#191 – Making a Living From the Paid Newsletter Ecosystem with Yaroslaw Bagriy of Newsletter Crew
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Whats up, everyone? This is courtland from ni hackers doc m, and you're listening to the ni hacker er's podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and changing their lives in the process. And on this show, I talk to these ni hackers to learn about the ideas, the opportunities and the trends that they're taking advantage of, so the rest of us can do the same.

If you've been listening to the show and you want to an easy way to give back, do me a favor, leave a quick review for us on apple podcast that helps other people find the show. And IT makes me a happy podcasting. And today's, i've so gonna talk about, how are the hackers are making a living off the back of paid content.

Oba, the big winner in twenty twenty when IT comes to content, was paid news letters. Seems like everybodys got one and a lot of modern very well. So check out of ode number one. Sixty one was sapa thought him about a hustle trends, a paid news letter. He started that part of his newley company that I was recently acquired for something twenty seven million dollars.

Episode one, sixty four, scot keys of Scott sheet flights to somehow making IT through the pandemic in the lower travel with this paid news letter and drew Riley and epo de, once seventy three, you sorted up a news letter, help andy hacker's capitalize on trends, and is doing pretty well for himself as well. And here with me to discuss, this is your slaw. Backy is part of the any hacks pot york, are you got your own podcast? Paid community is called news crew.

Welcome to the shape. And thank you for having me. Yeah yes, thanks for joining. So we're going to talk about how people are making a living by writing online. But I think this is more than just about writing. I think other andy, hackers are also sort of profiting from this trend where they're making apps and tools that cater to the news sound of ecosystem.

So this is kind of why I think it's important talk about it's kind of why keep bringing people on the show over and over again because whatever you see, people finding some new way to make money to church, a new path, creating new career, IT creates pretty much an entire ecosystem. You don't have to be the person, right? That news that you could be building a platform, they're onna write on.

You could be building tools to help them write Better. You could be putting up books and products to and let me how to write Better, or you can start your own new letter. I want to what your thoughts are on this.

You talk to way more newsletter authors and I ever have. Do you think that this is just an opportunity for writers? Do you think the opportunity is is for people creating tools and platforms and building .

software for these writers? You know, nothing good question. I feel like every indian tor should be paying attention to this trend. I don't even want to call the friends because I I think it's here to stay. But I mean, there's tons of people that writing on this trend as well. I know you from these are you got ah I forget his named jack of Green field from new other spy uh we ve got convert c which is also like in you know kind of homegrown india uh, product and then we got the big kind of a grow in the room like sub stack you know ghost. But you know there's times of other examples as well like no actual india res know breaking into the space and know making a decent living off of IT.

Tell me about somebody what's .

news letter by news letter? Yeah so news letter by you. It's actually info product. All IT is is the landing page an airport? And then basically it's behind the paywall. So what news letter fy is is essentially just a data abasement of twenty thousand subset newsletters. And you know you get the name, you get the you you get the tagline um you know you get the launch date, you get the scriber options, you get the pricing option.

So IT service provides basis data as a bee. You're right. I mean, literally is just someone went in the air table and made a gigging tic table of substances. W sledges. He says they have twenty thousand such jack. News letters in the use cases are can use this to discover amazing news letters so you can analyze competitors, or you can identify, abandon news letters that you can possibly acquire cheaply from an ni hacker. And where I was behind, they're just selling this access to the table for fifteen box that's IT just like a one time fee get access fifteen bucks on gum road super sampling yeah I .

think the first when he launch on product county made like I think two k in the first day. So I mean, it's really popular. People are know wanting to pay for the the step information and it's great. And I love that I don't know how much he's making right now, but it's it's definite great product and know there sons of no other I guess, examples as well. You know you want me get into those yeah .

of some of the bigger players. So substance obviously needs no introduction. It's like probably the e platform that made paid newsletters sort of take off in the last couple years that just makes is super easy to basically started news letter, build an audience and charge them for access to some of your issues.

But then we've got some of the lesser own players that I think people have been sleeping on a little bit. So this convert, kate, there's ghost. Ghost has been around forever. It's a blogger platform. What are thoughts on ghost and how their paid news or descriptions work?

Oh, man, yeah. So and actually I used goes for a new other crew. So it's not just a block and platform.

It's not just an email platforms, actually also like a membership platform. And that's kind of the core feature that I used IT for. And man, I love a dude. I think this is the thing that's going to kid, well, maybe not kill word press, but like I mean, why not use something that you know they don't charge you like a month percentage like you know membership takes five percent or maybe ten percent of your revenue per month. Same sub right ten person revenue saying which is a .

unique because almost every other two basically charged more and more money more money you make for the subscribers like if you have a substantial sledge and you're making fifty thousand dollars a month of subs like you're paying sub stack ten percent five five years yeah you're playing like about thirteen percent of your revenue and like what are you really paying for?

Like what does subject give you that ghost doesn't give you guess it's like a cool brand. Know maybe it's a little bit easier to set up. Why isn't .

everybody just use grouched instead of substance exact maybe just the marketing that subduing popular last year from mbs there is gaining popularity, but I honestly don't know. I mean, you don't even it's not even that much more complicated than you know you can host with them if that makes sense for twenty thousand dollars years. So it's like now they do all the tech for you, if that makes sense. So it's like all you do is to you have to go in, you write your news letter, you send IT out and that's IT. So honestly, i'm not exactly i'm kind of baffled why you know gost isn't more popular than subsidy at this moment because the economics make sense.

Goes is doing pretty well as a platform of regardless. So IT goes itself as an nd hacker company. IT started by jono Ellen, who's been on the show twice.

