2025 Content Review | Facts, Figures, & Outlook for 2026

Every year, I review the stats from my journey as a creator (so that Chenell Basilio from Growth in Reverse has plenty to work with in a few years). Here’s the breakdown for 2025: 

[1] Stats

[1a] Newsletter

• Dec 22nd, 2024: 511
• Dec 30th, 2025: 1,092 

Nice, steady growth. This year, the focus was on consistency, and that paid off – finally crossing the 1,000 subscriber mark in November.

The biggest channels were Generalyst (which lines up beautifully, the people who apply to Generalyst are also the perfect reader profile) and organic content on LinkedIn.

Which is cool - I used to struggle to translate LinkedIn followers to subscribers, now it’s working really well. 

Notably, exactly 300 people unsubscribed in the past year. That sounds like a lot, but translates to a ~0.4% unsubscribe rate per email sent, which is still above average in the industry. 

Flexing with subscriber rates is a vanity metric if nobody reads it. My open rate has gone down from 61.63% last year, but given the massive subscriber growth, this is still perfectly fine (and slightly skewed by the fact that I sent a newsletter yesterday that not everybody has read yet; should directionally be more like 58.5%). >60% open rates are rare in the industry, so I’m happy with that. 

For now, growth remains linear. 

Let’s see if or when the hockey stick hits. 

[1b] LinkedIn

• 2024: 524.661
• 2025: 624.803

Viral posts can definitely spike impressions, but again, it’s the consistency that pays off here. I’m not sure what changed in the algorithm or whether my posting became better, but the floor became higher in early October (with 11.9% higher impressions than the previous 90 days). 

Now, here’s what’s interesting: my followers grew by 77.1%, but impressions only by 19,3%. 

• 2024: 2,857
• 2025: 4,523

Which goes to show that just having a lot of followers is, again, a vanity metric. Don’t optimize for it; optimize for engagement, impressions, and ultimately, revenue. 

[1c] Insights

After writing 50+ newsletters and ~200 LinkedIn posts this year, here’s what I observed: 

• Newsletters are mostly a retention mechanism. They don’t bring in new top-of-funnel leads, but they make people go from the top to the bottom of the funnel in the span of a year. I recently had an interview with a person where I was like, “man, I recognize that name”, but she hadn’t applied to Generalyst before. Turns out, she’s been a subscriber for more than a year. 
• Newsletters, paired with an obnoxious LinkedIn presence, help you stay top of mind. Which greatly increases luck surface area. Difficult to measure, but yields opportunities. I’ve been told “whenever I open LinkedIn, you’re always at the top” at least ten times in the past two months. Nice. It’s working. 
• Just having a digital product that you’re not heavily promoting does exactly … nothing. My online course only sold a handful of licenses this year. Makes me reconsider the notion of “just build it, then you’ll have something to sell forever”. 
• Putting your thoughts on the internet opens serendipity. I’ve closed a few deals with people who have read my writing, strongly agreed with it, and then decided to do business with me. Manifestos and strong opinions hit like crack for founders & VCs. 
• I feel like I’ve found my authentic voice. It’s always a work in progress, but I think much less about how to write and instead … just write. Seems to be working. 

[2] Considerations for 2025 in review

In the 2024 review article, I committed to do 2 things:

Publish an eBook

Yeah, that didn’t work. Hard to focus on writing a book when you’re busy building a business. Don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon, and that’s okay. 

Collaborations, Guest Blogs, & Podcasts 

Not much happening here. Appeared on a few podcasts (one of which is yet to come out), didn’t do any guest posts. 

Would still be open to changing this. 

[3] Considerations for 2026

Personal Media Company

Content works. I have zero doubt about that. I absolutely love writing, and being in front of a camera and/or mic. Everything around it … not so much.

So in 2026, I’m planning to invest some of the earnings of Generalyst into building out a personal media company. With video editors, new channels, all that. 

Can’t say too much about it, but expect to see me also on other channels. 

Monetization

With more than 1k subscribers, monetizing the newsletter somehow becomes more appealing. What I'm currently not considering is charging a premium subscription.

But I’m considering advertisements of products that I also genuinely believe in. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on this: do sponsorships make reading a newsletter less appealing? More? I personally just skip them, and occasionally click on one of them because I actually want it. 

Actually – let's try it:

Subscriber Surveys

I have a hypothesis of who reads my newsletter; but in reality, I have no idea. One thing for 2026 is to finally implement an onboarding survey as well as an individual survey for existing subscribers. This’ll help me tailor the things I write about even better. :) 

I love writing this newsletter. I really do. 

Thanks for reading the things I put out.

Have a wonderful year 2026. And if you’re looking to start your own newsletter and/or personal brand, let me know.

Happy to help. 

LFG. 🔥

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