Newsletters 101 Part 3: How To Build & Monetize Them with Ethan Brooks

[00:00:00] Hey and welcome back to Content Is Profit. This is Luis, half of the BIZBROS and I'm welcoming you to this incredible start of 2025 in the 10 episode series on where we go all the way from frameworks to how to monetize your content in a very specific way, even how to outrun Google or how to land your dream sponsors. So I think these 10 episodes are going to really help you. If you haven't listened to any of the others, go back and they start on January 3rd all the way to January 12th.

[00:00:30] So super excited to share these with you. Enjoy.

[00:00:33] Hey, I'm Luis.

[00:00:35] And I'm Luis.

[00:00:36] And you're listening to the Content Is Profit podcast.

[00:00:44] Welcome to Part 3 of the newsletter segment in the Content Is Profit podcast with the BIZBROS and our special guest Ethan Brooks.

[00:00:54] I have a question, right? Like I think in your thread you asked this question like where should people start with, let's say specifically newsletters, right?

[00:01:01] In this case, but do they do paid newsletters? Should they be free, right? This is a question that we've had for us. We're like, oh man, okay, there's an email list that's growing. How do we actually start doing this? Is it free for the show? Is it like a paid thing? Like where do we do that? I'm sure like Fonzie has experienced a little bit more on that.

[00:01:18] You might have a follow-up questions to it, but where should people start looking into starting this journey?

[00:01:27] Great question. Yeah. So, and like as is so often the case in business, like the answer is sort of, it depends, but I'm going to give you some concrete stuff.

[00:01:38] So, generally speaking, like I said, there are like a few components to this, right? Cashflow, audience, products.

[00:01:48] And when you break down that audience product model, you have like your free audience, which can be monetized via ads or affiliate deals.

[00:01:55] You have those low price front end products, and then you have your high price backend products.

[00:02:01] Now, the real truth is technically you can start with any one of those and any one of those by themselves can be like a multimillion dollar business, right?

[00:02:12] But you have to ask yourself, if you decide to start with a paid product, how are you going to get distribution for it?

[00:02:19] And so very often what you see is kind of the most common path is a company will start with a free offering of some kind.

[00:02:26] And that is that free offering is monetized via the ads and affiliate deals eventually and used to funnel people towards the paid products.

[00:02:35] So I've seen this play out in a couple of ways.

[00:02:37] Like if you're thinking strictly about newsletters, let's say you only want to write one newsletter and you don't necessarily want it to be free.

[00:02:44] Okay. Well, you can pull that off if say if you have an audience somewhere else.

[00:02:48] So if you have a podcast or you have a Twitter account or an Instagram account, something where you're already engaging with people and they're understanding like your story and the value that you could bring to the table.

[00:03:00] You can start with a paid newsletter right there.

[00:03:02] And I know a guy who's a he's a business broker.

[00:03:05] And so he started a paid newsletter where he shares business listings super early.

[00:03:09] And this thing is doing it. It's already doing like ten thousand dollars plus a month in subscription revenue.

[00:03:15] He just started at Oya this year. And he I mean, it was doing like 10K a month out of the gate.

[00:03:20] And the reason for that is two reasons. The first, like I said, he already had distribution through his Twitter account.

[00:03:27] Right. That's really important. I think it's the one challenge that people run into when they think about this is they think if they just build a paid newsletter and turn it on,

[00:03:36] it's just going to start making money. And that's that couldn't be further from the truth.

[00:03:39] But even if you have an audience, like an existing audience, there are other things you have to get right for business newsletters to really work or for paid newsletters to really work.

[00:03:47] And the the main other thing, and this is something that I think he did well and other people would do well to copy is your your paid newsletter or whatever your paid offering is has to deliver more value than whatever you're doing for free.

[00:04:02] And specifically what I tell people is the shorter the shorter the line is between your paid product and how your audience makes money.

[00:04:11] The more likely you are to be able to pull it off as a business. Right.

[00:04:14] So for him, he's selling business listings.

[00:04:17] He's giving people like people who buy businesses and upfront or early show an early look at businesses that are for sale.

[00:04:25] It doesn't matter how much he charges him.

[00:04:27] If he charges him a thousand dollars a year, like one great business would more than make that up in the first month of owning it.

[00:04:34] You know? Yeah.

[00:04:34] Yeah. So so of course it worked for him.

[00:04:38] It worked really well.

[00:04:39] Other people, I think, struggle when they have, say, like, let's say, you know, let's just say me.

[00:04:47] I talk about newsletters a lot.

[00:04:48] So I talk about it for free over on Twitter.

[00:04:50] And yeah, I work for a paid newsletter company.

[00:04:52] But let's take that out of the equation for a second.

[00:04:54] If I was to start a paid newsletter tomorrow and just write about paid newsletters and how they work, there's a chance that people would buy it.

[00:05:01] But a lot of my free content is really similar to that.

[00:05:04] So if people bought it, they'd pretty much be buying it because they like me and they're just trying to support me, which is not a great way to build a business that scales.

[00:05:12] And you see this all the time with creators of different types.

