The Infinite Reader Glitch
✏️ Make $1+ per email subscriber without selling books ✏️
Wouldn’t book marketing be a bit more fun if you could get paid to do it instead of *paying* to reach readers?
Even if it’s not more fun… it would make book marketing a lot more sustainable for a lot more authors.
Luckily, today, I have one hyper-specific way you can make money while growing your mailing list. The best part it allows you to make a profit by growing your mailing list before you even sell 1 copy of your book.
And guess who will pay you?
Bookbub… and tons of other companies.
Welcome to the world of paid newsletter referrals.
But before I dive into how you can get paid sometimes as much as $1 on average per new email subscriber, just by setting up a simple form… I want to share with you what we are really trying to do here.
What is the Infinite Reader Loop?
The Infinite Reader Loop is one of the Expansion Powers (Scale Your Readers) inside the Author Marketing Superpowers Deck. You can get the physical deck with 50 beautifully illustrated cards and the Six-Figure Author Superpower System for a limited-time discount here.
The power is simple: design a system that allows you to capture email subscribers and then upsell them to one or a series of stories/experiences that allow you to make more money upfront than you spent on marketing to get that email subscriber.
Some core rules that are essential to remember about infinite reader loops:
Rule #1: One offer that you upsell readers to is unlikely to have you break even on your upfront marketing cost alone.
Example: You run Facebook Ads and get new email subscribers for on average $0.75. In exchange for subscribing, they get book 1 in your series for free. If you upsell them to book 2 in your series at a $4.99 eBook, you will need roughly 20% of readers to convert to that to break even.
That’s… pretty unrealistic! More realistic may be 5-10%.
So what can you do? Incorporate a second upsell after book 2, such as buying book 1 in another series… or bundle the rest of your books in a series together, or an upsell to a paperback version where you can make more profit on average per order.
Now let’s say you manage to get your average order value to $15, a 5% conversion would still make that profitable at $0.75 cost per email subscriber (often called cost per lead).
Okay… great.
But what if I told you all of this Infinite Reader Loop stuff doesn’t matter?
Like, yes, it’s very important to know and can be extremely powerful to implement.
However, just designing some cool upsell pages and paid ads to drive traffic to your freebie (often called a lead magnet) will not be enough.
Even if these pages are hyperoptimized with your colors locked in, copy short, succinct, and snappy… You will only get average results… which means you will likely be losing money upfront.
You see… doing all of this without this one key missing ingredient is like writing a book with all plot and no characters.
So, how will we bring your reader loop to life?
That’s rule #2.
Rule #2: Your marketing story matters more than your marketing funnel.
“Free in Kindle Unlimited!”
“Gripping story, you won’t be able to put down”
Please make it end.
I’m crying.
It’s hurting me.
Stop this.
Readers deserve better.
Thousands of authors are hawking their stories. All saying the same thing, just swapping out one book title and genre for another.
As a reader, what makes me want to click on your ad, or better yet, actually read your freebie, compared to the thousands and thousands of other authors out there?
It’s not going to come from making your book cheaper.
And it won’t come from making your book better, although that helps in the long run!
We need to make them *feel* invested in our story.
You should be spending most of your time on the creative side of your marketing.
What hooks will engage readers with your stories?
What marketing voice can you use to stand out and build a unique, trusted brand for yourself?
How can you entertain your readers just through your advertising?
How can you make your marketing fun?
Of course, all 50 of the superpowers [you can scoop yours up here] are designed to help you do this by turning your book marketing into a fun card game. But I’ve also created a free quiz called the Author Marketing Styles Quiz to help you find your unique marketing voice, tools, and rhythm. You can take it here.
Rule #3: Play the long game and build trust (and profit) with time.
When someone signs up for your mailing list to get a freebie, they are not a reader of yours yet.
You now have a great chance to earn trust with them.
Most of us focus on whether our readers buy our books within their first few weeks on our mailing list. In reality, 70%+ of our sales will come after a reader has already been on our list for 90 days. This is called long-tail conversions.
Your fatal flaw?
You are likely doing very little to nurture long-tail conversions.
If you are going to be bringing readers onto your mailing list through swaps and freebies who are low-intent (aka they didn’t already purchase a book from you), we have to spend a long time warming them up and building trust.
This does not come from having a super long and segmented welcome sequence on your newsletter (although this can help).
It comes from regularly delivering value… for free… over time.
Maybe you write a new short story each month for newsletter subscribers. Maybe you share book recommendations in your genre. Maybe you share research behind the scenes of your books that will help benefit the lives of your readers (interesting insights on technology if you write science fiction, tips on kink if you have kinky themes in your romance, etc.).
