10 (Profitable) Newsletter Business Ideas To Start In 2025

okay everyone 2025 is here and I know you want  to start a new startup know it's on your mind and I got to be honest sometimes starting a startup  is actually most of the time starting a startup is pretty daunting you don't really know where to  start and that's why today's episode is all about 10 newsletter business ideas you can start this  weekend how do you start a profitable newsletter from scratch now I know people are going to listen  to that and be like a newsletter that's not really a startup it's actually a cheat code it's kind of  like a a hack to get a a loved group of people to open up your your newsletter literally and  get them to uh you know go you can build a Marketplace you can build an agency you can build  so much on top of a newsletter that's why it's such a good place to start and today uh I found  this incredible uh post by Matt McGary and Matt McGary is he's like a newsletter God you know uh  says he's gotten 15. 4 million email subscribers for clients and he's just got a list of 10 really  amazing newsletter business ideas that you can start in a weekend and we're going to go through  it together I'm going to give my opinion on each and every one of them um people are going to steal  these they're going to go do them and they're going to turn into some big uh multi-million  dollar businesses uh I have no doubt so uh let's just get right into [Music] it so the first  idea he has is a marketing newsletter for Global Talent so he says one of the biggest shifts in the  past uh few years has been the rise of overseas talent for example job boards like online pH and  over overseas recruiting agencies like somewhere have grown to eight figures as a marketer and a  business owner I notice most oversea marketers typically aren't as skilled as Western marketers  has nothing to do with language barrier overseas marketers have great English has to do with  something out of their control budgets so basically what he's saying is there's new  marketers in the USA with $100,000 a month budgets right out of school um but marketers in  these places like the Philippines work with less than 5% of that this creat a skill Gap and that  is the lucrative opportunity for you so what's the idea the idea is go and create a newsletter  specifically for overseas marketers seeking remote usab based marketing jobs now when I first read  that I was kind of skeptical and I'll explain why um in places like India you can get newsletter  subs for 25 cents to 50 cents from Facebook ads um so if you spend $5,000 a month you're getting  20,000 new Subs every month to me this is low quality Subs uh what I mean by that is you're  not going to be able to monetize them as well so I generally uh refrain from uh focusing on on  on niches like that but let's let's give him a second and let's let's try to understand what he's  trying to do so he says here's the structure for the newsletter you'll have three sections section  one great remote marketing jobs readers can apply to section two relevant digital marketing news and  updates section three actionable digital marketing T tutorials and then he says here's how you can  monetize it um and this is where he was reading my mind these subscribers are easy to get and will  find your content valuable but they're not the audience you want to monetize he's 100% right here  if you want to make this a real business you need to monetize the Western audience who wants to hire  talented marketing overseas for less than us-based so the four ways that He suggests making money  a job board so making a free job board where companies can post marketing jobs for overseas  talents um you can charge these companies 300 to $500 for a boost uh which is totally normal  for JW boards where you can feature the job in your newsletter which Rees reaches 20,000 talented  marketers so job boards uh I love these businesses they do print um if you get it right um and yeah  companies are just used to paying for it if you collect number two if you collect subscriber data  at signup work experience job title level company skills by the way such an important thing to to do  is collecting subscriber data you don't just want people's emails right so when you're thinking  about building your newsletter whatever it is think about what is subscriber data that you can  capture that is specific for your Niche so he says you can send targeted sponsored email blast on  behalf of job advertisers charging anywhere from 1 to 3,000 for recruiting email blast to help  companies generate more qualified candidates number three you can partner or create your own  overseas recruiting agency uh hard to do hard to build your own uh overseas recruiting agency a lot  of people a lot of management but partnering is is really an interesting one right like you saw that  with Nick Huber in somewhere. comom Nick Huber sweaty startup on Twitter has a lot of traffic a  lot of people a lot of eyeballs and he partnered with uh it was PR previously called support  Shephard now it's called somewhere where he was basically like I'm going to generate leads for  you and uh and then you know he he took an equity stake in that business so looking at partnering  is uh probably a more interesting uh venue to go after and then number four create a course um  focus on International audience of marketers I don't think personally that's my least favorite  uh of the options here's how the math works out okay here's cool this is cool assume a 25 cent CPA  $5,000 a month budget that's 20 new th000 Subs a month 300 job $300 for a job posting and five jobs  per newsletter that's $1,500 per issue that makes sense three newsletters sent per week at you know  times four weeks $18,000 a month in Revenue five recruiting blasts per month uh and you're charging  $2,000 each so that's $10,000 a month of Revenue so total revenue is about 28,000 per month with an  audience of 20 to 40,000 International marketers I don't think that's absurd I don't think that's a  crazy uh you know a crazy unattainable uh business to create and then all of a sudden you're making  28,000 uh per month okay so that's number one quick break in the Pod to tell you a little  bit about startup Empire so startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch  of people like me like you who want to build out their startup ideas now they're looking for  content to help accelerate that they're looking for potential co-founders they're looking for  uh tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them how do you do email marketing how do you  build an audience how do you go viral on Twitter all these different things that's exactly what  startup Empire is and it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas  or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction uh that they need  so you can check out the link to Startup empire.