[00:05:14] They'll have like a really popular YouTube channel or a really popular Instagram account, whatever newsletter.

[00:05:20] And then they'll say something like, well, support us on our Patreon or like, hey, if you like this and you want to buy me a cup of coffee, like there's a link below.

[00:05:28] And the problem with that, it can work.

[00:05:29] But what you're really relying on is whether or not people like you.

[00:05:32] It's not about how much value you're driving.

[00:05:35] And where people can do better is if they figure out, like, what are the features that I can actually offer somebody that is going to help?

[00:05:42] I mean, the easiest is going to help them make more money.

[00:05:45] That's not the only thing you can sell.

[00:05:46] Like, you know, you basically have to sell people things that they really want in their lives.

[00:05:50] But money is probably the easiest one.

[00:05:52] And so if you can figure out what parts of your content are most directly related to that, you have a much higher likelihood.

[00:06:00] And like peel it off from whatever your free offering is.

[00:06:02] You can start out of the gate with paid and it can work pretty well as long as you have that distribution somewhere.

[00:06:08] Yeah.

[00:06:08] So like for me, what I might do, like a different version of this would be, okay, I write about newsletters a lot.

[00:06:13] Sure.

[00:06:13] Sure.

[00:06:14] And I know that people who run newsletters, one of the major ways that they monetize is through advertisers.

[00:06:19] So and one of the major ways to find advertisers is to look at a whole bunch of other newsletters.

[00:06:23] And so I could easily create a business where I sell like a database of people who are advertising in newsletters right now.

[00:06:30] And then I just, you know, go through 500 different newsletters.

[00:06:33] I look at all their sponsors and I compile a whole bunch of stats on who's advertising and then, you know, the LinkedIn contact for all the like people who might buy advertising at those companies and just sell that, sell that list.

[00:06:46] Here's a whole bunch of people that could make your newsletter more money because they're already buying ads.

[00:06:50] Now, that is much more likely to get me money as a content creator out of the gate than just saying, hey, I can teach you about newsletters.

[00:06:57] Like go pay for my Patreon or something.

[00:07:00] Yeah.

[00:07:00] Does that make sense?

[00:07:01] Absolutely.

[00:07:02] I'm going in my head through some scenarios.

[00:07:04] You know, one, we've talked a lot about a soccer project.

[00:07:07] Soccer has been a massive part of our life.

[00:07:10] And we're like at some point we'd like to get back and build something there.

[00:07:13] Right.

[00:07:14] And early on, we had this idea of like the dollar soccer club.

[00:07:17] Shout out to you for coming, making a comeback this Friday.

[00:07:23] I know.

[00:07:24] I, you know, hopefully the people don't mistake me with the ball.

[00:07:27] That's how round I am at the moment.

[00:07:29] But, but with that, like the newsletter topic has come up.

[00:07:33] Right.

[00:07:34] And in my head, I'm thinking you made it very clear where it's like, okay, the shorter the line is between that and the desire.

[00:07:39] Right.

[00:07:39] Like obviously we're in a business sense.

[00:07:41] So revenue.

[00:07:41] Right.

[00:07:42] And I'm probably how do we connect it, but I'm going through, okay, what's the desire.

[00:07:46] And I'm going through your thread at the moment.

[00:07:47] And we can talk about this in a bit, but about like how neat should it be.

[00:07:50] Right.

[00:07:50] So I'm going through my scenario.

[00:07:51] Okay.

[00:07:51] Soccer wise, how neat should it be for, let's say kids from 13 to 18.

[00:07:57] And the value is, Hey, here, all the tryouts here, the contact info of these people.

[00:08:02] If you want to go become pro at a different country, for example.

[00:08:05] Right.

[00:08:05] So that could be something very interesting to explore.

[00:08:08] But after that, right, obviously right now with content is profit and content momentum, we start B2B companies.

[00:08:12] Right.

[00:08:12] So, uh, what, what are some models that you've seen, right.

[00:08:17] With B2B companies and why is that advantageous for, for them to build a platform, a media company like that you mentioned earlier, but initially on a newsletter, right.

[00:08:25] Like, uh, a lot of these people that we've talked to, uh, some of them have hesitation on sharing a lot of that information.

[00:08:31] Right.

[00:08:32] And, uh, with newsletters, we, we share a lot of information.

[00:08:34] So why would a B2B company, uh, tackle something like this?

[00:08:40] Great question.

[00:08:40] So, um, real quick side note related to what you just said.

[00:08:44] Uh, if I'm understanding it correctly, you're saying there's a possibility that you could start like a newsletter for specifically for soccer players who are thinking of going like pro or playing in college, something like that.

[00:08:54] Is that what you're talking about?

[00:08:55] Um, that's, uh, the ideas in the pot.

[00:08:57] That's the idea of old.

[00:08:58] Yeah.

[00:08:59] So, so interestingly enough, just to, just to show like how wide ranging this opportunity is.

[00:09:05] I actually know a guy who does that for football and, um, for American football.

[00:09:11] Sorry for my actual, for my actual football.

[00:09:13] The imposter.

[00:09:15] American football.

[00:09:16] Imposter football.

