AI Summary
5 min readAlex Garcia, a 26-year-old from Austin, Texas, makes roughly $845,000 a year writing five email newsletters. He didn't stumble into it. He applied for a job at The Hustle because he wanted to learn how to scale a media company, gave himself a year to figure it out, and left two months early to start his own thing. Now his flagship, Marketing Exam, sits alongside four other newsletters that collectively pull in 65 to 70 thousand dollars a month in ad revenue, with another 15 to 20 thousand coming from products he is testing.
The Niche: Love or Money
Garcia says there are two valid ways to pick a newsletter topic. The first is to write about something you genuinely love—what you find yourself reading and researching in your downtime. The second, if you are more money-driven, is to pick a topic that is exploding right now, something people are talking about that you can build a business around. He chose the first path: marketing, content, and building things. That intersection of what he loved reading, talking about, and researching became his niche.
Getting the First Subscribers: Hand-to-Hand Combat
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Starter Story
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (01:33) **The $845K Newsletter Business** - Alex Garcia, a kid from Austin, makes $800K/year writing five email newsletters and breaks down his entire blueprint.
- 2 (03:04) **How Alex Got Into Newsletters** - He applied for a job at The Hustle to learn the space, then used Twitter as his primary distribution channel.
- 3 (03:45) **The Real Opportunity of Newsletters** - Newsletters are not just small businesses; they can be top-of-funnel for agencies or nine-figure companies.
- 4 (04:28) **How to Find Your Niche** - Two approaches: write about what you love, or chase an exploding market.
- 5 (06:00) **Getting Your First 100-1,000 Subscribers** - Use "hand-to-hand combat" tactics that don't scale, then "buffet marketing" to find what 10x's.
- 6 (07:33) **Finding Good Content to Write About** - Use tools to find the most shared articles, or Twitter Advanced Search to find hidden gems.
- 7 (08:05) **Monetizing a Newsletter** - The simplest way is sponsorships; think of your newsletter as your own ad platform.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
I Make $845,601 Writing This Online...📚 Make Your First $1 (10x Faster) with Case Studies - https://www.starterstory.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=alex&yts=true📩 Business Ideas Newsletter (free) -https://www.starterstory.com/newsletterIn this episode, I meet up with Alex from Marketing Examined to ask him how he makes $800,000/year writing online… and it might be easier than you think.He reveals how to get your first 1,000 newsletter subscribers, how to land big time sponsors, and the 4 key elements to build a $1M newsletter business from scratch. Hope this one inspires some of you to start!0:00 - Intro 0:52 - The Business Model + Revenue 1:33 - Finding the idea 2:13 - Building a 9-figure newsletter 2:56 - How to find a niche 4:32 - Blueprint for first 1,000 subscribers 5:36 - The outreach method 6:04 - Finding interesting topics 6:35 - How to monetize 7:32 - Tools 8:02 - Outsourcing writers 8:28 - How to grow a newsletter 9:28 - Finding advertisers & pricing 10:07 - How to get better at marketing 10:36 - Daily routine 11:33 - Advice for new entrepreneursFollow Alex 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/alexgarcia_atx 🖥️ Website - https://www.marketingexamined.com🔔Subscribe - https://www.youtube.com/@starterstory 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/starter_story/ 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/thepatwallsSharing ideas that make money!Disclaimer: This podcast is published by a viewer using content from Starter Story's YouTube channel with the goal of making his valuable insights more accessible to those who prefer audio formats, helping more people discover and learn from the insights shared in his videos. It is not an official production of Starter Story. For any requests from Starter Story, please don't hesitate to get in touch. -------- Keywords: startup advice, software business, bootstrap startup, tech entrepreneur, tech business, startup stories, micro saas
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from this podcast
Starter Story →