So we had maybe 750 to about 1,000 members at any given time in this paid community.

Leqwane explained, “On a day-to-day basis, I was curating and aggregating proprietary information and public information around the industry so that people could have an advantage of knowing the earliest information about what’s coming in like six months — insider knowledge about product drops and information that's happening within large companies in the industry.”

He continued, “This information is very valuable to someone in the community of sneakers or streetwear. Having a newsletter that we could deliver to a broader spectrum of people for free without them needing to pay or anything — obviously, it was a little bit watered down — it was a very valuable set of information delivered on the daily to people that cared a lot about it.”

Solopreneur Success Tip: Goal-Setting

There’s one common denominator across the most successful newsletter publishers: they set goals. By setting targets to hit with your newsletter – whether it’s about growth, engagement, or monetization, you’ll allow yourself to stay more consistent. And, with beehiiv, it’s easy to track your goal progress thanks to our 3D analytics and our Newsletter Navigator.

Leqwane shared how from the beginning, he set growth targets. Then, he exceeded them.

“Alerts Daily was a daily newsletter that did five issues per week. I definitely jumped straight into the deep end and started writing every day. When I started it, the goal was – in the first month — to get from zero to like 1,250 subscribers. By the end of the first month, we were at like 2,500 people.”

He continued, “This was just due to us saying what we do on social media, like, ‘Hey, we're going to deliver free information and keep you updated on what's happening in our community.’ We were posting that on stories and using our Instagram to tell people about it.”

He shared how a secondary goal was to hit a happiness target, referred to as a Net Promoter Score (NPS)…