[00:09:19] Um, but, uh, uh, he, I mean, he was positioned well because he already had a preexisting audience and he's like very interesting player because he played D I think it was D one.

[00:09:29] Um, and, uh, he's also got like a whole business degree.

[00:09:33] He's got a whole career outside of this.

[00:09:35] When he basically teaches students how to do is plan for their, uh, sports career while also taking care of their financial career in case sports doesn't work out.

[00:09:43] That business did $20,000 in its first month as his side project.

[00:09:47] He had to slow it down because he teaches full time.

[00:09:50] And, um, so, so to answer a couple of your questions, but like how, how niche can this be really?

[00:09:57] I don't think there's a limit in terms of how niche something can be if you understand the business model.

[00:10:02] And again, that business model is free products monetized by ads or affiliate deals.

[00:10:06] And maybe I should dig into that for just a second because it'll help explain the answer to your next question.

[00:10:10] Why would B2Bs do this?

[00:10:12] Um, free products, low price paid subscriptions.

[00:10:15] And when I say low price, what I mean is the range on that is typically 50 to a hundred dollars a year.

[00:10:21] So you're talking like five to $10 a month, roughly in that range.

[00:10:24] Um, and then high priced backend subscriptions.

[00:10:28] And the, when we say high price, that's usually like 500 and up per year.

[00:10:32] And that can go all the way up into the many, many thousands of dollars.

[00:10:36] So, um, just to dig a little bit deeper on the free thing real quick.

[00:10:40] And this will be important because it will help show why the, uh, the, like, yeah.

[00:10:46] Uh, why this might make sense for B2Bs.

[00:10:48] So when I say monetized by ads or affiliate deals, um, ads are obviously display ads.

[00:10:54] So what you have is you have a sales person who is reaching out to companies and selling them a placement in the newsletter.

[00:11:00] There are several different ways that you can charge for those types of placements.

[00:11:04] We can dig into that later if people want to know more about it.

[00:11:06] Um, but generally speaking, you're charging for an ad that's going into your newsletter and they're paying you based on some kind of like performance.

[00:11:13] So maybe they'll pay you a flat fee based on how big your list is, or maybe they'll pay you based on how many clicks there are.

[00:11:18] Um, but they're paying to get in front of your audience up front.

[00:11:22] The other, um, affiliate model obviously is, is a performance based ad.

[00:11:27] So you're including links and basically you only get paid if you sell something.

[00:11:32] Now, why this could matter to B2Bs is that like, depending on what industry you're in, if you like one way to monetize these or one reason to potentially run a newsletter is that it's going to build more authority for you in your space.

[00:11:48] Right.

[00:11:48] That's right out of the bat.

[00:11:49] I mean, content is profit rule number one, right?

[00:11:52] This stuff builds authority, helps, helps fill your pipeline.

[00:11:55] But, um, more importantly, especially for like small businesses, uh, you can monetize these with relatively little, um, effort.

[00:12:05] And I actually think B2Bs are in a better position to do this than a lot of consumer newsletters.

[00:12:09] And the reason is, uh, the price on a lot of things that businesses need is just very high.

[00:12:14] So when you're selling affiliate products through a newsletter, um, you stand to make a lot more money if you're selling to like high end business leaders than if you're selling, you know, $15 flashlights to kids who are reading about like startup news or whatever.

[00:12:31] Yeah.

[00:12:31] Um, so the price tag is just a lot higher.

[00:12:33] And so the beauty of, uh, the beauty of the newsletter is really that one, it's going to build you authority to you can't, it can become a revenue, like a serious revenue stream for your company.

[00:12:45] Uh, and I think that's the big thing.

[00:12:46] Like we mentioned the list that I know of, that's doing a hundred thousand dollars on a 1000 subscriber list.

[00:12:53] Have I told you what the niche for that is?

[00:12:55] Uh, you guys want to know?

[00:12:57] Yeah.

[00:12:57] Please tell us something weird.

[00:12:59] I mean, we talked about the football.

[00:13:00] We talked about, well, you, you, you talked about the farmer.

[00:13:04] Yeah.

[00:13:04] Yeah.

[00:13:05] Is that, is that it?

[00:13:06] Nope.

[00:13:06] No, no.

[00:13:07] It's a, it's, it's a B2B newsletter for people who own photo booth businesses.

[00:13:13] Wow.

[00:13:14] How niche is that?

[00:13:15] That is super small.

[00:13:17] I've only met one guy in my life that has a business.

[00:13:20] There's not that many.

[00:13:21] I mean, like a thousand people on this list and I would bet he's got pretty much all of them.

[00:13:24] I bet that one guy and I know he's part of that list.

[00:13:28] Yeah.

[00:13:28] But the beauty of it is it's so narrow that like, when you write for that audience, they immediately know that you're the person they want to pay attention to.

[00:13:37] Right.

[00:13:38] Cause there's not a lot of people trying to get the attention of people who own photo booth businesses, business owners.

[00:13:43] Sure.

[00:13:44] Right.

[00:13:44] People in the wedding industry.

[00:13:45] Sure.

