How a Small-town Boy Started a 400K + Newsletter from Nothing

Jason Woodruff had exactly zero subscribers and no followers when he started

Karen Cherry
3 min readMar 8, 2024
Image: Freepik

In just a few years, Jason Woodruff piloted his newsletter from zero to more than 400,000 subscribers.

This is an awesome example of a start-from-scratch newsletter. It’s called The Pour Over and it started with no list, no industry contacts, and no funding.

The writers at Sparkloop explained the strategies Jason used to achieve such phenomenal growth. They attribute his success to having a niche perspective, attracting a wider audience with a podcast and incentivising shares with a referral program.

A Unique Niche

The founder of The Pour Over explained to Sparkloop that he was sick of not being able to get news he could relate to as a Christian.

So he created The Pour Over to solve his problem, figuring that if he had that problem, then others would too.

His offer: a politically-neutral newsletter, delivering big news stories in a way that aligns with Christian values.

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Karen Cherry

Substack writer. Secret tree hugger. Aussie business owner with >$19K revenue on Substack. Refusing to dumb it down.