The DM giveaway method we just covered is quite soft.

It mentions the newsletter in the Thank You message and asks people to sign up.

Some will - but not everyone.

What we can do instead is gate the lead magnet so that it requires an email address and this email address is subscribed to the newsletter.

This requires a lot more technical set up but is worth it if you i) have a strong lead magnet and ii) want to prioritise newsletter growth.

My personal suggestion is that you start with the softer method and see what lead magnets are popular. If they turn out to be hot then convert them into this harder form so you can collect email addresses.

The basic process is:

create the lead magnet as before
place it in Gumroad
set the price to $0 but require an email to access the lead magnet
connect Gumroad to behiiv to add the email to the newsletter subscriber list

Warning: to fully complete this you will need a paid beehiiv account for this to work. I’ll tell you when the paid part starts.

Gumroad is a tool for selling digital goods online. But because we can set the price to $0 we can also use it as a lead magnet delivery platform that simply collects email addresses.

Gumroad is free to use.

You can create an account here: Gumroad

Once you are in the Dashboard head to Products > New Product

Add the name and select Digital Product:

Set the price to $0. We are just collecting emails at this point.

You can now fill in a description about the lead magnet.

To do this copy/paste the text contents of your lead magnet into ChatGPT and use this prompt:

Act as a copywriter

Prepare a product description for this lead magnet

Focus on the main benefits and features 

It will be given away free - use a strong CTA to register to immedaitely receive access

[copy/paste lead magnet text contents]

This simple prompt will give you enough for the description. Edit as required.

Important - we want to add a reference to the fact that they will also be subscribed to the newsletter.

Look for Product Info and adjust the Summary so it mentions the subscription.

For example “Access my powerful Checklist + Free Subscription to Prompt Entrepreneur newsletter”

This is telling people that they’ll also receive the newsletter along with the lead magnet itself.

Fill out any other part of the product details required. You can preview the page as you go along to see what needs to be added. For the header image I recommend Canva as always.

In the product’s Content tab you want to add the actual content of your lead magnet.

You can directly add the text here if it’s text based. Or alternatively upload a PDF, audio file, video file or whatever format your lead magnet is in.

You can also add a link to a Notion document where the lead magnets content is. That’s what I personally use.

How you deliver the content will depend entirely on what the lead magnet is. Feel free to drop details in the comments and we’ll help guide you.

When ready go ahead and Publish and Continue.

Gumroad will give you a link to the page where people can get access. If you can’t see it go back to Products and you’ll see it below your product name.

This is the link you’ll publish in your giveaway.

Before we publish though we need to ensure emails move from Gumroad to beehiiv. You can do this manually, downloading emails from Gumroad and uploading them in beehiiv.

From this part on we’ll be using a paid beehiiv account to automate the process. Feel free to skip this part and pick up on the next steps further down the page.

Instead let’s use Zapier. Zapier is a software that allows other softwares to talk to one another.

The basic level is free, up to 100 tasks per month. Past that there are reasonably priced paid tiers - especially when compared to the amount of time Zapier can save you.

Head to https://zapier.com/ to sign up for a free account.

We then want to create a new Zap. A Zap is basically one automation in Zapier.

This is what we want to create:

To do so first head to Create > New Zap

You’ll see a blank Trigger and Action:

This is the most basic Zap possible. One trigger that sets off one action. Zapier can do all sorts of complex things but the root of all automation is this.

Click on Trigger and find Gumroad.

Zapier will ask you to log in using your Gumroad account. Hook it up and then select New Sale as your event.

You can specify which product in Gumroad you want this is refer to. But if you want all sales from Gumroad to lead to your newsletter leave it as all products.

Next do the same with beehiiv. For this you’ll need your API key. Grab this in beehiiv, Settings > Integrations > New API key. Call it Zapier and use this key in the Zapier set up step to connect.

(Warning: You’ll need a paid plan with beehiiv for an API key)

Once Zapier is connected to beehiiv set beehiiv as the Action in your Zap. Then set Event as “Create a Subscriber” to send the new email address into your email list.

Now when someone buys on Gumroad their email address is sent via Zapier to our beehiiv. Automatically, without us having to lift a finger. The initial set up can be a bit daunting if you haven’t used Zapier before but once in place it’s set and forget.

OK - we’re out of the paid part now. The rest is free again.

Once we’ve got all this infrastructure up and running we want to post about the new lead magnet and start generating traffic. We need our post to be similar to the DM giveaway but the instructions are different.

Use this prompt:

Act as a Twitter engagement expert

Write a post for a giveway post.

##instructions for giveaway post begin##

The giveaway is for this lead magnet:
#begin lead magnet#
[copy/paste text of lead magnet]
#end lead magnet#

To receive the lead magnet they need to go this this link [provide Gumroad link]
##instructions for giveaway post end##

This is the same as the previous post but instead of requiring social interaction it sends them straight to the Gumroad page.

I’d suggest experimenting with boosting this post with a small budget as the outcome (email leads) is very valuable.

[Expanding your product range] Scaling digital products