[00:13:46] But like when you get that specific, it's like, how many options do these people have for real news about their industry?

[00:13:52] And it is an industry.

[00:13:54] It's a whole industry.

[00:13:55] Yeah.

[00:13:55] Right.

[00:13:56] So, um, that, that newsletter does well.

[00:13:59] Now, some people who are running bigger businesses, they may look at six figures and that's just like a rounding error form.

[00:14:04] If that's the case, fine.

[00:14:05] Don't worry about the revenue so much.

[00:14:07] Just know that like the authority side of this is big.

[00:14:12] Yeah.

[00:14:12] So, okay.

[00:14:13] This is a question I've had for the last couple of minutes in my head.

[00:14:18] And what if, you know, let's say we want to start this soccer newsletter.

[00:14:22] Again, we're probably going to use, come back and use that as an example just because it's, you know, so close to our hearts.

[00:14:29] But let's say we don't want to be the face of it and we don't want to post at all on our like personal profiles.

[00:14:34] We have, we're starting with zero audience, right?

[00:14:38] Like nobody to share this with.

[00:14:40] We have the idea.

[00:14:41] We are going to be the writers.

[00:14:43] How do we start getting some traffic in there?

[00:14:44] How do we start getting people to sign up?

[00:14:47] Is it, you know, direct response marketing in a way that you're, you know, targeting people with ads and then just calculating your cost per acquisition, all that thing.

[00:14:55] Or, you know, creating organic content.

[00:14:58] What would be maybe or is it a balance of both, right?

[00:15:01] What is the best way to start driving traffic in there?

[00:15:04] Great question.

[00:15:06] So let me talk about two things.

[00:15:08] First is the growth levers.

[00:15:11] There's like what we found over the course of studying like several of these newsletters, especially in the early stages was there are effectively three levers for growth that you can pull as a media company.

[00:15:25] Time, money and audience.

[00:15:27] And the one that you pull is basically going to come down to which one you have most access to.

[00:15:32] So time.

[00:15:34] What was it?

[00:15:35] Time.

[00:15:35] Yep.

[00:15:36] Time, money and audience.

[00:15:37] So time is like your all your free growth tactics, organic social media, SEO, PR, like getting talked about by other media outlets.

[00:15:50] And really at the high level, what time is about is about getting other people to talk about you.

[00:15:56] Right.

[00:15:56] We can dig into that in a second.

[00:15:58] Money is pretty obvious.

[00:15:59] It's paid advertising, whether that's through PPC ads or influencers or other other other like, you know, search ads, stuff like that.

[00:16:10] And then audience is when your audience gets to be big enough that it is becoming like a sizable growth lever for you as well.

[00:16:18] And you mentioned the referrals that are at the bottom of the morning brew and the hustle.

[00:16:22] That's an example of like an audience based growth strategy.

[00:16:25] So which one of those do you pull?

[00:16:27] Well, it depends which one you have the most access to.

[00:16:28] A lot of people when they're first starting probably would have a lot of time.

[00:16:34] Right.

[00:16:35] Yep.

[00:16:35] And so they would be focused on like free strategies.

[00:16:38] Now, in the super, super early days of a newsletter, what I encourage people to do is like you got to think of a few people that you know who would be good clients for this.

[00:16:47] Because if you don't know anybody that would be a good client for this, don't do it.

[00:16:52] Right.

[00:16:52] Right.

[00:16:53] Yeah.

[00:16:53] And if you look at like Cody Sanchez is a great example of this.

[00:16:57] So a lot of people know her on Twitter.

[00:16:58] She runs contrarian thinking.

[00:17:00] They grew that to 10,000 subscribers in 30 days, I think it was.

[00:17:04] Wow.

[00:17:05] And she she charted the entire course of it.

[00:17:07] People can go look it up.

[00:17:09] But it was very like super, super manual outreach early on.

[00:17:13] She, you know, started by emailing everybody that she knows and just saying, hey, I'm starting this thing.

[00:17:17] Would you like to subscribe to it?

[00:17:18] You know, people often skip that because they think somehow the audience is going to come from somewhere else.

[00:17:23] Yeah.

[00:17:23] Or I don't want to bother the people that I know.

[00:17:26] Exactly.

[00:17:27] Exactly.

[00:17:27] And I get it, man.

[00:17:28] I get it.

[00:17:28] Like I've forced myself through this situation enough times where it's like I still feel it every time I think about launching something new.

[00:17:35] So, but yeah, that that you're so for in the case of the soccer newsletter or basically any other newsletter people are thinking of starting from scratch.

[00:17:44] The advice would be first look at those three levers.

[00:17:49] Well, actually, before you even do that, just who do you know who's already a good client for this?

[00:17:53] Send it to them.

[00:17:54] Right.

[00:17:55] That's the easiest thing.

[00:17:56] You can do this in five minutes.

[00:17:58] Once you get a few people and like if a couple of your friends have actually signed up for it, these people who you think are going to be good clients, then it's time to start looking at those three levers and go, okay, what's the content or what's the marketing plan that we're going to do?

