Identify an audience need: Chenell’s journey started with a curiosity about how another creator built his business. She wasn’t alone and decided to address this gap in the marketplace.
Use revenue-producing skills in the early stages: Chenell used her SEO and paid ad experience to start a consulting business that brought in revenue as she transitioned to her newsletter business.
Prioritize relationship-building: Chenell grew her newsletter to thousands of subscribers without spending money on ads. She also thanked every newsletter operator who recommended her.
Monetize early but don’t wait to raise prices: Chenell monetized her newsletter at a low rate ($100) when she had fewer than 5K subscribers. Within a year, she raised her rates to over $1.1K an issue when she had 26K subscribers and a 48% open rate.
Diversify revenue streams: Chenell’s next major revenue stream was a paid community instead of an online course because it gives her more enjoyment and revenue and gives members more value. This year, she started a podcast and sold a sponsorship for five episodes before publishing the first one.

The Story of Chenell Basilio

Finding the right gap in a crowded marketplace can differentiate between success and failure. Chenell Basilio quickly discovered this when she started her content business Growth in Reverse.

Like many of her peers, Chenell began her path to content entrepreneurship by majoring in a subject unrelated to her eventual content business. She graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in geography, a field she chose because she loves hiking.

In 2009, Chenell landed a job with AAA in its travel department thanks to an application her mother filled out for her. “They thought it was a great option because of my geography degree, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but I was like, ‘Hey, I got a job,’” Chenell says.

She quickly stood out for her computer proficiency and was recruited to the company headquarters in Wilmington, Del., to help with marketing and website development.

During her hour-long commute, Chenell discovered podcasts. She eventually stumbled onto Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast. The first episode, which featured Glenn Allsopp, changed everything for her.

“I was like, ‘Wait, people just build websites to make money?’ I thought that was crazy. I graduated college with $70K in student loan debt. What if I build a website that talks about me paying off these loans?”

In 2014, Chenell launched that blog using SEO tactics she had learned on her own. She shared her new knowledge with her boss at AAA, and he added SEO and paid search to her job duties. Flabbergasted, Chenell made the best of it.

“I have never logged into Google Adwords in my life. And I ended up managing millions of dollars in ad spend. I had to learn pretty quick,” she says.

Capitalizing on her new skills

Chenell’s on-the-job training with paid ads proved fortuitous. As her skills and experience increased, people took notice. While working on her blog, she met people in the personal finance space who reached out for help.

Chenell took on a few clients, doing paid ad consulting for their online businesses, and realized it could become her full-time job. She saved up eight months of expenses and, in mid-2017 left her AAA job to launch her agency, Conversion Owl Marketing.

While the going was a little rough, Chenell covered her expenses and had the freedom being a solo entrepreneur provides. Then COVID hit, and suddenly everyone needed ad help.

The business flourished, generating up to $450K in revenue, but the workload of 15 to 18 clients overwhelmed Chenell.

“I got burned out really fast. I couldn’t figure out the hiring piece, so I worked all the time. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, but I was so over the service game. I helped them grow a business, and then they said, ‘Great, we are going to bring this in-house, thanks, and see you later.’ So, I wanted to build something for myself. I just didn’t know what that was at the time.”

Finding the power of newsletters

Looking for direction away from a service-focused agency, Chenell stumbled on an article from Mario Gabriele from the Generalist newsletter. He talked about how he made $300K in his first year.

“Obviously, I was like, ‘What?’ I wanted to know more so I went deep in the rabbit hole trying to figure out how this guy did this. It was insane to me,” Chenell explains.

She listened to podcasts where Mario guested and reviewed his old Twitter posts, spending about 50 to 60 hours on research before writing an article about his success. Then, she posted the article online to see what would happen.

She also followed his advice by posting what she wrote on social media.”I took my Twitter account and just completely rebranded it to Growth in Reverse. I didn’t have any reason for the name. I’m actually bad at naming things, so I just said what I did. I looked at growth and then went backward,” Chenell says.