So NOW you have the knowledge to build an incredible system that can grow your readership profitably and allow you to get an incredible return on your email list by nurturing long-tail conversions.
There’s just one problem.
What if you don’t have a book out yet, but still want to build an infinite reader loop and grow your audience? What if you don’t want to or have the time to build out upsells to try and make back your marketing cost upfront?
Luckily, I have an answer for you: paid newsletter referrals.
How Paid Newsletters Referral Programs Work
Paid Newsletter Referrals are when someone signs up for your newsletter and is then recommended 3 to 5 other newsletter lists to sign up for right after.
When they sign up for these newsletters, you get paid!
Some key characteristics of most paid newsletter programs:
You have to apply to be a referrer for a newsletter. For instance, if you apply to be a referrer to a newsletter writing exclusively for military vets and you write military science fiction, that could be a good fit!
Each newsletter pays out a different amount per new subscriber. These typically range between $1 and $3 per subscriber (depending on what the specific newsletter wants to pay for new subscribers). That’s a lot… and could allow you to make up to $10 from a single email subscriber who opts in to all your newsletter recommendations. But there’s a catch…
You only get paid when you refer “engaged” subscribers to other newsletters. What is defined as engaged varies depending on the specific newsletter referral program, but think having opened at least one email in the first 30 days, and sometimes even clicking on a link inside an email, to qualify as engaged. Typically, between 30% and 50% of subscribers you refer to other newsletters will qualify as engaged. That means you are eligible for referral payouts on those subscribers.
Lastly, not every new subscriber will opt in to newsletter recommendations. This varies based on how targeted your recommendations are to the new subscribers joining your email list. A good target is for the average subscriber to join 1 newsletter recommendation, knowing that many will join zero, and some will join all (you will likely have 3 to 5 in total).
Now we can start to model out a realistic payment per subscriber.
If you are paid $1.50 to $2 on average per successful referral, each new mailing list subscriber of yours joins at least 1 referred newsletter, and 30% to 50% of those become engaged, you are looking at a potential realistic payout between $0.50 and $1 per subscriber.
Wowza 🤯. The best part, after you refer folks to other newsletters, you can redirect them back to upsells to future books in your series and more!
No, you won’t get rich off newsletter referrals. But if you are running ads to get readers onto your mailing list, there’s a decent chance referrals alone will help you recoup most of your advertising cost and even make a small profit.
And that all before a reader even buys one of your books (meaning you can feasibly start this before you have a massive backlist or first book complete).
That’s awesome!
In a future edition of the Author Sidekick Dispatch, I’ll dive more into paid ads.
But now the important question… where are these paid newsletter referral programs, and how can you join?
Luckily, one is completely free to join!
SparkLoop and Beehiiv Paid Newsletter Referrals
In my article on the Top Email Platforms for Authors in 2025, I mentioned Beehiiv and Kit. These are the two companies behind these paid newsletter referral programs.
#1: SparkLoop (acquired by Kit 2 years ago)
SparkLoop is a powerful growth platform for email newsletters.
Completely for free, you can join their platform and start recommending other newsletters + get paid for it!
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Sign up for a free account and connect your newsletter platform.
Step 2: Add details about your publication and payout information to apply to their Paid Recommendations program (it takes about 24-36 hours to get approved).
Step 3: Apply to referral opportunities so you can begin referring subscribers. Bookbub is even one of the options, paying $3 for engaged subscribers!
Step 4: You can embed a pop-up form onto your site, or create an Upscribe widget that allows you to redirect subscribers AFTER they sign up for your newsletter, to then have the option to join paid referrals. After they join paid referrals, they can then be redirected to an upsell page on your website to get a book bundle, etc.
If you are interested in joining SparkLoop, you can do so here [note this is an affiliate link!].
#2: Beehiiv Boosts
Beehiiv has boosts integrated directly into the platform for folks on their Scale plan and up (at least $49 a month).
Beehiiv works very similarly to SparkLoop Paid Recommendations, the only downside is that with SparkLoop, you can use any email service provider, whereas Beehiiv Boost is limited just to people who use Beehiiv for their newsletter.
You can join Beehiiv and learn more about their boosts program here.
And that’s it for this one! If you enjoyed this article, I’d really appreciate you sharing this with fellow author friends. This doesn’t have to be a secret. The more who engage in paid newsletter referrals, the stronger it makes this marketing opportunity for everyone!
I’ll be back in touch later this week with a return to the Beyond the Book Podcast after the hiatus. Wohoo!
In the meantime, don’t forget…
Together we are boundless,
Michael Evans
The Author Sidekick