You do have a lot again to catch up with them, but they're in millions in revenue as you're lude IT to earlier. They kind of started off as a word press killer. So john was actually like part of the team developing world press, and he got a little Fosters and said that it's gona crappy.

It's super blooded. I saw a good mean on twitter the other day where, like word press, one of the only ecosystems where every developing and IT agrees that its crap. There are no developer arguments.

They all agree like this is shit and goes to just a much cleaner, Better, sick wordpress for the modern age. And of course, now it's much more than wordpress. They actually help you build paid subscriptions, paid newsletters to pay blogs.

So goes is obviously very mature. And the hacker company convert IT is another very mature and hacker company started by Nathan barry, and they're recently moved under the paid news at space. You're obviously talking to a lot of people on in your podcast about news letter jarrow who are some like flegere andy hackers who are building software and are profiting from you know this tend towards paid new sisters for sure.

And you know one really good example is joshi anderton as a product make five camera are uh solo and t hacker called up scribe. You know it's also the new other space and IT actually started as a you know medium form. So this you know, you have your blog and at the bottom you put in your subscribe form actually, you know how people sign up.

And yeah, he was doing that. But as time when now, you know, medium just start to suck and sucks, more people just started, you know, leaving IT. So kind of sad that trend of medium sucking and kind of saw the trend of news letter's and you towards that.

And and yeah, now obscure be, is a email marketing tools really simple? yes. So all you do is, you know, close subjects, ers and marketing emails, email sequences, there is no bloat. Like I said, it's just really simple. And you know.

he did IT so low check in this website out right now, obscure, be dot net. So so just email marketing, that's all they do. That's IT no bloat. Ah you can send marketing email, you can send email sequences. They basically competing with something like a hub spot or a male chap or a converted.

And it's pretty razed that one person does this like typically, you would expect to have the inflections to send marketing emails that you would need a whole team of people working on something like this around the clock. But there are so many tools and platforms out that you can build on that is actually like not that hard to build a service like this. So at ny, hackers on building own kind of subset clone, and i'm building IT using postmark, which is just kind of a series of A P S.

And emails for you like postMarks bad apis, amazing. The documentation, amazing. It's a really easy to use that. And so maybe ten years ago, I don't needed like a team of one hundred people to build something like this. But today you can just do IT by yourself, have your own sort of one person shop building this, and then compete with like the bigger email marketing players, like without damage, having really.

Yeah I told the degree. And also another example is uh button down by Justin duke. He's also the hacker solar city hacker also making five camera on his product just just a really simple email marketing tool.

And you know the way he started is, you know, like every new hacker and had a news letter and realized that he could do a Better. And he also notice that, uh, you couldn't actually write news let down, that kind of one of differentiating in unique features of one down versus, like sub attack. And yes, we gonna find his nation there and works straight, and he does this on the side.

So yeah, that that's really cool. So minimal as well. Just suns a newsletters. I mean that that's all that does .

also got another side project called spoon bill. I think it's spoon bill I O and IT basically will track changes to people's twitter BIOS and notify you when they update bio. So a few months back, my buddy Julian, he was growing his twitter account t like a massive size, and he eat.

Some advice is OK really want to get more twitter followers. You need to restructure your bio so that text people what you tweet about so they know whether that they should follow you. And everybody are changing their bio.

And then everybody who signed up for spoonbill sort of getting a total notifications, like, why is everybody changing their twitter bio? Like what happened? And Julie and sweet was kind of the cause of that, but pretty ool.

This guy worked with stripe. He's got making five grand a month, an extra side income, basically on top of his Normal salary, just with these simple projects. And let's like, I was other one button down, never when he was website.

So it's W, W, W W down email and the easiest way to run and write your newsletters. So it's like a super simple sub stack built around, like you said, mark down. And what I love about this is people think that they can start companies because the compassion on exist. They think, okay, I can't start a subject competitor because subject already big, but subject itself doesn't seem to have that many defensive motes around IT like it's not that hard to build something that allows people to send emails. And so if you have really strong opinions about like how email should be sent, if you think markdown is the best, if you think every email should be under five hundred words, if you only want to focus on email sent by churches to their congregations or email sent by tech companies to their employees or something, like you could probably build a highly opinionated email marketing platform and carve out some niche. And there's going to be some like percentage of people for whom like that much Better than the regionic sub stack or even convicted or ghost.

Yeah for sure. And you know we already have two examples of you know people hitting a five camera are with a really nih email news. I think it's possible. And you know the market is so big, I mean, there is even more room for you know more of these products that love one really specific use case within the email in other space. Yeah, hundred percent agree.

Let's talk about your story. I looted to IT earlier, but you run the news utter crew podcast and blog and paid community, and you ve interviewed many dozens of people who are running profitable news letters. So basically learned a ton and you to share what you've learned on your podcast.

And how do you get into this? You know, what was your motivation? What your sort of path to success as an ni hacker?

Yeah for sure. Yeah you know it's kind of hard but will try to summarize pretty well. Yeah, I started any having about a year ago func and you know really begins to multiple streams of income, right? So I can real I got stuck import folio and i'm just trying to build other streams of income like sas.

Sas was one big income stream that I really wanna build in and still i'm building. So know, look at browser hackers kind of trolling. I really trolling.

But you know, just creep in the hackers for months and months, start noticing, you know, newsletter trained, right? And people are actually making money off of news letters like, okay, that's pretty cool. Why not start my own news letter?

When was this was the last year?