[00:18:12] And I think this may be where things differ a little bit for your audience as opposed to some other ones because like you said, you work with a lot more business owners.

[00:18:19] So maybe they do have budget right out of the gate.

[00:18:22] However, generally speaking, I and this is this isn't like my advice.

[00:18:27] This comes from what I've seen just in terms of the growth path of other newsletters.

[00:18:32] Generally speaking, it's a pretty safe rule of thumb to try.

[00:18:35] If you say you're doing like a general like news industry news newsletter.

[00:18:41] Right.

[00:18:42] You're going to want to grow that to a certain capacity before you start paying for advertising.

[00:18:46] And the reason for that is as can be expensive, you want to make sure that you have like a product market fit editorially speaking before you start dumping money into advertising.

[00:18:56] Yeah.

[00:18:57] And you just need to work out a lot of systems.

[00:18:58] Right.

[00:18:58] Like are you weekly or daily?

[00:19:01] And like who's writing it?

[00:19:02] What's the voice?

[00:19:02] There's all these other things to work on early on.

[00:19:05] So we don't typically recommend people start with ads.

[00:19:08] But time, money and audience are the three things that you'll eventually pull.

[00:19:12] And, you know, a super, super overrated one on the time side is just reaching out to your existing network and asking them to sign up for it.

[00:19:21] Yeah.

[00:19:22] We've talked about this many times on the prospect and outreach.

[00:19:25] Right.

[00:19:25] Like a lot of people have that fear.

[00:19:27] Right.

[00:19:27] Like, okay, well, I'm, I'm, I feel, you got for those listening fonts is like raising both hands.

[00:19:34] Uh, but, um, uh, and it has been a big part of the journey, right?

[00:19:38] Like for us, we had to like sell from day one.

[00:19:40] Right.

[00:19:40] Uh, without that, uh, there's no business, uh, no food.

[00:19:44] Uh, and, um, and I think a lot of people or like overlook that because not even an option, like it's not even a thing in their minds.

[00:19:51] Um, that could be, you know, uh, a big challenge.

[00:19:55] So again, uh, I asked myself this question every time we go, do we actually believe in the message that we're sharing?

[00:20:00] For example, with content and profit apps.

[00:20:02] So freaking lootely.

[00:20:03] Right.

[00:20:03] Like I'm going to tell everybody about the podcast, everybody and their mom.

[00:20:06] Right.

[00:20:06] And then on the service, same thing.

[00:20:08] We, I, I believe that we bring so much value to those businesses that of course I'm going to be continue to have that conversation with that.

[00:20:15] And that really helped me.

[00:20:16] So on the newsletter topic or content or whatever you're creating, I think that's super important.

[00:20:20] Like look back and be like, okay, do I actually really believe in this topic?

[00:20:23] Do I really want to share with this?

[00:20:25] Do I really have the passion that I, that, that I need to endure long hours of research and writing?

[00:20:31] If that's just you, right.

[00:20:32] Or do you have the patience to hire that team?

[00:20:36] Right.

[00:20:36] And resources to hire that team and provide feedback every single day, uh, for them to execute on this.

[00:20:41] Right.

[00:20:41] For example, Sean, right.

[00:20:42] With, with, uh, the milk road, right.

[00:20:43] Like he's deeply passionate about crypto and these things.

[00:20:46] Right.

[00:20:46] And his business partner, I'm sure as well.

[00:20:48] And that, that's why they're able to do this.

[00:20:50] And he likes to write, like he has a writing course.

[00:20:52] So all these elements obviously make, uh, uh, make part of the formula.

[00:20:57] So I encourage if you're listening right now, whether that's a podcast, whether that's a newsletter,

[00:21:02] right.

[00:21:03] Uh, take inventory of those things.

[00:21:05] Like, do I really want it?

[00:21:06] Do I really have it?

[00:21:07] And that's not an easy conversation to have because sometimes we're blinded by chasing the

[00:21:11] money.

[00:21:12] Right.

[00:21:12] Then we're like, yeah, of course I have it.

[00:21:14] And then as soon as we start executing, uh, things like fall off the cracks.

[00:21:17] I mean, they're going to fall off the cracks.

[00:21:19] That's okay.

[00:21:19] That's like the thing that happens all the time.

[00:21:21] It's just, okay.

[00:21:23] Reassess and go back to it.

[00:21:24] And maybe that's not the path.

[00:21:26] And then should we try something different?

[00:21:27] Right.

[00:21:27] So I think that's very important when it comes to creating, producing, and even monetizing

[00:21:32] content.

[00:21:32] Absolutely.

[00:21:33] Um, uh, I have two questions here.

[00:21:36] I'll let you pick whichever you want first, you know, but I'm just going to put them out

[00:21:40] there into the world.

[00:21:41] The first one is you kind of mentioned industry news based newsletters, right?

[00:21:45] Which is, I'll say kind of like the hustle morning brew, right?

[00:21:49] The milk road.

[00:21:51] And then we have, let's say expert based newsletters, which is more like people's opinions and you

[00:21:57] know, their lessons.

[00:21:58] Again, they're the expert.

