AI Summary
5 min readAlex Garcia, a 26-year-old from Austin, Texas, generates roughly $845,000 a year by writing five different email newsletters. He started by getting a job at The Hustle, a well-known business newsletter, and then applied the playbook he learned there to build his own portfolio of publications, including Marketing Examined, Content Examined, and DTC Examined. In this conversation, he breaks down the mechanics of building a newsletter from scratch, how to find a niche, how to get your first subscribers, and how to turn an email list into a real business.
The Two Paths to Finding Your Niche
Garcia argues that there are two distinct strategies for choosing what to write about, and the right one depends on your goal. The first is passion-driven: write about something you naturally spend your free time reading, researching, or discussing. For him, that was marketing and content creation. The second is money-driven: identify a topic that is currently exploding in popularity and has clear commercial potential. If your goal is to build a business to sell, you should look for what people are talking about right now. Garcia’s own approach was a blend of both—he loved reading about marketing, and that space also happened to be growing rapidly.
The Growth Playbook: From Hand-to-Hand Combat to Paid Acquisition
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:26) **The Opportunity: Turning a Google Doc into Millions** - Alex Garcia, a kid from Austin, makes $800K/year writing five newsletters. The episode breaks down his step-by-step blueprint for building a six-figure newsletter from scratch.
- 2 (03:02) **Origin Story: From Fan to Founder** - Alex got his start by applying for a job at The Hustle, giving himself one year to learn the newsletter space.
- 3 (03:49) **The Real Scale of Newsletter Businesses** - Newsletters are not just small side hustles; they can be the top of funnel for nine-figure companies.
- 4 (04:26) **Finding Your Niche: Passion vs. Profit** - Two approaches: write about what you love, or find a topic that is currently exploding in the market.
- 5 (05:57) **Getting Your First 100-1,000 Subscribers: Hand-to-Hand Combat** - Do the unscalable things first: DMs, friend pushes, small giveaways.
- 6 (07:30) **Finding Good Content to Write About** - Use tools to find the most shared articles on a topic, and use Twitter Advanced Search to find hidden gems no one has covered.
- 7 (08:01) **Monetizing a Newsletter: Sponsorships & Paid Models** - The simplest way is sponsorships: you've built trust and distribution, so people pay to get in front of your audience.
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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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