co in the description number two you can create a  platform based newsletter so um you know he uses the example of mix X Miss XL I'm sure most of you  know mix Excel she I think she got popular on Tik Tok but she basically made learning about Excel uh  fun and and then she's she's moved on to you know now she does word and now she does PowerPoint but  she's created a huge uh business out of it so how can you replicate this um create a list of tools  platforms and programs that are commonly used in your industry or that you personally love and then  basic create an educational newsletter instructing people on how to use them better um so the  examples he uses is Ableton for music production Da Vinci for video editing notion for operations  canva for graphics figma for design clavio for e-commerce perplexity AI for research you get the  idea pick a tool make it digestible and delightful to consume that content and just focus on one  particular Niche you're you're doing you know you know uh perplexity AI for research you're not  doing perplexity AI for everyone and then how can you monetize it well you can build a course um  that's I that's like probably my you know the least interesting uh option for me I think that  there's way better ways to monetize I think uh be an affiliate partner for the platform Affiliates  typically earn 20 to 50% recurring commission that's insane so not many people know this but a  lot of these software products will pay you 20% let's say recurring commission um if you send them  if you send them customers right so um that that's that's huge and it's recurring um I'd probably  try to double down as much on that as possible and the other thing that's not talked about here  is they potentially buy your business in a year two three five years um lean into templates  number three um so if you have a newsletter about mastering HubSpot you create uh a HubSpot  template for subscribers and then you could say sign up through HubSpot through my affiliate link  and I will give you the template for free uh or if you already have HubSpot here's a high converting  template that can be yours for $200 um this is huge these digital assets I'm seeing a lot more  of it uh a lot more people gain into templates the margins are obviously great um and uh he's giving  away some sauce here I really like that um and then and then he ends it with there you know there  are entire ecosystems and economies built around platforms for example if your newsletter is about  Shopify websites you can easily find a SAS tool that would want to get in front of your readers  absolutely that's that's totally right and now with AI not only could you find a SAS Tool uh you  can build one right so you can use tools like rep repet like bolt like VZ like lovable and actually  go and create these tools yourselves um and that's another Beauty about a newsletter business right  instead of you know you can build software to sell to to these people okay number three uh this  is actually my my least favorite idea on the list an un unofficial sports team newsletter I'm  not saying that uh it isn't cool and interesting and fun to have I just think that um I don't know  maybe maybe it is May it's just not exciting to me I also think that uh from a revenue perspective  it's it's one of the tougher ones so now that you're like so stoked about it now that I've  pumped you up on it um but listen someone may like this so uh he says find a sports team with a big  fan base but not much media coverage this could be your local team a minor league team a college  team uh don't start with something like the Dallas Cowboys uh there's already so much content  on them so how do you Source content instead of writing your own content go to subreddits  and forums and select the best takes on your local teams link out to these takes or go one step  further DM the person behind them a be uh DM the person behind it asking them to contribute to your  newsletter and you'd be surprised a lot of these people would do it uh linking out is probably  the best way to start it removes the time and effort and content creation and lets you quickly  scale horizontally you could easily create five unofficial local sports teams newsletters quickly  monetize this through sponsors and creating a paid Discord or Facebook Community uh to turn this into  a big business and I agree with this you probably need a dozen newsletter for multiple teams but  it's doable again that's one of the reasons why I don't like this you have to amalgamate a lot of  these to actually create serious Revenue but it's an opportunity for someone okay number four uh  local real estate investor newsletter so this uh there there are there are examples of people  making millions of dollars with real estate uh newsletters um friend of