[00:22:00] And that's kind of like what we at least were more into at first with the whole, you know,

[00:22:06] direct response world and click funnels, right?

[00:22:08] Russell Brunson has his own newsletter.

[00:22:10] I don't know, probably thousands of thousands of subscribers.

[00:22:13] And that's how he sells a lot of his product too is through his newsletter.

[00:22:17] So I'm curious, like which one do you see any advantages or disadvantages between these

[00:22:23] ones?

[00:22:24] Uh, what do you recommend for a business to start?

[00:22:27] Maybe is it better, you know, in the industry based, uh, industry news or an expert one.

[00:22:32] And then the other question that I had, again, I'm just putting them both out there is we

[00:22:37] talked about, okay, driving traffic that how do we kickstart this?

[00:22:41] But now let's say we got people, you know, wanting to read this thing.

[00:22:45] And it's a process of how do we put this thing together?

[00:22:48] And you talked about having researchers or, uh, uh, writers, right?

[00:22:51] People that are giving you their time to, to write.

[00:22:54] Um, and I'm curious on how did you get those two?

[00:22:57] You're not going to lie.

[00:22:57] I'm like that idea.

[00:22:59] So enticing, right?

[00:23:00] I'm guessing you probably have the role more of the editor where you have people writing

[00:23:04] and then they send stuff to you.

[00:23:06] You review it, make changes.

[00:23:08] And then you can have the last, the last word when it comes to publishing it.

[00:23:11] So those are the two questions I'm throwing the ball back at you.

[00:23:15] You pick whatever you want to answer first.

[00:23:17] Well, they're good questions.

[00:23:19] I think they actually both, uh, roll up into this broader category of editorial strategy.

[00:23:25] So when I think about the first question, um, I actually approach it a little different

[00:23:30] than, uh, the way that you framed it.

[00:23:32] So broadly speaking, I, I, the question that you asked is important, but it wouldn't be the

[00:23:41] first one that I would ask when I was thinking about starting a newsletter.

[00:23:44] The first one that I would ask would be like, what is the outcome?

[00:23:46] Um, because as we mentioned a couple of times, there are a few different outcomes that you

[00:23:52] can shoot for.

[00:23:53] Like if influence is your most important, um, outcome, then you're going to want to think

[00:23:59] through that lens first, right?

[00:24:01] Like, well, how am I going to influence my particular market?

[00:24:03] Now it's going to be, there's going to be a very different answer for that for somebody

[00:24:06] who considers their market to be like, you know, software developers.

[00:24:12] Versus somebody who considers their market to be like the head of purchasing at, or what

[00:24:19] is it?

[00:24:19] Assistant to the head of purchasing at a paper company or whatever the hell it is.

[00:24:22] Right.

[00:24:22] Like if you, it depends on who your business is trying to profile, um, and how big that

[00:24:28] audience is.

[00:24:28] So if it's, if it's a fairly niche market, then I think you can, um, well, you just want

[00:24:34] to be thinking through like, what is the actual outcome before you think about what does the

[00:24:38] product look like?

[00:24:41] And so that's kind of how I think about number one.

[00:24:43] The thing I'll add to that is I talked to, uh, Dan Oshinsky who he, uh, led newsletters

[00:24:49] at Buzzfeed.

[00:24:50] And then he went and like launched the newsletter program at the New Yorker.

[00:24:53] And he says that like, broadly speaking, there are a few different types of newsletters that

[00:24:57] people read and write.

[00:24:59] And like, he, he actually kind of buckets it down into, um, I don't want to misquote

[00:25:04] him, but it's like, you know, one is it gives one is like utility.

[00:25:08] So it gives people what they need.

[00:25:10] And that's kind of what we were talking about in terms of having a very short line between

[00:25:14] how people make money and what they're getting from you.

[00:25:16] Um, another is, um, like gives them what they want.

[00:25:20] Right.

[00:25:21] So if you were to like, I think the hustle is a little bit more like giving people what

[00:25:25] they want, which is kind of fun news daily.

[00:25:27] It's, it's like kind of a refreshing break.

[00:25:29] It keeps me up to date.

[00:25:30] Stay in the loop.

[00:25:31] Yeah.

[00:25:32] Give me something interesting to talk about, but it's not really going to like my, my job's

[00:25:35] not going to go away if I don't read the hustle or something like that.

[00:25:38] It might, if you stop reading the hustle.

[00:25:41] Um, then the, the two other ones are like personality, uh, which is, you know, I actually

[00:25:48] think that that's a little closer to what you were describing in terms of like expertise.

[00:25:51] So when you have somebody like pop who writes about, um, crypto, yeah, crypto is

[00:25:56] important, but really people are weighing in.

[00:25:57] They're coming there because they want pop's opinion on it.

[00:26:00] Right.

[00:26:00] Or these other like personality based newsletters.

[00:26:03] Those are a little harder to make work.

[00:26:05] If you don't have a preexisting audience, if you do have a preexisting audience, they're

[00:26:08] a pretty good moat because people can't come in.

[00:26:11] I can't give you pop's opinion on something.

[00:26:13] So he's got a pretty big right moat around it.

