AI Summary
5 min readAlex Garcia turned a blank Google Doc into a business doing $845,000 a year by building five email newsletters from scratch. He runs Marketing Examined, Content Examined, Social Examined, Landing Page Examined, and DTC Examined—a portfolio of roughly 150,000 to 160,000 total subscribers generating $65,000 to $70,000 in monthly revenue from ad sponsors alone. On the side, he tests products that add another $15,000 to $20,000 a month. His entire career revolves around content, and he learned the playbook from the inside—by taking a job at The Hustle, giving himself a year to study how newsletters grow and scale, then leaving to build his own.
Finding the Niche and Getting the First Subscribers
Garcia sees two paths to picking a newsletter topic. The first is passion-driven: write about what you naturally read, research, and talk about in your downtime. For him, that was marketing, content, and building things. The second is market-driven: identify a topic that is exploding in conversation and start a business around it. He chose the first route.
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Outline
- 2 (00:00) **Opening & Ads** - Pre-roll advertisements for Gatorade, Lowe's, and Indeed
- 3 (01:29) **Episode Hook: Turning a Google Doc into Millions** - Alex Garcia, who makes $845,601/year writing five email newsletters, is introduced as the guest
- 4 (02:27) **How Alex Got Started in Newsletters** - His origin story: working at The Hustle and building distribution on Twitter
- 5 (03:43) **The Real Opportunity in Newsletters** - Why newsletters can scale into nine-figure companies, especially in B2B
- 6 (04:29) **Finding Your Niche: Two Approaches** - Passion-driven vs. money-driven niche selection
- 7 (06:01) **Getting Your First 100-1000 Subscribers** - "Hand-to-hand combat" and "buffet marketing" tactics for early growth
+ 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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