mine uh used to run a  company called bis now media I think they ended up selling for about $70 million and that's what  they were doing they were just doing email you know real estate news uh uh newsletters so uh  just because you know a transaction of of real estate a real estate transaction is so is so  big there there's a lot of money around it so what's the idea that Matt has so he says this  this this idea works for cities with 200,000 to a million people um the target audience for  this newsletter is local Real Estate Investors who are looking to invest in that City and  here's how you can do it step one go to Zillow or contact local Realtors to discover the best  investment properties once you know what to look for you can probably Outsource this to a virtual  assistant for $500 a month you can also probably use AI to automate that number two place 10 to  20 highquality listings in each newsletter and three enrich the listing by adding potential  mortgage rates forecasting potential Returns on the investment this added information will make  your newsletter more valuable and interesting to read newsletter like the newsletters like the  offer sheet and here. Co do this for Airbnb properties and the offer sheet is huge I think  they have more than 100,000 Subs so how to grow this okay everyone wants to know use Facebook ads  to build your subscriber list your CPA should be $2 or less promote your newsletter in local F FB  groups and subreddits just be careful on how you do this because you don't want to get banned  for Shilling yeah it's harder to do it on on subreddits um you can the the way to do it is just  you add value in your post and at the end of it uh you just link out to to to your newsletter you  just say like like for more of this go here uh and then share pre and post ctas on social media  to tease your content uh your newsletter content and if you don't know what that means uh a prea uh  just basically means you know an example like this this is a tweet that Matt did he says my results  from Twitter ads last month and he you know $1. 97 CPA 64% open rate want to see how I run Twitter  ads for myself and 10 plus other newsletters my Twitter ad guide drops tomorrow my newsletter  get it here so it's a pre call to action he's saying something is you know he's teasing with  a carrot of information and then he's saying you know tomorrow my newsletter uh you're going  to want to be on the newsletter because I'm not sharing it here on Twitter and and post is kind  of a similar thing he uses a Justin Welsh tweet uh who says yesterday 38,000 of my subscribers  learned four lessons from a million dollars in on online core sales um and then you tease some of  what you know is in the in the post and then you link it out so that's called a post CTA preas and  post ctas are are just you know some of the best ways to get people to to from your your social  audience X Instagram Tik Tok and get them on your newsletter and by the way while you're creating  your newsletter while for any of these ideas you should be Crea in uh focusing on one Platform One  internet audience maybe it's Tik Tok maybe it's Instagram maybe it's X depending on what it is uh  and just be focusing and building that audience while you're spending money on meta and other  places to to get subscribers because eventually what you want to do is uh you don't want to be  reliant on paying Zuck you know thousands of dollars a month for on on meta ads so so so the  idea is eventually you your organic will surpass your paid you know he says send this newsletter  out one time per week to start as you sell more ad inventory send it to three to five times per week  okay and then he says how to get your first ad sale because I know a lot of people are would be  are thinking like okay great but how do I actually sell an ad spot so let's assume you have 1,000 to  5,000 subscribers which by the way isn't a lot I'd approach a local business charge a flat fee run  it add for them until it gets an agreed amount of clicks here's what this looks like the sponsor  and you agree to a certain number of clicks at a specific price I'd aim at 500 clicks at $5 per  charge an upfront flat fee of $2500 you'll need to run the ad for multiple weeks to get 500 clicks  but that's okay take that $2500 and reinvest it uh in ad spend to get more subscribers get  more subscribers close new sponsor at that higher rate so local businesses with high ltvs  that already work with Real Estate Investors are the best sponsors for this newsletters for example  lawyers accountants Bankers Insurance Brokers Etc once you have 5 to 10,000 subs and a steady stream  of AD Revenue then you can repeat this newsletter framework for another nearby City and then you  can scale horizontally by following the same model in two to