This was at the begin of twenty twenty. So like I think for on february, january, february, march time frame was like, okay, I think I really wanted do you know like start a news letter, pay news letter or, you know just free news letter. But I definite have news letter as part of like one project that makes me some income right?

Know as possible sounds like right i'm going i'm going to do this right i'm going this can be my first project that um as an any hacker and i'm going to make you know my goal is just make five hundred M R per month on this new letter. I I started learning about IT, and there's tons of resources online right now. And you got blogs, I got podcast, I got poked episodes.

There was actually there wasn't any courses back then. Now now there is. But, uh, mother just thinking, all right, let's kind of help. And I started reading no different resources.

I listen all the podcast what kind of one of episodes so kind of like your uh in the heck's poke as with samper but I noticed there doesn't a full podcast that's just dedicated to this one uh discipline right um and that's kind of how I learn I when I go to the grow is when I just work. I pop on a podcast. I like to learn passively.

I just search news letter in uh apple forecast and really got nothing. There is a podcast about uh, news letter but all they do is just read their news letter, right? So that that's like the top hit was that so I read their own newsletter on the actually exactly so what is specially I the television army news letter, which is like, I don't know, I think they have a news letter and they just read IT as a podcast.

I'm not exactly sure IT definite wasn't what I was looking for. So like, you know, why not just create this? You know, what I wanted to do was actually interview, uh, news other creators myself to learn and why not just bundle IT up record added and then published for everyone else to learn about that kind of what I did. And that's kind of how that a cruise art that .

is like the hacks played to learn something. Finally, something is really lucrative, valuable, like something that that could be a lifestyle for you. In your case, you want to to make five meter box a month from your own newsletter. When you try to learn about IT, you realize that, hey, there is very few resources.

The way that you like to learn about IT isn't there? And then you just go create that resource yourself because it's probably other people like you who won us into a podcast that helps him get Better writing a paid news letter. So it's little exactly what I do with any hackers.

And I think this possible groups were prety much any like new industry, new trend. You see people getting big on only fans or tiktok, a set olic. There probably should be newsletters and courses and blogs and communities around like getting Better at these things because people are motivated when they realize they can make a living doing these new different things. So in your case, that was actually starting the news of the crew pocket.

You, exactly you. And that's how what started as the podcast. And then slowly, I started adding him more and more on so IT. And just kind of by randomness.

Ss, I stumbled upon after my first product on launch, uh, one guy who ran email or in male dcom, that was a community for news. Other creators, apparently, you know, he saw how popular my article lunch was, which is also big community for a different product. And he was like him, and I don't have time to actually run this anymore, and I already have the motivation as well.

But that looks like you're inning a pretty thing. Paid community and obvious is popular because you got back to the day. Why not just buy the off of me? And I was like, yeah, did IT i'll totally to buy this off you? And I actually got for a hundred box. So one hundred box, he added, IT was. And actually .

this community .

IT wasn't that me. There was about one hundred and thirty people I acquired IT. So all paid. Think M A R was only like one point five care like IT was really an active man. Like when I went into IT after purchasing and I was like this pretty dead actually my understanding or my looking into the future was like like eighty percent.

These people are going na turn when the year comes around, right? Because IT was the really membership and actually you wanted give its me for free, but I was like I can just take this for free, man, that I just do like a hundred box to like I know IT just just to fy the sale, right and he's like, right let's do IT so I gave him one hundred box and acquired IT integrated IT into news letter crew and then started using the um podcast you know the audience are building up this podcast actually fund more members into well, india ler which is now like just a news letter of membership, right a community. So I use the podcast fund members in and you know the community is thriving like it's like ten x well, the growth has like three x but it's like ten x more active of that make sense like people are actually really compared to last a year ago.

So yeah, he is really, really interesting. And then I for that I added to blog on who because you know why not um and then from there I stargeshina sors for IT. Then h now offering package deals for like the full sponsorships. You get you know you get up ads in the news letter, get ads on the podcast, you get ads on the website. It's completely different revenue stream that i'm building with news crew alongside the actual membership or of so how .

much is a cause somebody to join your paid community in B A member?

Um yes. So I actually you know when I first started, when I first acquired from there was one thousand year, then I start increasing Price was and another year, then IT was thirty nine and then I actually interviewed some power on the on the part cast just a few weeks ago. And it's like, man, do you you're under charging like tremendously and like really like i'm more charging thirty nine box.

Why would anyone want to pay more? You should be in right? And that's that's my thought, right? And he was like to charge two ninety nine and I like. Well, actually I asked him like, okay, how much you think I should charge and is like two ninety nine and I like, do there's no way no was going to pay two hundred and like, i'm not same party like I can do trends you know because you know trends eco is two ninety nine three like i'm not sam. I can't do what sams doing same as like that's not really my audience, if that makes sense.

I tried to ninety nine for a few days, but you know know like no one, no sales at all, get about one a day, right? So I didn't end up doubling Prices to fifty nine dollars here. And that's kind of what is that right now.

But I might do that. I might not I I don't know its memberships are really hard if that makes sense. It's actually take out the pricing.

But I hear you doing like the r typical andy ACC thing, like talking in yourself out of why you can charge, why you can charge enough. Now this is why they could charge and I can. But like yeah, the case to be made, you could charge at least one hundred bucks and then you just really have to demonstrate the value.

But the good thing about charging more is, is a good forcing function for you to build things of value. Like if you think okay, people want pay a hundred box for my a month for my community because IT isn't have X, Y and z. Well, now you know exactly what you need to build to get them to pay a hundred boxed y community, you know X, Y and z.

