AI Summary
5 min readAlex Garcia, a former employee at The Hustle newsletter, now runs five email newsletters that collectively reach 150,000 to 160,000 subscribers and generate roughly $65,000 to $70,000 in monthly revenue from sponsorships alone. His flagship publication, Marketing Examined, drives most of the business, and he is testing paid products that add another $15,000 to $20,000 per month. Garcia's approach is methodical and rooted in content distribution, audience building, and disciplined execution rather than flashy tactics.
Finding a Niche and Getting the First Subscribers
Garcia advises two routes to finding a newsletter niche: follow a passion or follow market demand. He chose marketing because it was what he loved reading, talking about, and researching in his downtime. For getting the first subscribers, he credits the concept of "hand-to-hand combat" learned from Noah Kagan—doing unscalable, manual work to build initial traction. This means DMing people on LinkedIn and Twitter, asking friends to share, running small giveaways, and posting consistently on social media. Garcia himself wrote 50 marketing Twitter threads over 50 days, which grew his Twitter following from 500 to 40,000 and his newsletter subscribers from roughly 2,000 to 8,000 or 9,000 during the same period. After that initial push, he recommends "buffet marketing": testing many channels to find what has 10x po
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Outline
- 2 (00:00) **Episode Introduction & Sponsor Block** - Ad reads for Indeed, Google Chrome, and Palmolive; host teases Alex Garcia's $845K/year newsletter business
- 3 (02:18) **Alex Garcia's Background & Newsletter Portfolio** - Alex introduces his five newsletters (Marketing Examind, Content Examind, Social Examind, Landing Page Examind, DTC Examind)
- 4 (03:02) **Origin Story: From The Hustle to Marketing Examind** - Alex applied for a job at The Hustle to learn newsletter operations and scaling a media company
- 5 (03:43) **The Real Opportunity of Newsletters** - Alex argues newsletters can be nine-figure companies, not just small businesses
- 6 (04:26) **How to Find Your Newsletter Niche** - Two approaches: write about what you love vs. chase exploding topics for money
- 7 (05:09) **Starter Story Promotional Interlude** - Host pitches Starter Story's case study library as a shortcut to making your first dollar online
+ 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
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