five towns in the surrounding  areas so there's more ways you can monetize of course because you can sell your subscribers a  local in-person real estate investment seminar or event for $500 to $1,000 per seat uh that that's  happening all the time people doing really well with that you can also offer premium subscriptions  and put 50% of the properties behind a pay wall for $1,000 a year so you know if you do the math  you assume a $2 CPA $5,000 a month budget which is 2500 new Subs a month uh you're adding 20  subscribers per day from organic social so it's 600 new Subs per month basically 3,100 new Subs  a month total now you have a valuable audience of 3,000 local Real Estate Investors you can start  selling ads if you sell three run into run into 500 clicks ads like we talked about before for  $2,500 each month each month that's $7,500 if 2% of a 5,000k a 5,000 person list purchases a  $500 seminar it's $50,000 in sales which doesn't include the potential sponsorship revenue for  the from the event and you will be able to make money from sponsorship Revenue if 1% of a 5k  list converts to $1,000 a year premium Subs subscription that's $50,000 ARR total revenue is  $190,000 with an audience of 5 to 10,000 subs and plus the economics get better as you scale and  plus you can sell this business on a dime this is a super sought-after uh audience um and the  reason I'm happy that he put this uh example here is a lot of people tell me oh I want to start  a newsletter business but I'll only start making $100,000 a year uh once I hit 100,000 subscribers  no you know five to 10,000 Subs uh and you're making $190,000 a year okay you still with me you  getting those creative juices flowing you still sipping all right well let's uh let's keep going  don't you know get you know hope your notepad is out and you're sort of writing notes okay so  number five newsletter for B2B decision makers so uh this is this is actually one of my my favorite  uh favorite on the on the list so the beauty of this type of newsletter is you don't need a huge  so it's even less than the the previous one if you have 2,000 subscribers and they're all SE execs  you hit a home run sponsors are desperate to get in front of these decision makers the hardest part  will be acquiring newsletters that fit your ICP ideal customer profile here's how to start pick a  niche and focus on one industry for example this could be CEOs at Fortune 500 oil and gas companies  the next step is acquiring subscribers as I said it's tough but there are three approaches chat  with an executive at a 500 a Fortune 500 company in your target industry ask about their info diet  and what they want to read about then create for that person eventually ask them to introduce  you to more people in their Network ask those people what content they're consuming create  hyper relevant content that Executives of that Niche want to read do an analysis and summary  of important press releases product launches Executives hired fired earning reports Etc uh  take all the information they normally consume and summarize it into a five to 10 minute newsletter  number three share that content on LinkedIn and X to drive people to your newsletter and number  four advertise in other newsletters that your ICP is reading uh however these ads may get expensive  or may be expensive as your audience grows you can do cross promos with these newsletters to grow  for free the next part is uh the next next part of this is critical to monetizing a newsletter so  you want to create a survey After People subscribe you can do that with something like beehive survey  forms and you can ask people their job title their industry their company and their location and  we talked a little about you know getting more you know data enrichment than just a sub uh  a plan old uh email uh earlier and again this is coming up again so analyze the results to  determine what percentage of subscribers are your ICP and what percent uh aren't if you can  say 50% of our subscribers are SE sues execs in XYZ sector then you have serious leverage when  selling sponsorships so I think this is a really really great Playbook um and again I like it  because I like high value valuable uh customer bases I like when people have a lot of disposable  income to spend who are in charge of budgets um these are beautiful businesses to create um  and then again you can create software on top of it um and and sell them things you know uh it  doesn't necessarily need these are just you know it doesn't you you don't need to necessarily sell  by ads events courses stuff like that I actually tend to think you should be selling software but  you can always start by selling uh ads and events quick ad break let me tell you about a business I  invested in it's called boring marketing.