And I think if you charge less, a little bit less motivated to build those things that are super valuable or asked people like what would get them to pay more. So I like the same, so rib, and try to pay more. So I I, I agree with, I think you should year, right? So this was per year like sure yes, one hundred percent percent go high than sixty box.

but like that that's the thing. It's like I don't know crew, it's a business of itself that's growing.

But you know the main reason why I started all kind of going back to my sas, you know, if that I actually want to build the asses, I want to build a distribution channel for that sas in the newser space, right? So i'm not sure how much time you knows the baLance, how much time do I actually want to put into building news letter crew and actually increasing the revenue and you know awesome features and content verses building an actual audience distribution channel access and building, right. So yeah.

it's hard to right. I like chicken, the steps. Maybe one day your goal is you want to have a super profitable sas company that can store a new other authors.

But day one, like you start your podcast, you build the audience to your podcast. And then like one that starts getting pretty big, you find all them into your community and you work on your community. And like maybe you get your community in your podcast at the point where you can quit your job and like that your only goal.

And then once you get that well, you never bunch more free time to work on like your sas or growing your audience at. Like one step leads to the next step, lead to the next step, rather than sort of the typical ni hacker trap of like trying to do everything all at once, all the same time. Where is really hard and you by the way, you're still work in your full time job. exactly. You still got a bunch of the .

responsibility lies. And there's no time in the day I told you I actually sold off a few other products building earlier in the year. Just I, I, I got a baby, you know, eight months old, I ve got a full time job. I've got a wife house that I got a ten, two.

Yeah, you got all the stuff.

the exact I was like, I can do this. Uh, so I just started cutting down things and just try. I actually outsing a bunch of stuff. Now new crew is making around roughly like, if count, sponsorships plus memberships from two camera right now. Actually, not not too bad, right? Not enough to quit my job, but enough to start out serving people because, like, I really just don't have any time to do any anything anymore.

What's your quiet point? How much money you need to make every month before you quit?

I hot back and fourth every day is like, if the bad day at work, can I do a three k i'm done like, but if it's a good day, i'm like h ten K I think time case should be like fine if if I had ten k like five case like that break even point like I can do five K I live in many apples. 5k is like I can get far red at five k so that's kind of the break even point .

but like if I can do tank like the next day ool for you。 I think you'll get almost have you've heard about through running your pot? Who are some new letter authors and a news letter, andy, hackers that we should all be looking up to you?

Yeah, for sure. yeah. So I think everyone knows the browser. It's probably the most popular and probably long lasting newsletter out there. Been here for ten years and they got sixty readers. Ten kills are know pebble ribes in five million months, making fifty a month. And uh that's one of the amazing story i've heard in my podcast, is, uh, the browser.

Yeah, I hadn't heard about the browser until I heard them on your show. And I love their longevity because I kind of proves that news letter arent necessarily a flash in the pan.

I got an email actually, if you we go saying, okay, you know this whole news other fat, just fat, you should stop interviewing news other creators in the pocket s like nobody he's going to be subscribe to this stuff come twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two and it's not sure people have been subscribing to IT for years. People will pay for value no matter how you delivered to them. The fact there's lots of competition isn't really matter.

So I like the fact the brothers exemplifies that. I don't know their story. I don't remember IT.

So what's the story behind broza? yes. So basically, Robert, who's the founder ten years ago, I think was like two thousand eight or something that used to work at, you know, financial times.

Uh, the economist, he was kind of like the head editorial person there. And he started noticing that, like, you know, they are moving altoona. Ds, the digital uh content, right like news letters that I blogs and he's just pretty much thin.

Like, all right. Well, if you know some of these big institutions are actually know going to digital, maybe this is the actual trend it's going to be around for you know, forever. And he took the gamble, so he quit the economist.

But furthermore, he also started noticing that there is too much content on the net rate. So and and this was ten years ago, you know, image how much content there is now. So thinking that there know the internet needs more Victor versus no creator, if that makes sense.

So that's all he does know that kind of how the business started is no, he started security. New letters are starting, create blog post and and articles on the internet daily. So pick picks out of five best articles, send those as a newsletter and people pay for IT. So yeah all does create exactly yeah he doesn't create anything, is not writing anything noon, but all he does is curate. They're making a lot of money.

I think your is not much information on the internet nowadays. And IT is weird dichotomy where for some people that makes IT easier to find stuff and learn. For some people, that makes IT harder to find seven learn. So let's say you're like a prototypical and the hacker, you have a high bias toward action. You really get IT using the web, really get IT sorting through information.

The fact that the internet has so much info, ana, is great for you because whatever you want to learn, like when you're trying to learn news letters, like you're going to find every podcast, every course, like you know the twitter accounts to follow, you're going to find IT. But let's say you're like literally anyone else. The fact of the summer information online is just like paralyzing is way too much for you to sort through.

And so the bigger the internet gets kind of the most stressful the kids, and the harder IT is free to make a decision and pick what you want to learn from what you want to read. So I like sort of the rise of curators, like the browser. They're just saying, like now we're going to do all the hard work.

We're going to go out and like find all the best stuff for you to read. You don't need to brost witter. You don't need to grow through a million different sources ah, you can just submit us and that's a work good to to you.

This is literally exactly what we do with our new letter, andy. Hackers were basically trying to give you like kind of the best need to know information as an ni hacker because I spend a lot of time myself like coming through twitter and following like the right podcast and set out. And it's really like low signal, like to know know one hundred hours of pod gaudio to get like three or four hours of good.