[00:26:16] And the last one is related to like identity.

[00:26:18] So what do you identify as?

[00:26:21] Um, and so like Buzzfeed, I think the newsletter that they launched was, it was called something

[00:26:26] like today in cats or something like that.

[00:26:29] And it was basically like news for, for cat people.

[00:26:32] And it would, you know, they'd have like funny cat, uh, memes and stuff like that.

[00:26:36] And so the, the, the, the newsletter revolved around this mindset where people like part of

[00:26:42] their, yeah, maybe they work in tech or maybe they work, maybe they're in like a, maybe they're

[00:26:45] a trucker or whatever, but part of their identity is related to, um, cat person too.

[00:26:49] And so that's one way you can reach people.

[00:26:51] Um, but, but for, for all four of those, it's important to kind of think about what your outcome

[00:26:55] is first and why you're trying to build this.

[00:26:58] And you don't have to get it perfect because the reality is, you know, as with any business,

[00:27:01] you're going to iterate your way through this, but just think like, what's more important

[00:27:04] to you?

[00:27:05] Do you want to build influence or do you want this thing to be cash flowing?

[00:27:08] And if it's the cashflow one, then you have to decide, is that going to be through

[00:27:12] a paid product or is it going to be through ads?

[00:27:13] Because, you know, yeah, those are two different size audiences.

[00:27:17] Absolutely.

[00:27:18] Um, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to throw here, sorry, before you continue, um,

[00:27:23] you know, sometimes we throw in random ideas like spaghetti to see if they stick it to the

[00:27:27] wall.

[00:27:28] As you were talking right now, I was like, yeah, I was like, let me, let me test this idea with

[00:27:33] you.

[00:27:33] You know, what about a newsletter?

[00:27:35] I have another one too.

[00:27:36] I have another one.

[00:27:36] Like industry based news, but it's about personalities.

[00:27:41] Right.

[00:27:41] So we grabbed like Palm's opinions, right.

[00:27:45] Or, uh, you know, uh, Sean's opinion and Sam's opinion.

[00:27:49] And then we distill it into a newsletter.

[00:27:51] So instead of like, Hey, you don't need to go scrolling through Twitter, right?

[00:27:55] X amount of hours a week.

[00:27:57] We'll do it for you.

[00:27:58] And we'll just bring you the best of the best of what they're saying.

[00:28:02] I mean, what you're, what you're saying is a perfect, it basically reflects your understanding

[00:28:09] and just the vast amount of opportunity in this space.

[00:28:13] It's totally feasible.

[00:28:14] I mean, you might run into issues like licensing people's images.

[00:28:18] Maybe not.

[00:28:18] I don't, I don't really know what the rules on that are, but the, but the bigger point is

[00:28:21] like, yeah, exactly.

[00:28:22] What you just said is exactly possible.

[00:28:25] And there's a million different versions of that too.

[00:28:28] Yeah.

[00:28:28] Like for example, I said earlier, you can't really out morning brew morning group.

[00:28:31] Right.

[00:28:32] But you can do morning news for somebody that you don't feel is being, um, like represented

[00:28:38] currently.

[00:28:39] So like, I know a kid, young guy, he's like 21 or 22.

[00:28:42] And he's basically building the hustle for Spanish speaking countries, because for whatever

[00:28:46] reason, we don't translate our newsletter.

[00:28:49] We just got so upset.

[00:28:51] We just got so upset.

[00:28:52] We're like, we speak Spanish, bro.

[00:28:53] Like we should be doing this.

[00:28:54] We need to meet, we need to meet that guy.

[00:28:56] Cause we need to partner with him at some degree.

[00:28:59] So just saying after a camera time, we need to connect.

[00:29:02] Absolutely.

[00:29:03] Yeah.

[00:29:03] Yeah.

[00:29:03] Yeah.

[00:29:04] Yeah.

[00:29:04] Yeah.

[00:29:04] I mean, uh, let me know.

[00:29:05] I'll, I'll connect you to, he's sharp kid and he's like, I've seen the newsletter.

[00:29:09] It's doing really well.

[00:29:10] So the other, um, thing, uh, Oh, one of my other favorites is, uh, Glow Reel.

[00:29:16] So, uh, Shilpa Bim, she's, she's actually a trans member and she started this, uh, newsletter.

[00:29:22] It's like, you know, I think it's, I think it's weekly right now, but I get it.

[00:29:25] Uh, it's either ones or it's a couple of times a week or weekly.

[00:29:29] It's news for BIPOC women.

[00:29:31] And I don't know what BIPOC stands for, but it's like, you know, women of color, like

[00:29:36] basically underrepresented women, like Indian women, black women.

[00:29:39] And she's originally from Australia.

[00:29:41] So there's like a whole Aboriginal or, uh, like population there, but she's writing this

[00:29:46] incredible newsletter and it's very similar to the hustle in like structure voice topics

[00:29:52] that they cover, but it's all, uh, from this other perspective, which from, you know,

[00:29:57] unfortunately is completely underrepresented inside of like broader media.

[00:30:00] And kind of the result of that is like, I'm not, uh, I'm not joking when I tell you, it's

[00:30:04] one of my favorite newsletters.