Growth in Reverse launched on Sept. 4, 2022, with one deep dive article and no newsletter subscribers. Chenell gained her first subscribers by commenting on other people’s posts and sharing what she was doing. She sent the Mario deep dive once she had four subscribers (including herself).

Explosive growth

That first newsletter had a 100% open rate. One of the four subscribers was Jay Clouse of Creator Science, who messaged her, “This is awesome.” Jay shared the article with his community, instantly increasing Chenell’s subscriber count.

Chenell condensed her research time for the second article but learned that her readers preferred her work, which focused on numbers and growth levers.

“I think that people hadn’t seen content like this before, so people were just sharing it in the creator space. Random newsletters I had never heard of were sharing it. I continued to post on social media about what I was doing and building relationships. It definitely helps to build relationships,” she says.

Within six months of finding the right gap in the marketplace, Growth in Reverse had 5.1K subscribers and spent no money to acquire them.

Chenell did a few cross-promotions in the early months and used Sparkloop for referrals. Whenever she saw a new newsletter sending subscribers, she thanked the operator for the recommendation. She credits this personal touch with building valuable relationships and continued recommendations.

Monetizing the newsletter

During the startup of Growth in Reverse, Chenell kept her consulting clients to help pay her bills. By the end of 2022, she stopped taking new clients. She knew she had to monetize the newsletter for this to work as her full-time gig.

In February 2023, she sold this first sponsor spot for $100. By the end of 2023, she increased sponsorship rates to over $1.1K per issue because she had 26K subscribers with a 48% open rate. She sold around 80% of the available slots.

Chenell experimented with affiliate marketing, primarily recommending the tools and courses relevant to her audience. However, affiliate revenue makes up only about 5% to 8% of her revenue. She continues to recommend tools but does not depend on this inconsistent revenue.

Expanding the business: Community and consulting

Chenell considered launching a course as reader demand grew and built a waiting list of 1K people. However, she thought the changing newsletter world wouldn’t support an evergreen course. She decided on a community-based model instead.

In August 2023, Chenell launched the Growth in Reverse community, an application-only membership for established newsletter creators priced at $799 per year.

“I wanted to create a space for people who were already building, not a beginner’s group,” she says.

With an initial cohort of 60 members, the community became a hub for in-depth discussions, networking, and collaboration. The community has grown to 75 members, and Chenell plans to grow it to 250 to 300 members.

Community activities include live calls, themed months, expert guests, and challenges, with the winner receiving a shoutout in her newsletter.

Recently, Chenell did a “roast-my-post” discussion in her community. Each participant shared a post that didn’t perform well, and then they talked about why it didn’t perform well in a productive, light-hearted manner.

Growth in Reverse also now offers consulting services. Chenell’s favorite offering is newsletter audits. She provides in-depth feedback on client’s content, design, and growth strategies through recorded Loom videos.

Learning from hiring mistakes and building a team

One of the key lessons Chenell took from running her agency was the understanding that she needed to hire additional help when the time was right. With this intentional approach to scaling Growth in Reverse, Chenell hired Dylan Redekop, a fellow newsletter expert and founder of Growth Currency, to help with content and research for a few hours a week.

She also hired a virtual assistant to handle the administrative tasks, freeing up her time for strategic growth and increasing revenue.

“I learned that hiring isn’t just about delegation. It’s about making sure the right people are in the right roles,” she says.

Adding a podcast and future plans

Hiring Dylan proved advantageous in another way. Dylan talked about a podcast with Chenell, who already had some interest. In late 2024, they launched Growth in Reverse – The Podcast and secured a five-episode sponsorship before publishing the first episode. Looking ahead, Chenell plans to refine her monetization strategies and pursue more partnerships. She acknowledges that her growth is attributed to her content and referrals. However, she does want to put growth strategies in place that can lead to more auditing clients and more members in her community.

Learn more from Chenell and other expert presenters at Content Entrepreneur Expo this August in Cleveland. Register today!

The post How Chenell Basilio Reverse-Engineered Success From 0 to 40K Newsletter Subscribers appeared first on The Tilt Publishing.

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