No information as an anty hacker about what you should be capitalizing on in the same with reading news letters and following twitter accounts. And so curators are, I think, a little bit underrated. It's kind of tuition if you think the more information that exist online, the less you need middleman because everything so democratize, you could just gone and find everything yourself. But like actually, the more information there is, the more you actually want there to be some person .

who finds IT for you. Yeah so no, to go longer to your point that these creators but if you're trying to build a news letter and you think this is going to be one of those far weak businesses and probably isn't, Robert spends all day like a literally eight hours of days coming through all the content on the internet to pick out like the one percent of the one percent.

If you want to start news, that earth thinking, it's going, you know, you can work for no one hour day or one hour a week and make, you know, tons of money. I don't think it's gna be the right path for you. That makes sense.

Well, you're like a super efficient person, right? Like you actually going to shocks me that he spends and eight hour work day putting together this and that I mean that probably a super good if he dies. But I will get you super efficient.

I mean, you said you got a full time job. You ve got a family. You've got you know, your community and news letter and podcast and other projects are working on, let's say you were robber. You're running the browse, what would you do to run IT more efficiently so you ideally create the best stories on the .

web without spending eight hours a day on IT specific is right? So the browser just Carried the best articles on the internet like the full internet if that make them. I mean, just imagine how much content there is come out every day.

So if you niched down riots, so if you're just like with the hackers, right, is just the hacker blog posts. Or if you're just in, you like the boot trapping space, or like gardening, mr cheering ating content for gardeners, it's gonna be a lot less time going through the full internet content per day. Uh then just doing like a specific initial I gardening. So that's one thing and obviously start building up our service y right? So you do not going through and coming through reddit or the hackers or hacker news or or rubber content is being pumped out that party.

Your dish, if you have a kind of use, can just kind of know grow through R S, feed back out maybe the headlines that seems that the cool list um and and actually Robert, what his number one tip is that he knows uh when your article is good or not based on the first like five seconds of reading the first two sentences, right so you'll easily like scrap an article base off the first sentence, like if if he does, if not catchy enough or just not good enough, I mean that's IT. He doesn't read any more. I think he s like little thousands articles per day makes us that's ridiculous.

It's kind of a cool job to have though, let's say your goal. You want to be extremely well red, well educated, you're having trouble doing IT. You could start a business like the browser and now you're literally forced to read hundreds articles a day if you want to just run your business.

So assuming he's you know you actually likes doing IT, maybe that explains why spds for work. They are doing nothing but reading. But I like your tip. You can strain your focus to a pacifist itch. You would have to read nearly as much content, and you could probably get off by spending much.

Last time on IT, like I talking to navia charter, she's an lai hakko has a newsletter er called called the soap box project and it's pretty ool was very mission driven and so her website now says you want to fight climate change but you don't over to start with you free bite sized action plans every week and literally IT takes her I ask how much time you spend on this and it's like three to four hours per newsletter, one news letter a week. Super simple and like the reason is super samples because just like his market of IT as being by sized, it's not gona be something is going to take you two hours to read like the hostile trends and news letter. It's going to be really quick. E three men and action plan SHE gets in the rest of her time working on growing her business findings, describers hosting events, inset us. So I think there's lots of wait to cut down this massive time and investment that IT takes .

a of one of these yeah for sure and actually kind of golf that there I don't know Andrew caffey is kind of pretty guy and and hackers yeah he also had an idea kind of this like a daily news that are just really brief for talking like one paragraph long sunrise, one niche topic like maybe just send one article per day you know, that's indonesia. He was influence marketing.

But let's say you pick, you know gardening in this case, I love gardening. Yeah you just want an article per day and just you know, a daily news that probably take like ten minutes. There's only minutes a one way to do IT right that make sense.

So how do you make a newsletter last as long as the browser has? I mean, they been around for ten years even even be quite a few news letter authors. Has anybody else lasted as long? And that what do you see like the commons in the trick to make this not something that you flame?

Yes, when you are your news letter, don't think that this is the news letter you gona be writing forever, right? I just kind of do IT like KO like a south product, right? You you can iterate quickly.

Start with one idea, maybe due for a month, maybe it's a content curation, uh, news letter. You know, after the month, just look back. Did you actually like doing IT? Uh, you know, was that a drag? It's actually, do IT was IT fun to do IT.

Could you see yourself doing this for like another month? Or would you like, man, I can't wait for this months you've shed right and based just keep doing that. And so you find one that's like, you know that checks all the boxes that you know fun to do, take too much time you actually want to do IT. And that's kind of the main component.

I love that especially because with content any sort of content series, whether it's a blog, a news letter or podcast tweet posted on tiktok or make you tube videos, every time you put out a new piece of content, every time you send a newsletter, you're back to score one and it's kind of like a fresh start. You're not locked and anything like if you're coding something and you build a bunch features and then you do you want to change directions like that, super hard to get to throw away a bunch of code, you get a fresh start every time you send a news letter.

So why not go back to the drawing board for not really happy with out how things are going? It's kind of a parallel actually with a lot of founders do this twelve starts and twelve month of thing, which i've mentioned on the podcast, where they set out for the next year to actually work on twelve things. And then I can work in all twelve the same time to do one per month.

But usually after about three, four, five months of starting different things, you realize how different different projects are, how different they feel. And you're much more, I think, equipped to, I think, make a good decision about what you want to run. Because the biggest tragedy you could possible do with you start of business that you don't like running, running for several years you ever successful. You've now lic created a job that you don't like. The whole point of this .

is to create job that you do like the exact so let's move to .

another story. I ve one I want to have this soon comes from shan peery. He's the host of the my first million podcast, love this show.