[00:30:06] And part of the reason is because it's full of stories that you just never find anywhere

[00:30:09] else.

[00:30:10] Right.

[00:30:10] Like, unfortunately there's just nobody reporting on this.

[00:30:13] Um, so there's a million iterations of this that can be really good.

[00:30:17] And I guarantee you glow real is going to be as big or bigger than the hustle at some

[00:30:21] point.

[00:30:21] Um, she's killing it.

[00:30:23] So the, the, the opportunity is really endless.

[00:30:26] Uh, I think the thing people need to think through is like, what's the outcome that you're

[00:30:31] after?

[00:30:31] Um, and then I think the other thing that I, like, if I could bring one thing to the table

[00:30:35] with this, uh, like, you know, the conversations that we're having, it's just setting people

[00:30:40] up with the right understanding of how the business actually works and like what expectations

[00:30:43] to set.

[00:30:44] Because one thing that I think people struggle with is, you know, they'll see somebody like

[00:30:48] Sean's a great example.

[00:30:49] So he's writing the milk road, which editorially is one of the best newsletters that's out there

[00:30:53] right now as they're doing an excellent job with voice, an excellent job with community

[00:30:57] building.

[00:30:58] Um, they're experimenting with all kinds of different types of content, which is, which

[00:31:01] is fantastic.

[00:31:02] They have grown from zero to 150,000 plus readers in six months.

[00:31:07] Wow.

[00:31:07] Now, part of that is because they're writing a tremendous newsletter and you really can't,

[00:31:13] there's no growth hack.

[00:31:14] That's going to like overcome the fact that your content sucks.

[00:31:17] If you write a bad newsletter, it's just not going to work.

[00:31:19] Right.

[00:31:21] But another part of it is that Sean is pretty well known.

[00:31:24] He's got 250,000 Twitter followers.

[00:31:26] He's got one of the top 50 podcasts in the world right now.

[00:31:30] Yeah.

[00:31:30] Um, and they've got, you know, a significant growth budget to throw at that.

[00:31:34] Now, like I said, they write a killer email.

[00:31:37] And so they absolutely earned all that success where it becomes dangerous for other people

[00:31:41] is if they look at that and go, Oh, well, they went from zero to 150 K in six months, which

[00:31:47] means that's what I should be able to accomplish without the same resources, without the same

[00:31:51] background.

[00:31:52] Sean's been building his online audience for like half a decade now.

[00:31:55] Right.

[00:31:56] So unless you have the visibility into these case studies to really understand what they're

[00:32:01] doing and really understand what the real numbers are like, yes, you can go from five

[00:32:05] years from now.

[00:32:05] If you invest in your content for five years, yeah, you can probably launch something that

[00:32:09] does 150,000 subscribers in six months, but you got to know that first.

[00:32:13] Otherwise you can get totally overwhelmed when six months from now you haven't hit that number.

[00:32:17] Um, so just like setting more realistic standards, I think, and giving people the roadmap to actually

[00:32:23] like achieve it because it's totally doable.

[00:32:26] I've seen it happen over and over and over again for people who know what the actual equation

[00:32:31] is.

[00:32:31] Yeah.

[00:32:32] That's insane.

[00:32:33] We're going to, after this conversation, Marva and I are going to put like all the ideas

[00:32:37] that we got of the newsletters are going to be like, okay, let's pick one.

[00:32:40] Which one are we going to do?

[00:32:41] Yeah.

[00:32:42] You just, uh, stir the pot big time.

[00:32:44] I'm just going to put that out there.

[00:32:47] Uh, and if you're listening, I would love to hear what are your ideas of newsletters.

[00:32:51] So just send us a message at this girl's call on Facebook, on Instagram.

[00:32:55] That'd be, that'd be fun to check out what ideas that you guys have.

[00:32:58] Yeah.

[00:32:58] Ooh.

[00:32:59] How good was that?

[00:33:00] I am.

[00:33:01] Uh, I have sweaty pizza value.

[00:33:03] So the pizza value.

[00:33:05] That was absolutely amazing.

[00:33:07] Thank you so much, Ethan, for a part three of the newsletter segment.

[00:33:11] And if you're listening right now, I'm sure you have a whole bunch of notes.

[00:33:15] Make sure you share them.

[00:33:16] Make sure you, you know, post about this on Facebook, share it on Twitter.

[00:33:20] Make sure you tag Ethan on Twitter and comment about all the value that you received.

[00:33:24] And most importantly, stay tuned and subscribe to content and profits.

[00:33:28] So you can be here when the next episode drops part four of the newsletter segment.

[00:33:33] See you guys soon.

[00:33:34] Thank you so much for tuning into the content and profit podcast.

[00:33:36] Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite platforms and on social media at this bros.

[00:33:40] Co that is right.

[00:33:41] And if Ethan here, help you move one step closer towards your goal and building an awesome newsletter,

[00:33:46] please don't forget to share this episode and, and leave a five-star review.

[00:33:50] See ya.

[00:33:51] Bye guys.

[00:33:51] Bye guys.