I added a signup form to my landing page two days ago and have already made $34.

My friend Jamie Northrup, aka Minimalist Hustler made over $900 in January.

It’s not a scam. It’s working. Best of all? It’s free. Although there is a paid version you can take advantage of to grow your newsletter to new heights later on.

Let’s dig into this one!

Signup form magic

To the nitty-gritty: To make money with an email signup form, you need 3 things:

1. A compatible newsletter provider (we’ll dive into this one in a second)
2. A newsletter (or the plan to start one), obviously
3. A tiny bit of techy knowledge to activate it

It’s worth it, though, as you can see from the numbers above.

What am I talking about?

See the sparks

The service is called SparkLoop*. I introduced it in my last post.

SparkLoop is a newsletter referral and growth platform that anyone can use, either for free with limitations or paid with incredible power.

In particular, the part of SparkLoop we’re talking about today is called SparkLoop Upscribe.

Want to know what SparkLoop folks say about Upscribe on their website?

But wait

Before you get carried away, let me give you some bad news. Upscribe won’t work with Substack!

It’s a bummer, I know. I’ve been using Substack to run my newsletter for 10 months. But SparkLoop is not compatible with Substack, because Substack, as you might know, does not offer API access. Other tools would need that API access to integrate with Substack’s features.

Here’s the deal, though. I still use Substack. And I am using SparkLoop regardless.

How?

What I did was add a SparkLoop-compatible signup form to my website to collect those email addresses and benefit from SparkLoop’s referral system. I then manually add those new subscribers to my Substack newsletter. It’s not great, but it works for now.

Compatible ESPs (email service providers) include

• ConvertKit
• Beehiiv
• EmailOctopus
• MailChimp
• MailerLite

and many more.

ConvertKit to the rescue

I use ConvertKit for my signup form. It’s easy to use, GDPR-compliant, well-rounded, offers great support, and has all the features we need for SparkLoop. But you can use any other compatible provider as well.

Sidenote: You might need the paid version of some of those ESPs to integrate with SparkLoop. Others allow it on the free plan.

How to make money with SparkLoop

Simple.

After you decided on the right ESP for you, and after you added the signup form to your homepage (or created a landing page inside your ESP — you can easily do this in ConvertKit), you connect SparkLoop to your ESP and signup form.

For this, you need

• a SparkLoop* account, obviously. The free one is fine
• the Upscribe widget from SparkLoop for your signup form
• A few correct settings inside SparkLoop and your ESP

It’s not too complicated. Don’t panic.

Once you have set everything up, you can select newsletters for your recommendation widget and whenever people subscribe to those newsletters, you can earn money. You will find my newsletter “The SoloCreator Hub” among those options as well.

Setting everything up

1. Sign up for SparkLoop and log into your Dashboard.
2. Select Upscribe from the menu at the top
3. Let the setup wizard help you, it’ll walk you through the steps
4. Connect your ESP (see if yours is available, if not I recommend ConvertKit, MailerLite, or EmailOctopus)
5. Add your publication (your newsletter)
6. Choose publications to recommend (up to 5 will be displayed at once)
7. Set up Upscribe (as a widget or hosted page), here’s a video to help you with that
8. Customize the widget or page
9. Add the code to your website or redirecting to the hosted Upscribe page

The widget should look something like this:

It may sound more complicated than it is. It’s also relatively easy to integrate Upscribe into your ESP landing pages. Watch the aforementioned video, it’ll help a ton.

Ready to go

You’re ready to earn now. Whenever someone subscribes to your newsletter and then subscribes to a recommended one from your Upscribe widget, you can earn money.

There are free recommendations as well as paid ones. You can pick and choose. I’d mix and match. And please use newsletters that you actually read. You can select up to 5 for the Upscribe widget. These can be changed or paused anytime.

As I said, I only activated my Upscribe widget two days and have already seen potential earnings of $34. I say potential because these referrals have to be verified by SparkLoop.

If you don’t believe me, check out Jamie’s tweet + screenshot of his SparkLoop earnings last month. And he’s not paying for SparkLoop!

The bottom line

SparkLoop is a goldmine for newsletter creators, it seems to me.

That leads me to the question: Why hadn’t I (and haven’t you) heard about this service before?

I think it’s this:

1. When you visit SparkLoop’s homepage, they talk about their referral system, how to grow, and more. When you visit the Pricing section, you’re probably going to be turned off. SparkLoop does cost a lot.
2. In turn, they don’t over-promote the Upscribe feature. Most likely because it’s free. Or can be used for free with a free SparkLoop partner account*.
3. Lastly, I suspect some people fear the tech knowledge required to integrate Upscribe. Don’t fear. You can do it!

Those 3 factors only play in our favor right now, though, as this platform and the Upscribe mechanics aren’t overused or saturated yet.

This means it’s the perfect time to jump aboard and try SparkLoop Upscribe. If you do, it would mean the world to me to see my newsletter “The SoloCreator Hub” in your recommendations.

Cheers.