He's also a very transparent on twitter. And he started a personal news letter has one of the crazy stories i've ever read. So he wait about this, actually a blue up on fire all yeah, I get like three thousand likes and two hundred and eighty retweet.

So he to started off, I talked about he is running his podcast called my first million. And the pocket has gone super big. I think they do about three hundred fifty thousand downloads a month, which is as big as andy hackers is ever Better. And I get the biggest month back when I was doing, like two episodes a week, and basically going to show, like, i'm ensample just a brainstorm ideas.

But when people here then brainstorm ideas, I find that hard to sort of take action, because know one thing to, hear about an idea, hear about a success story, but it's another actually see, you know, people who talk about the times that they messed up and not just the times they succeed. And so so we get, like all these messages on twitter, and people be OK. And I love this idea that you showed the podcast, but I know, how would you actually go about building this? I don't know where to start.

I'm stuck on this particularly step, what I do. And so Shawn figured, you know, if people are willing to pay for newsletters for things they won't really bad, maybe they would pay even more for a new letter where he showed them how to execute that. I just told them sort of high level details.

And so this idea ultimately was a paid news that that that shows you that the data day of how to take an idea from zero dollars to a million dollars in revenue, and that, like the typical get rich quick stuff, you know, cla advice, easy people tweet, and he was going to actually know, kind of envision is virtual apprentice. He called IT you to seem exactly what he does from day to day. It's going to send you and knees that a literally every single day of the week that cares what I did today.

Take the idea from zero million. So with three different projects. The first was he was gonna ise a million dollar ment investors who we didn't know.

The second project he was going to a email tips. Four were him growing e commerce store, two hundred thousand dollars a month. And the third project he was going to do was him launching an online course that makes a million dollars. And so announced on his podcast.

And like to prove your point, you earlier you're saying like, what's you know, why are you doing all this stuff? Why are you just starting with a blog and a news letter that because you wanted to build your own distinction channel, where Shawn had a distribution channel with his news letter, and so he was able to get three hundred and fifty people from his podcast to sign up to his news letter. And he is not charging like five box or ten box amount, like a typical news letter.

He's charging one hundred and fifteen dollars a month for this, so three hundred fifty people paying one hundred forty box for netter he had in a new order that was doing fifty grand a month almost instantly right out of the gate, which is an insane for a newsletter, the way the story ended there was a little bit tragic, which is that he quit. So the problem for him was that I was an insane amount work. He already had a full time job, had a podcast is running.

He's married. He has one year old baby is kind of like you. And now he had this news letter that he had to send five times a week so he'd like go to work, do all that stuff, come home, kisses his wife, and then like he would work in this new site from like seven pm, like one A M every night.

And then he was working four days on the weekend because I didn't just write the news that actually had to do the stuff is right about and try to build these businesses. So quitting, he said, his goals to teach million people. H over the next ten years, he doesn't to teach, you know so one hundred people over the next like year.

So uh, wasn't really the right fit raham. He's already rich. He doesn't need fifty grand a month. But I think the story kind of goes to show kind of what you are going to accomplish in the news, utter space in the how much space there is that really hasn't been explored. I don't know anybody else charging one hundred fifty box for a new letter.

No, that's that's the first part part of that. But like I mean I agree, I mean that is that really worth IT? I mean from seven D M to one A M, that's how long is I like five hours a day or something that are far after a job, after a job, right? Like after eight hundred a job or however much fans on the job, I mean like, yes.

So for him, if I was him, like, yeah, totally, I drop them. I mean, just so worth if you really rich him and why spend how much time? No expression is main goals, you know teaches many million plus people you can't really do of pay news arx. That's kind of what it's all about is exclusively I an going to get seven million people paying provincial five box on to learn what he's trying to T H trade.

And yeah, I know on top of the actress of the business along the side with IT, right? So you like the one million dollar or like hundred k uh e on business like that hard in one of itself aside from actually building a paid newsletter, right? So do not both. At same time, I mean, you really got to be an expert you an expert that this actually pulled off in and he did right but it's yeah I don't know, man.

it's not worth yeah I think he quit like after the second project is that done? I am going to not do this. So when everybody hears a refund, i'm out. Good luck. People weren't too disappointed.

But he actually has a free news that now, and i'm described to IT and one of them here, he had this cool, like life dashboard to graphic kind of reading like how happy I I with my life. And so for health, he put himself out a four out of five for work. He's at a four and a half out of five for play.

He's A A four out of five self respect. He's a four and half out of five. And in love, because love life, he's only get three a half of five.

So for him the casualties may be relationship right? Spending so much time doing other stuff, maybe marriage is sufficing. That's a good reason to cut back. But I think let's say you're an average and hacker, let's say you you're not working a full time job or you make a less and ambitious project.

Like is there some way that you could envision to make this work to be able to charge people upwards of one hundred dollars a month to subscribed to a newsletter? Kind of reminds me of people building in public, like right now, people build in public basically for free. You know, they tweet about what they're doing are they make a product page on any hackers and they talk about what they're doing and they might even have like a podcast where they kind of follow their story. But just the only person I know who was doing that and charging money, what you take, have you seen anyone else do this and paid these other farming? You think an average person who has an already made millions of dollars can follow in chunks with steps and try .

something like this yeah for sure, man, and yeah, like building the public, probably the most popular ways to building audience right now. I mean, I was done IT. It's tons of people are doing IT. And yeah, I mean, I think that's a viable, I think, doing what shan is doing.

