Interview Date: July 6, 2025
Table of Content
- Meet Evann Ryan
- Newsletter Identity Card
- Her tool stack to run her content business
- Why she started a newsletter
- How she grew 1,200 subcribers
- Strategies she used to reach 180+ paid members in less than 2 months
- Personal & professional impact of running a newsletter
MEET THE CREATOR
Evann Ryan turned her passion for plant-based fitness into a fast-growing Substack success without even crossing the 1,000-subscriber mark!
- She already had a 128K-strong Instagram following, where she consistently shared vegan recipes. Wanting to serve her audience more deeply, she launched a Substack newsletter to turn her content into a structured, service-based business.
- In just two months, she introduced Bite Club, a high-protein vegan meal planning newsletter designed to help her community eat more intentionally.
- She didn’t just write about vegan recipes, she identified her audience’s needs and offered them a perfect solution. She went all in on high-protein vegan meal plans, solving a specific problem for a specific audience.
- Instead of offering personalized consultations, she built a scalable system: paid subscribers receive a meal plan every Friday, complete with 6 recipes, a grocery list, customization options, and globally friendly ingredients.
- With her service-based newsletter, she quickly became a Substack Bestseller 2 months after its launch.
Today, she has built a loyal audience of 1,100+ readers and continues to grow daily. Bite Club isn’t just a newsletter, it’s a thriving service-based business rooted in audience trust and needs.
Evann’s journey is a powerful example of what happens when you deeply understand your audience and build a newsletter that actually serves them.
NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD
TOOL STACK
- ESP: Substack
- Writing: Canva
- Curation & Note taking: Google Docs
- Visual design: Canva
- Payments: Stripe
START
How and why did you start Bite Club in the first place?
I started Bite Club, a high protein vegan meal planning service to expand my offerings to my audience! Since starting my online business almost two years ago now, I’ve given my audience new recipes in blog format or in high protein ebooks. While my audience enjoys this form of content I knew I could dig deeper and offer them a service that makes this lifestyle even easier.
GROWTH
What specific strategies or actions helped you reach over 1,100 subscribers within 2 months after your launch?
I believe my growth came quickly because I know my audience well. I connected with them as much as possible and knew that there were more ways I could help them achieve their vegan protein goals.
Once I had a service in mind I started sharing it with them through my social channels, offering them a free subscription, or a 7 day free trial to upgrade to the paid version. This allows them to dip their toes in and see if this new service is the right fit for them. Luckily it seems as though it is!
You have a huge Instagram audience of 129K followers. How does your Instagram presence support your newsletter growth? What’s been the most effective strategy for converting those followers into loyal newsletter subscribers?
My instagram audience has been a huge help to me growing my substack because I made it for them! I’ve definitely seen some organic subscribers come in from Substack too, which is totally exciting, my initial goal was to serve my current audience.
My strategy is simply letting them know a few times a week through stories, carousels, reels, or my website newsletter that this new service is available with an easy link to access it.
MONETIZATION
You hit 100 paid subscribers at 900 subscribers, which is quite rare on Substack!
How did you decide it was the right moment to launch a paid newsletter on Substack? And how did you launch your paid offer?
I currently have 180 paid subscribers on my substack and it continues to grow every day! I launched the paid service on substack within the first few weeks on Substack.
I started quietly there to figure out how Substack worked and once I understood it well enough I launched paid. I didn’t announce my first paid newsletter to anyone because I wanted to make sure I understood how it worked completely. By week two I let my audience know.
Substack was going to be about the paid membership from the very start for me, so it wasn’t really about when, it was just about how. As for a launch, I didn’t actually do anything special, I just launched and let people know it existed.
How did you decide what to offer differently to paid subscribers to make it compelling for them to join as paid members?
My paid subscription is a big service! Every single Friday morning I send out a high protein vegan meal plan with 6 recipe options for their week ahead. It comes with a grocery list, easy customization options, and globally friendly ingredients so my audiences from all over the world can use it.
My free subscription is a few recipes each month that I found myself loving and repeating in my own house.
The reason I didn’t make this a consultation service is because I can work with way more people by providing a generalized meal plan service, as opposed to one on one clients which would greatly limit my reach.
What do you think worked best in helping you gain paid subscribers?
I don’t consider myself to be very marketing savvy and actually have a hard time “selling” but I know my audience, I know what they come to me for, and I know where my strengths are in helping them. I build based on their needs and simply let them know it exists through my socials.
I have yet to have any “huge” growth days, I just show up consistently, and listen to their feedback. I think my strategy is and always has been to help my audience achieve their goals in the best ways that I can.
IMPACT & LEARNINGS
How did building Bite Club newsletter contribute to your life professionally and personally?
Building Bite Club has been so much fun! I always knew food, fitness, and veganism were the things I wanted to work on and talk about as much as possible. They’re my passions, and getting to work on those every single day and help others do the same is incredible.
Professionally it’s been an amazing way to round out my online business. I started working online full time almost two years ago and my first business was content creation making my income from partnerships. While I still do that I knew I needed something more stable and consistent, both when it comes to my work routine and income.
What would it be if you had the right to give one piece of advice to aspiring newsletter creators?
My advice would be to write and talk about what you’re most passionate about. If you can niche that topic down even further and become a leader in that category even better. I could have focused just on vegan recipes, but I took it further and made it specifically about high protein vegan recipes because I know that’s a big issue for vegans and vegetarians.
Be specific and make sure it’s something you can’t get enough of, because it’s going to take a lot of work to get noticed in a constantly changing algorithm.
3 Popular Bite Club Issues
- 5 High Protein Vegan Meals For Busy Days
- Homemade Electrolyte Drink Recipe
- High Protein Vegan Recipes (Meal Plan) May 30 – June 5th
