How Tim Ferriss grows and monetizes his newsletter

Entrepreneur. Public speaker. Creator of “The 4-Hour Work Week”...

If you do business online, you know Tim Ferriss.

And if you know him, you might also know his weekly newsletter; 5-Bullet Friday.

Today, we take a deep dive into what it is, how it grows, and how it makes money. Let’s get started!

WHAT IS 5-BULLET FRIDAY?

“5-Bullet Friday” is a weekly, short bullet-point email newsletter in which Tim explains the five coolest things he found or explored that week.

It’s that simple – five cool things.

That could be anything. A TV show, a TED Talk, a poem. Anything.

And by anything, I mean anything. In last week’s issue, one of the things was PSY’s “Gangnam Style”.

The reason many people love the newsletter is because it’s short and skimmable. In ten seconds, you understand the email. If you want to go more in-depth, you can – but you don’t have to.

🪴 HOW IT GROWS

An important source of the growth in this case is obvious; Tim Ferriss.

• His podcast, “The Tim Ferriss Show” has over 900 million total downloads.

• His YouTube channel gets over 1 million views a month.

• His tweets reach millions of people every month.

• … and I could go on and on.

The point is: Tim Ferriss is an authority figure. People value his opinion and are interested in his thoughts.

Automatically, this is going to bring a lot of subscribers to his newsletter.

But that’s not all – he’s still actively growing it through paid ads.

On Facebook and Instagram, for example. Here are a few example of ads Tim Ferriss uses:

They’re simple and to the point; they show Tim and explain what people get if they sign up for the newsletter. 

Safe to say - all in all, his growth tactics work…

The newsletter currently has over 1.5M+ subscribers.

💰 HOW IT MAKES MONEY (... AND HOW MUCH)

Now, let’s get to the good stuff – how does it make money?

The newsletter has two sources of income:

1. Sponsored segment

2. Affiliate links

Firstly, the sponsored segment, which you’ll find at the very bottom of each email. After Tim signs off, he leaves a spot for one sponsor.

🔢 Let’s make a calculation:

There are two key figures – subscriber count and CPM. For now:

• Subscriber count = 1,500,000

  • This figure is from Tim's last official subscriber update in June 2021, so it's conservative. The newsletter has likely grown a lot since then.

• CPM = $20

  • This estimate is conservative, considering Tim's ads focus on tech/self-improvement and his high authority status.

So, with those numbers in mind, an ad in the newsletter makes Tim (1,500,000 / 1000 * $20 =) $30,000.

That’s $1.5M+ per year…

And again, that is a conservative estimate.

But that’s not all…

🤝 There is also the affiliate income. A lot of the links in the email are affiliate links.

It is very hard to calculate what each email generates in affiliate income every week, because it depends on so many factors – amount of links, product price, and more. 

But we can do an example calculation of what one link might bring in.

In his last email, Tim had an Amazon affiliate link for Lonely Planet’s “Korean Phrasebook & Dictionary,” which costs $9.99.

We know that Amazon’s commission rate for books is 4.50%. Tim might have special rates with Amazon because he is a major affiliate, but for now, we’ll use this assumed number.

Let’s run the numbers:

• Price = $9.99

• Open rate = 35% → Opens = 1.5M * 0.35 = 525,000

• Conversion rate = 0.5% → Conversions = 2,625

• Commission rate = 4.50% → Commission = ~$0.45

That means this link alone might have brought in (2,625 * $0.45 =) $1,180.

And again, these are conservative numbers. The real subscriber amount is likely higher, and so is the conversion rate. And he often recommends products with way higher price points.

The amount of affiliate links is different in each email. But take the last email, for instance. It had 4 affiliate links.

4 affiliate links per email * 52 editions = $245,000 per year.

💲 It's hard to pinpoint the exact revenue for this newsletter, but these calculations suggest the actual number is substantial.

Which leads me to believe that Tim is making $1.5-3M/year from his simple weekly newsletter.

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“5-Bullet Friday” should be an example for every email newsletter out there. 

• The concept is simple, yet effective. 

• The growth strategy is simple, yet effective.

• The monetization strategy is simple, yet effective.

👏 Just as things should be…