But with your product that you're building like as an india cki, I think it's nothing worth and probably like maybe not one hundred fifty cut hunt has like that premium brand on him, but I mean, maybe could charge hundred fifty other now, I mean, why not try IT? But and you know, one thing that I ve noticed with this world, like the building in public crowd, is that, no, they build in public, but they don't really go that deep. Like competition.

An news letter who was like, really like detail I mean he's told you every single step that he is doing to actually get to that end goal while you know the building public crowd is just like, okay, I hate you know today I did this future and ah I on board to this customer and I met her and then small as like okay, 6MRR。 So it's really like general overview. So I think taking that one step further and pretty much doing exactly what chance doing, but with your own product, maybe you won't be a successful.

But still detAiling that out for subscribers is probably a good idea. Um do you know Kevin county? Yeah from soft ideas.

So software ideas.

right right. So he like, so here's here's a really call idea for for someone out there. Subs, news letter, find one idea and could be any idea. Take that idea, then actually start building IT.

As the news letter, you do exactly what hn was doing with a very detailed daily newsletter where you, you know show you exactly what you did to build that business. I think that would be a really good idea. I mean, I deftly something like, yeah.

I love IT. I think that spot on. I think Shawn is going way deeply than everybody else.

Everybody else is building public that kind of just giving along the surface where show was like, no, here's every single detail about what I did every single day this week. And he wasn't just sharing that artifically. He was sharing that because he had a value proposition that these details sort of line with.

So if you look at the aviator, san is building in public to kind like, so you know, I just doing this because I heard you should build in public and I will help me so follow all of my journey. You click on my links and set up and like, that's not very compelling where shan was like, hey, i'm going to build three businesses to a million dollars a year. Follow along to get a detail playbook of how you can do the same thing and like that's a very clear value proposition.

Does not like to do this for me. It's k do this for yourself. And if you think you can make a million dollars a year by by listening to a shot saying or even half of that, of course, it's worth IT to pay. Hundred and forty six months is probably worked to pay thousands of dollars a month. And you know he had a lot of street create like he's been on the cast talking about the businesses he's botton sold and built in the past.

So like people believe them, you know like he has the trust is building in public and two likes he got a really interesting business that has been proven by .

Shawn yeah let's talk about this other news you brought up and I think wrap up, it's called a soft ideas by Kevin ki. What's the story behind that when I know Kevin a bit because he post on ani hackers but know what do you know about Kevin story and what should listeners know?

Yeah after so Kevin doing or five months, which I mean again, that's absolutely insane for pay news that I mean, wow, amazing. And he pretty much started, you know he created M V P, right? No, sorry. He created the product party last year, something that that you spent six months actually building and he got nowhere. Literally zero customers don't wanted IT and you just like, all right, well, you screw that.

I'm going to actually start something and actually make money from like to get go right? So I don't exactly remember why he started soft ideas other than that kind of saw the trend of people actually wanting to don't really know what's build. So on india, gers are sons of people asking, especially newcomers like, what do I build? What do I build that's profitable? What do I build that I don't have to waste my time on like that.

I know if i'm going to build this IT will hit five ten K M R R or whatever. So we kind of saw that trend and basic rapped IT up in the pay newsletter. And he sends three ideas out, but he kind of didn't really interesting way, right? So he didn't just started.

He did kind like a presale. So he created a kind of an MVP, like, you know, news. Other issue with one idea that goes really in depth, posted on indie hackers, posted on twitter hackneys.

And a the really ool thing is at the bottom he is like, you know if you want more content of this and are a potential paper IT, you know just email me at this uh email he plugs this email and and um and yeah he kind of set goals to hit a certain amount of a Price revenue before actually kind of diving deep into that news letter and and yeah, he hit that in like six days or something that like he was really quick. So that kind of validating the idea that no, some of ideas is going to make money because people already paying for before, you know, actual product, right? And yes, pretty much history ever sense. I mean, grown crazy like like a five, ten years and five monsanto.

Yeah it's another example of this pattern of like somebody went out to the world and looked for something. In his case, he was looking for ideas, and then he realized, like, not only that hard to find ideas, but there are a bunch of other people looking for this too.

So what I should do is like, really good at finding them and then give them everybody else so they don't have to do the work of looking, which is the exact same as you in your podcast. You want to find details on how to started a news letter. It's hard to find.

Other people are also looking. So you're going to do the hard work of energy ing people, and you going to give up to them in a podcast. And the other thing that stands out to me, you from the story, is the fact that as you highlighted, like he wasn't like working on this for like years and years growing a freeze scriber base and then eventually, you know, converted like two percent of them to his paid newsletter.

He did, like a few posts, took presales, saw that there was an idea that people would pay for immediately. And he just came right out of the gate with the paid news letter. He's going to ten thousand doors a month. Have you seen others who do this where they don't have a large free audience, but they flip on the switch to paid content? And that works out because usually people do the opposite .

and they build up freely. St, first, I. You create a free letter, free news letter.

You build IT up to like thousands thousand scribes. Theoretically five percent will convert. Um you know you can do the math and that kind of the center playbook. But hey, I mean, if you got a really interesting like product ties inside news letter, just like soft ideas, uh, or like jews transit D, C, there's tones about me out and you actually providing real value.

I don't see why you need an audience to actually modify as a paid newsletter, red of the bad, especially if you're doing the cells, right? So sure if you do, uh, paid news letter and no one wants to know if you do precelly don't want IT, then obviously want to, but a few do precelly and you're hitting your actual numbers yeah totally. I mean, you don't need an additional product process .

product and trying to find .

how much charging for was doll three months or every quarter.

