
They got their early subscribers by pitching business classes at the university.
“After we pitched a lecture, we’d pass around pieces of paper for everyone to write down their email. Simple, but turned out to be *very* effective.”
Courtland Allen of IndieHackers interviews Casey Botticello, founder of the Blogging Guide newsletter that has recently reached the $500 per month in recurring revenue after starting in February. Casey shares his business model and how he is growing the newsletter. Paid newsletters on platforms like Substack (What is Substack?) have been gaining in popularity recently. There is a growing market willing to pay for quality content, despite all the free information online. If you are a content creator, paid subscriptions are worth considering. I’ve decided against that direction for this IdeaEconomy newsletter, but there are many that seem to be succeeding. For more information, Trends.vc has a helpful post on the business of paid newsletters
Andrew Warner of Mixegy interviews The Hustle newsletter founder Sam Parr. I love The Hustle and their My First Million podcast. The Hustle now has close to 2 million subscribers. Sam Parr is a great person to follow and learn from. Listen to the interview!
Paid and curated newsletters are a very popular startup idea now because of the low startup costs and large profit potential. James Altucher talks to his old publisher of the multi-million dollar Choose Yourself Media, David Newman, about everything newsletters. This conversation is pure gold. They cover: the opportunity with newsletters, the importance of offering a lead magnet to get subscribers, using Substack to publish newsletters, why affiliate links can be more profitable than ads, using giveaways to get subscribers, and much more.
Brian Clark of CopyBlogger, Genesis WordPress Themes, and the Further personal development newsletter has a simple free course called Next 7 that he says “can lead to a 7-figure business without employees or investors.” It is delivered by email after short quizzes for each lesson. I find the process a little annoying, but it might be a good strategy to encourage people to complete a series of emails. It ultimately leads to information on his upcoming course on the subject. Despite the promotion, it’s still interesting. The main idea is that email newsletters of curated content are a big business opportunity in our world of information overload. Obviously, that is the premise of starting this IdeaEconomy newsletter so I’m biased on the topic. 🙂
The First 1000 newsletter shows how the Morning Brew added subscribers at different stages of their growth. It started with helping students keep up with financial news for job interviews. They later experimented with different iterations of an ambassador program, a referral system where subscribers can earn prizes for recommending people, and paid ads.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff runs a rapidly growing newsletter and community at NessLabs. She has been openly sharing the process of building her business and is active on IndieHackers and Twitter.
“Indie newsletters are booming, and they’re home to some of the most exciting food writing today.”
Here is a look at the business of food newsletters. This can apply to any niche.
Business Opportunity: I think almost every business could benefit from a newsletter, even if it’s sent out once a month. Newsletters are easy to start and building an audience in your niche can open up all sorts of opportunities.
“The Business Model of Good Taste”
“With more creators, more content, and more choice than ever before, consumers are now being consumed by a state of analysis paralysis. The real scarcity isn’t content anymore. It’s attention. When it’s impossible to absorb everything from the flood of information, the best we can do is pick and choose what matters to us most — or, better yet, find the people who can do the curating for us.”
I’m biased, but I definitely agree that curation is going to play a much bigger role in our future. There will be big opportunities for those who build a sizable audience.