com so a few years ago I met this group of people that  were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest  companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that  could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to  have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses  I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing. com and  that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day  Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend  boring marketing. com okay number six Niche ad examples for media buyers so media buyers need to  stay current and find uh add creative examples to get better at their job titles some newsletters  do this like the ad Professor which covers General ads and inspiration and uh bidy Co but there's  a lack of newsletters dedicated to ad creative for media companies SAS info products Leen and  many other Industries create a newsletter that's broken down into three to four sections each SE SE  each section should feature ads from a different Niche here's how cre create a spread number one  create create a spreadsheet and determine which niches you want to cover number two Source High  converting ads for each Niche do this by going to Meta Meta ad library look for ads that have been  live the longest on high spending accounts they're literally consistent High performers select three  to six ads per Niche add some context to each ad this can be one to two sentences now how do you  monetize well you want to put 80% of the content behind a pay wall make canva templates for each  ad that subscribers can download you want to sell sponsorships to advertisers that want to Target  paid marketers that's obvious and you want to sell a community or a membership or a course to that  audience so s you know super straightforward on how to monetize it um I think there's a ton a ton  a ton of opportunity in this one um so yeah that's number six let's keep on going this week in memes  most newsletters are text based but there are some great exceptions Charter which was acquired by  Robin Hood which was visuals and infographics on business finance and Technology smart nonsense  a daily comment explaining nerdy stuff like your five and the Bay Area times which was started by  Anthony Pompano Pompano uh which is a visual daily newsletter on business and Tech but no newsletter  explains the news with memes here's how it could work find a big story that happened that day or  week we find a meme that represents or relates to the news story and write a witty and concise  summary of the story in 250 words below the meme trun fan does an incredible job at curating memes  around business and Tech news on Twitter but who's doing it in a newsletter so this is the idea  create one of these newsletters uh creating one of these uh newsletters isn't rocking science yeah  so you just want to cover two to four stories per day one meme for each story 100 to 250 uh word  witty summaries for each you don't need to make any memes from scratch find them on Reddit Twitter  Memel lord.

Tech it's actually meme meme uh mem- alerts. com and other s sources um I'd recommend  choosing a prosumer niche focus on business Tech investing or Finance but this can work for  General news too prosumer content has some has more monetization opportunities yeah so  obviously the more consumer you go uh the less monetization there is and the more prosumer  you go more B2B you go the the more monetization goes up what's the big idea around this one so  the big idea is today's newsletters are text and in 2025 they are going to be more and more  visual um I think that memes is one more visual way to to like meme images are a great way to  consume information um it's it's tried and true uh there's also other ways you can do it like  you can do infographics um you can do gifts so just think there's just a lot of opportunity in  making more visual newsletters so that's kind of like the idea for me on this one is creating  you know creating more visual newsletters in a space that uh doesn't doesn't have any visual  newsletters um and and create something that uh it just feels doesn't feel like work to read because  I think a lot of newsletters now just feels like a lot of text and and people don't have time for  that okay so number eight industry specific AI tips and tactics this idea is modeled after write  with AI it's a weekly paid newsletter that trains how to write with AI uh they send chat GPT and  AI prompt to your inbox every week so it's $200 a year $20 a month um they have $200,000 in ARR  through their paid newsletter subscription so you can take this concept and apply it to other  categories AI for marketers AI for lawyers you get the idea so you know the key to creating a  successful newsletter that people pay for off the bat is creating content that gives them the  results people want cheat codes help your reader save time and money with AI tools and tactics  okay so I think um what isn't said here is that um Nicholas Cole and Dicky Bush the the the people  behind right with AI have hundreds of thousands of followers already so on social so they're able  to take that to generate this $200,000 AR so the question is with this idea is could if they  didn't have that audience would they be able to use Facebook ads acquire customers obviously not  at $2 a paid subscriber but maybe you know $20 um that's my question mark with this one so I  believe in the product like I believe that you know there's a ton of opportunity to create a you  know newsletters where people are learning AI or new tools or or or basically things that save them  time or money um and and I think that people are more more willing in 2025 to pay for them than  they than they were in 2015 um but my question is can you do that without a social audience  uh let me know in the comments so number nine lessons from leaders or inspirational figures  so this newsletter would feature highlights and Lessons Learned From inspirational leaders this  type of news newsletter is trickier to monetize because there's no clear Niche but it's a great  way to grow a broad audience fast uh this content also translates great to social it translates  great to social because it's the type of stuff that goes viral specifically uh especially on X  but on other places too if you need some ideas on leaders to profile there's a lot of great podcasts  that go uh in-depth on similar topics how to take over the world business breakdowns Founders  podcasts acquired FM um rather than keeping in-depth profiles on leaders the profile does a  good job doing this I would keep this newsletter super short two to five minutes max so let's  say your niche as investors and you profile Warren Buffett create three to sections that look  like this best interview with Warren Buffett best quote from Warren Buffett best book about Warren  Buffett best piece of advice from waren Buffett remember readers like predictable formats with  short actionable content this there's like very little risk to create something like this and  it's it's just going to work right it's going to work because you're picking backing off The  credibility of say Warren Buffett you can do Facebook targeting to you know people who like  Warren Buffett um or follow Warren Buffett on or follow Berkshire hathway on X uh or you  know follow people like Bill akman who are are students of Warren Buffett on X so there's  a lot of ways uh there's a lot of ways to make this work I don't see it as high risk um but my  my issue with it is like where do you where do you take it from there how do you monetize it um  if we were going to use the the example of Warren Buffett I actually think that's a probably one  of the you know a great place to actually uh to build a business around because then you can you  know it's a business around investors people who like value investing um you know you could there's  a lot you can do there um some ideas just like off the top of off the top of my head um is well one  you can raise a fund uh like a hedge fund and you could be a mini Warren Buffett and raise from  from people like this um you can do an agency of like you know how would Warren Buffett run  your company and do Consulting around it um of course you can sell courses [Music] um make a  few hundred thousand doar a year there uh maybe make a stock trading app that is just you know all  around Warren Buffett and value investing uh you know an AI agent that you charge for that looks  at your portfolio and optimizes it like Warren Buffett these are just off the top of my head um  but I do I do like it because you know people you know if you are going to do this idea focus on I  would say focus on inspirational leaders that uh also attract like a prosumer audience okay last  uh last idea is local newsletters number 10 so traditional media Publications have have shifted  to digital platforms but local news still hasn't caught up so there's a big opportunity right now  for digestible local newsletters that focus on what people want positive Community oriented  news not crime heavy local news stories people are like so tired of just looking at the news  and seeing sad things come out of their town so you can do a things to do this weekend  newsletter send it out on Thursday mornings highlight lical events live music food and fun  things to do uh Pro tip find locally sourced events that aren't on Eventbrite like events that  are written on chalkboards uh at local cafes and bars things AI easily can uh easily things AI  can easily replicate so how do you acquire Subs classic FB ads to grow your audience uh these FB  AD should be pretty straightforward here are five restaurants to try this weekend in Miami uh once  people click on the ad it should link to a landing page where people could subscribe um and then it  you know Matt says that he's helped local news letters AC acquire subscribers for less than 50  cents um so you can acquire them pretty cheap I would be curious of those us um so monetization  uh you can monetize the newsletter through local sponsorships particularly from high lifetime  value businesses like lawyers Realtors and wealth managers local newsletters can grow to six figure  businesses in one city with the potential to scale to seven figures by expanding into multiple cities  if you want to learn more about local newsletters uh he has a podcast interview with Ryan sneden  of naptown scoop a local newsletter covering Annapolis Maryland that does 400k per year in  Revenue um and then also check out the media that had big outcomes from small local newsletters  so I didn't know this but 6 a. m city grew to 8 million in Revenue with 1.