Yeah, I want this website now when he's got a quarterly subscription, which is another thing i've never seen for a news letter. So it's the done for you sah opportunity experience to cause IT. When you pay, you unlock every past issue of the news letter, and you also will get idea says you'll get access to a video series that teaches to take the ideas and find traction.

But he says the video series is still in development, so you don't get IT yet. And it's with these seven box over three months, which I think is a smart way to to put IT because know if he just said like this was gonna, you know two hundred and forty box a year, maybe the people will get sticker shock. But if he know breaks IT down and two quarters in the Prices is a little bit lower, a little bit less of a commitment, maybe you should try this your your community. You know, if fridge race Prices instead of being like, okay, it's kind of fifty nine X A year to try fifty nine box every quarter, maybe people are willing to pay fifty nine box. There's y're not .

necessarily going to commit for a whole year. Yeah, that's that's a good idea. I I might try that out and do I yeah IT is as far way to do IT.

I mean, fifty seven dollars per three months. I mean, in three months, you could probably find one idea they wanted build, right? So it's kind of like fifty seven dollars for an idea just minus, right?

I mean, probably don't need a user of substitution because once you have your idea, I think you really want more ideas right? Um that's kind of the the biggest pain of any hackers. Too many ideas right right?

Yeah like the very format of the news that of itself is probably somewhat high turn where if like you technical, if you subscribe to his news letter and IT does what it's supposed to do, IT gives you an idea, want to work on. And he really should graduate from IT and are working on an idea and not need any more ideas, which suggest that he probably should charge even more because like he might have higher return than another newley that provides like ongoing value like the browser. Really, presumably, you're never going to turn from wanting to read in the best information on the web like doing that years now.

So ideas is very metrics as a public, you know I think that you can see. So if you have any ideas and like, uh, yeah, you can definitely this turn numbers, you can see this revenue, you can see active customers. And uh, like you said, uh, turn is kind of high. If you look at like the last like a couple months, uh nine .

percent turn, I think at ten percent yeah .

nine point three percent right? I mean it's down twenty percent. So I used to be eleven twenty seven percent right? Or up to twelve percent back in december has been dropping. I don't know what he's doing to the drop that number. But yeah, I mean, the hydron business, I mean, imagine ten percent of your a user base is turning every month as a business business like you're going to y'll be out of business like a no time.

exactly. But as a newsletter, you know, if you get this this money up front, if it's a little bit of easier than the end of the day still making what is up to eleven thousand dolla month in revenue. And again, this is like less than half a year after he started IT, which I think is much faster growth than the vast majority of all ni hackers who starting as business.

I don't know. I think like this is one of those businesses that like are almost inevitable. Like times of people are just like that's the thing you find an idea, then you stop paying for the new idea idea, right?

It's kind of been like these numbers. I love these like built in public companies metrics. Yeah super .

interesting to see this. Go research another point here about like the sort of nature of what you're writing about. We talked earlier about like the frequency with which you send newsletters, maybe a chance to return news letters she's sending IT once a week because he's sending like action table tips for, you know, dealing with climate change.

How many acceptable things can you really do to deal with climate change every week? Like probably won? You know, probably people will do lesson that maybe one a month.

And so SHE doesn't have to send IT a high frequency. And with software ideas, I think it's probably similar. You know, how many ideas can people really take and run with? Probably not that many.

He doesn't need to send his news, that of daily know once a week ago, a few times a month is enough for him. Where I was something like the browser trying to keep people entertain. There's something like morning blue of the hostile you trying to keep people informed.

People have an almost limitless appetite for entertainment and news like they want a little bit every single day. And so with those neuters, not only do you have to send probably more often, but you can actually get away with sending more often and not having that much to turn because you're not going to overload people. You know if you your accountant send you email about doing your taxes, you know every week you be like only need the email once a year, you would undescried because its noise. But if you get you know anything about the news once a day from the information or something or for morning brew, you're not going to ever on describe because once a day seems to be about .

the right frequency. Yes, I like B2C ver s B2B news, right brother to B2C new let ter, right? Customers are all just in a regular people, right a while soft ideas.

It's more towards kind of businesses, I mean, the hackers that wanted start businesses. So I kind of consider that B2B peo ple lik e to wan t som e sor t of act able ins ide out of IT, but being entertained like he said. So yeah, you can skin the cat like a million ways with the nester cool.

We've got a more ideas on this list, but I think were at the time. So think what people are going to have to do is good to your show and check out the newsletter crew. You can just search for news attic crew in your past player described your show.

You've interviewed to think close to forty different people who are making a living from their newsletter and is going to be much more. And if people aren't, say, and that they could potentially join your community as well. And hopefully you started them much more than fifty nine box a year time ever. Sort this out. I want to ask you, you know, before we signed off here from all the different stories you've seen from your experiences in ny hack of yourself, what's one lesson you would want to leave listeners with that they can learn what you ve done?

Man, just one day at a time. I mean, just take a, take a easy. Don't try to do ten things at once.

Yeah just put one thing go out. And if IT works, keep going out. If IT doesn't work, a drop and to start something else. But don't try to start five, six projects at once that just doesn't work.

Don't start five or six projects at once. Don't start two projects at once, just do one thing at a time. Love IT, you are bad. We thank you so much for coming on the share. You want to tell people where they can to find also anything else like.

yes, so you can go to news and you know can find all the podcast. You can go to the actual poke's players who you can go to your back that come from the site for my news letter I sent to that once we summer of, you know, kind of my journey. And h, yeah, i'm creating another smaller of sas micros called reversal kid, which is the actual action building to sell two, my news crew. Audience, no development, but may will be out the time. I mean, your awesome.

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