Start a newsletter today that makes money + Find profitability by going niche

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story. 

I’m hitting your inbox to share with you the best ideas and insights we've published over the last week.

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📈 These two friends started a $4.5K/month newsletter that finds trending stocks before they blow up

This week I’d like to talk to you about Luca and Sam, two friends that started a newsletter about stock investments and in just a few months is generating $4.5K/mo without spending a single dollar on ads.

There is a lot of information about stocks and it’s hard to process, so they wanted to build a tool to do that for the people. They made various Reddit and Facebook posts that gained traction quickly and within a week they made over $1,000 in sales, charging $49 for lifetime access. Boom, there’s your validation.

Ultimately they realized that building the product was going to be hard and the valuable part was the information anyway, so they switched to a newsletter. And this is the key part of the story, information is very valuable and people pay for it all the time. From the early days of newspapers to Substack’s hype. Plus, Luca and Sam save investors tens of hours of digging through tedious reports and share just the true gems. 

Things they did absolutely right:

• They pivoted from SaaS (complicated, more expensive, slower) to content. Adding value and charging for it from day 1.
   
• They picked a topic that is blowing up like crazy right now (stocks, r/WSB, cryptocurrencies). These stories about trading go mainstream all the time, many people are looking to get started in this space and need help.
   
• They turned their knowledge into $$$.

Newsletters are amazing businesses and can be done well in every niche

There are many great things about launching a newsletter, but most importantly, they're fast, easy and free to start. You could start one right now.

Here are some examples of profitable newsletters you can learn from:

• Gonzalo runs Seedtable as his side project. A $1k/mo weekly newsletter on European tech, business and politics read by 10,000+ subscribers.
   
• In No CS Degree Pete interviews self-taught web developers and shares their stories some months he reaches $2,5k in earnings thanks to sponsorships from coding bootcamps mainly.
   
• MarketBeat, is a financial media and marketing business that publishes stock market news, data, and research tools for individual stock investors. They publish a free daily stock newsletter with 2M active subscribers.

Newsletters are also a great tool to engage with your audience and part of its recent revival is because you own that channel of communication. You don’t depend on any algorithm or viral effect to reach your audience. 

This is why despite not being the core of the business itself, it’s an essential marketing tool for lots of businesses:

• It’s a great tool to capture people interested in your product before you have a product. Jerry and Elizabeth gained over 10,000 email subscribers before launching their sex toy. This really makes a difference on launch day.
   
• Sometimes can be a stepping stone to something else. One Ramy’s side projects was a design inspiration newsletter that helped him connect and understand better the people in the design industry. That knowledge led him to start a $4,5k/mo library of inspiration videos for digital product designers.
   
• Or you can use it with a branding purpose, to establish yourself as an authority in the market and eventually obtain leads and clients thanks to it. Susannah, who runs a $3,5k/mo consultancy business helping people to start shoe brands, has a free Shoe Biz Club newsletter for exactly that purpose.

Ready to start your own? Check out our extensive guide on how to grow your email list and make more money through your newsletter.

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💘 Can't find a co-founder? Have you tried looking on reddit?

This is probably one of the biggest and most common hurdles people face when starting a business: lacking a co-founder to complement their skills and experience. Steven was in this position a few months ago. He had found a niche that he was interested, but was missing a partner to work on the brand identity and design tasks.

He posted on reddit and after interviewing about 20 people, he met Josh who was the perfect match. After some time of freelancer-client relationship, they became 50-50 partners and started this $4k/mo plastic-free spring salt ecommerce business. 

Fun fact: They’ve never actually met or seen each other.

What I love about this business is how specific they are. Seems like by going niche you’re not being ambitious enough, but I think there are tons of advantages and if you are successful you can always grow from there.

Here are some people that succeeded by going niche:

• Failory, a website for entrepreneurs to talk about their failed startups.
• Generating passive income with an online diamond price tracker.
• A $4k/mo website about games to play with your friends and family in a bar.
• A $7M/year pain-free solution to manage back hair.
• GloFX, a $400k/mo innovative party eyewear and LED flow props.

And there are many more examples that you can learn from and get inspired by, take a look at our list of 100+ niche ecommerce business ideas.

“We are not the only people with a young family and a full-time job that start a business up on the side. But the truth is that maintaining the motivation after a long day is more than half the battle.”

Marcus Taylor, Founder
Bruder Watches

🚗 The $720k tool that makes it easy to open kids’ car seat buckles

Once again, a business that was started to solve a personal problem. Probably the best way to find a business idea.

Becca’s mom suffers from arthritis in her thumb, lacking the strength to push the red button on the children’s car seat. Car seat buckles are federally regulated to require 9 lbs. of pressure to release. Great for safety, limiting for grandparents.

Being an Occupational Therapist who spent her career adapting equipment for patients with disabilities, she decided to create a tool to solve her own problem. And that’s when UnbuckleMe was born.

One of their biggest accomplishments was appearing on Shark Tank and receiving offers from all 5 Sharks! The publicity from that opportunity gave them a huge advantage to pursue several other big retail and marketing opportunities.

Getting on Shark Tank is hard (an awesome pitch, being prepared and knowing what to expect can be of great help), but businesses that make it all have great stories to tell:

• People have literally reinvented the wheel to get on Shark Tank
• This 13 year old made it on the show and did $500k in sales
• RinseKit, the $150k/mo a portable pressurized shower
• These twin brothers created an app to find pick-up basketball games
• And of course, not making a deal on Shark Tank can be the best thing that ever happened to your business

🛠 Job opportunities

• Mobile app developers - MightyCall ($2M/year VoIP Business Phone Service)
• Community manager - Flexiple ($80K/Month Freelancers Marketplace)
• Google Ads, Affiliate Marketing, and B2B sales - Live Lingua (7-Figure Online Language Learning Platform)
• PHP/JS Programmers - MintMe (Creation of tokens and digital coins)
• Marketing co-founder - OnlySalt ($4k/mo ecommerce)

P.S. Huge thank you to Klaviyo - our exclusive sponsor at Starter Story. By using Klaviyo, we've grown our email list to 70K and added thousands of dollars in revenue per month through email marketing. Get Klaviyo today!

Looking for a business idea? Find yours from our database of 3,000+ business ideas.