Paid Growth: When and How to Advertise

Most newsletter writers who ask me about paid growth are asking too early. Not because paid acquisition doesn't work, it does, but because it answers a question they haven't earned the right to ask yet: how do I scale a channel that's already converting well. If you don't know your retention rate, your actual engagement, or what a subscriber is worth to you in dollars, spending money to get more of them is spending money to find out whether your foundation holds up, which is an expensive way to run that test.