The secret to James Clear's success

Author

Brad Wolverton
September 16, 2024

👋🏻 Welcome to Newsletter Examples, where I highlight the most innovative features I’m seeing in newsletters to help you improve your newsletter.

This week, I’m sharing 4 things I love about 3-2-1 Thursday, James Clear’s elegant newsletter of ideas. Total reading time: 3-2-1 minutes.

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#1: Clear mission

James is the author of Atomic Habits, a book about building good habits and breaking bad ones, which has sold over 20 million copies. His newsletter is chock full of ideas to help you live a better life.

What I ❤️ about it: James promises to drop more wisdom than any newsletter, and he delivers; his emails are all signal, no noise.

#2: Simple structure

In every issue, James shares 3 ideas from him, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question to ponder. Aside from a couple cross-promos, that’s the whole newsletter.

What I ❤️ about it: The structure makes it easy for his audience to consume and easy for him to repeat.

A message from our sponsor

If I told you that the guy who helped James Clear grow his newsletter to 3 million subscribers was available to help you grow your newsletter, would you be interested? 

Manny Reyes, a former Morning Brew growth guy and the founder of newsletter growth agency Boletin Growth, is crushing the CPAs for tons of newsletters.

He has 2 spots left for the year, so if you want to get things off the ground, I wouldn’t wait around. Give him a shout here.

#3: Useful ideas

The secret to James’ success is his ability to regularly deliver big, relatable ideas in a short, simple package.

What I ❤️ about it: I don’t have time to read Kierkegaard’s letters, but I do have time for a short excerpt.

#4: Elegant ads

These are James’s two top-performing ads in the last 30 days, according to Manny, the founder of his paid newsletter growth agency.

Ad link here

What I ❤️ about it: Like his newsletter, these ads are short and sweet, and have wide appeal. If I had to guess, I’d say the CPA on both of these is under $1.50 because they’ve been running continuously for 45+ days.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s examples. I’ll be back next week with a new set.

☮️ -Brad

P.S. Did this email help you? Do me a solid by sharing this link with 1 newsletter pal… 🙏 

P.P.S. [Sponsored] Fun fact about the guy behind Boletin Growth: He has spent more than $7 million across his past roles strictly on paid ads for newsletter growth. Very likely he knows what he’s doing, so I urge you to at least look into booking a chat.

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