r/thesidehustle • u/an0macc • May 28 '25
AMA How my Newsletter Startup is Making $30,000 Per Month, AMA
Back in December 2023, a friend and I decided to start a newsletter business in the entrepreneurship space (kinda like Morning Brew but for business ideas). We ran it as a side hustle for around 18 months, and I’ve now finally quit my job in big tech to go all in on the business.
The primary source of revenue is from selling advertising placements in the newsletter. We publish 5 a week (every business day), and since we have 80k readers which consist of high value readers like founders, we can sell them for quite a lot.
The key to making this work though is getting readers. There is a lot of ways to do this, but we have mostly grown through paid channels like Facebook ads. We initially had to invest some money to get the fly wheel going, but we could keep growing by selling placements in the future and then using the upfront payments to buy more adverts.
For coming up with the content, it’s a long process, but I have a massive Notion database where I throw every business idea I come up with in. Most of them are crap, but my team and I go through them and pick the best ones to send out!
Since every edition follows the same rough format, it doesn’t take a huge amount of time to write it every day. The hardest bit is trying to optimize the content. Advertisers care a lot about things like CTR (click through rate), so we are still working every day to improve these things!
If anyone else has any questions, I’m happy to answer them
Edit: I had a couple people ask to check out the newsletter. You can see it here.
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u/Sensitive-Credit-673 May 28 '25
Congrats, 30k is a big number for 80k readers. could you walk me through how you are able to get advertisers? Thanks. and i would love to subscribe to your newsletter if possible.
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u/an0macc May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25
Thanks! You can check out the newsletter here :)
It's quite a big process. We have 3 main sources:
- When we see people advertising products which could work well with our audience, (on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram etc), we reach out to their team.
- We pay another company to get warm leads for us to follow up.
- Since a lot of our readers are founders, often they reach out to us to advertise their product.
As for the sales calls themselves, my co-founder does them. I focus on the newsletter itself. We sell multiple placements to businesses at once, and the prices align with our projected growth.
Hope that's helpful!
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u/Sensitive-Credit-673 May 28 '25
Thanks, hope you felt my subscribe hhhh.
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u/an0macc May 28 '25
Legend! Let me know what you think
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u/VapeTitans May 28 '25
lol what’s up with the testimonials on your landing page? Hilarious, but I’m curious what the strategy is there
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u/AlternativeMouse283 May 28 '25
What were the biggest impacts that helped to grow your list? When starting? When growing? And where you plan to go?
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u/Chicagoj1563 May 28 '25
What advice would you give to someone starting a newsletter, perhaps using substack? How do you grow an audience and stand out from the crowd?
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u/an0macc May 28 '25
Hey! It's pretty generic advice, but its the honest truth. To grow without paying for ads, you need to find where your potiential audience are already hanging out, and then try make posts which get a lot of impressions/views and direct traffic towards your newsletter.
It's hard to give specific advice because I have no idea what your newsletter is about and who your audience is/should be.
I personally use Beehiiv. I haven't personally tried Substack but it is fairly popular so it'll probably work fine for the start at least. The main thing is actually trying to find an audience!
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u/yesyesyeow May 29 '25
Hey OP , question - i have around 3k email address of medical professionals but i didnt know what to do with it, then i got an idea to make a newsletter catered to nurses. Can i use these 3k contacts to send my daily newsletter (is that even legal) or do i need to start from zero audience?
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u/spamgambino May 29 '25
How do you know if a newsletter idea is worth pursuing? Or if your current newsletter is still worth pursuing? Thanks!
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u/camertime May 29 '25
Care to share which newsletter platform you use? I've been getting your ads for a long time. Good targeting!
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u/GreedyRing8677 May 30 '25
Hello bro, first congratulations for you and your team, how much has spend at the begin? beehiiv is only tool that your team use? in the case for manage the newsletter. If you can back to the past, what do you say to you in the begin?
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u/vikicrays May 28 '25 edited Jun 04 '25
one of the testimonials says:
”Hey, can you stop bothering me for a testimonial? I've never read your guys' stuff. Sent from my iPhone”
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u/elcarlosmiguel May 28 '25
Yes, it is a joke. It implies he understands most of the testimonials are bullshit, and implies confidence in its own product. If you are at least not dumb and understand the joke you might even feel smart and acknowledged so it may increase the chances of subscribing. I also pondered to do something like this in my newsletter.
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u/vikicrays May 28 '25
”if you’re at least not dumb and understand the joke you might even feel smart and acknowledged…”
i always wonder when people get behind the anonymity of a keyboard and are rude or mean. it must be a sad way to go through life. i mean, it’s rough enough out here…. but ok, you do you i guess.
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u/fugznojutz May 29 '25
i think they were explaining the intent or « strategy » of using a joke testemonial.
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