Mar 10, 2026
Ep. 101: Building a 70k+ subscriber newsletter by word of mouth ft. Rachel Meade Smith
Rachel Meade Smith is the founder of Words of Mouth, a weekly newsletter focused on finding meaningful work. In this episode, we discuss how she built and monetised a values-driven newsletter to 72,000 subscribers over 10 years without ever running a single ad.
Preorder Search Work now: https://orbooks.com/catalog/search-work/
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Rachel Meade Smith
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Timestamps
00:00 Introducing Rachel Meade Smith and Words of Mouth
01:38 10 years of values based curation
07:17 Growing to 70k subscribers organically
13:03 72% open rate, 22% clickthrough rate
14:07 Monestizing while maintaining strong ethics
20:07 4 ways the newsletter is monetized
37:29 Developing beyond purely aggregation
43:21 The art of aggregation, curation, and editing
46:13 The process and expense of writing a book
