An 8-Figure Newsletter (And The Take-Away)

In the last couple issues of THE EDGE, we talked about the idea of, essentially, email blogging. In short, it goes like this…

Instead of posting open blog posts like everybody does, instead you “blog” exclusively to your email list. Your homepage essentially becomes a squeeze page to join your list… and your posts remain hidden to all except your subscribers (and optionally social media followers).

Taken to another level, you can create a small ticket continuity program by charging for a premium newsletter. Offer something of value and you can create a nice, simple membership program without creating any online courses or any of that stuff.

Now, yes, there are examples. 🙂

Ever heard of Morning Brew? This is a daily email newsletter. Their hook is right on the homepage:

“Get the daily email that makes reading the news actually enjoyable. Stay informed and entertained, for free.”

What you’ll notice is that their homepage is literally just a squeeze page. There is literally NOTHING to do on their homepage except opt-in.

The site was started in 2015 because the founders saw a gap in the marketplace of news. That’s a challenging niche because general news is just so damn vague – and highly competitive. But, they saw a gap in making the news easy to digest for young professionals. It gives a good overview of the daily news in an easy to digest format. It doesn’t require people to read the WaPo, or WSJ, etc.

In short, what Morning Brew does is curation. They summarize. They make it fun to read. And it works for people who want their news in a short and sweet format.

Now, get this…

They have over 1 million email subscribers.

They get about a 50% open rate. (Much higher than industry average, BTW).

And, yes, despite having a free newsletter, this company has evolved into an 8-figure company. They make their revenue with advertising. This would be an advertisers dream, though. The young professional market is very desirable for most advertisers. Plus, a high-engagement email newsletter is going to have FAR more eyeballs than ads on a blog. Any day and twice on Sunday.

So, there are two lessons to take away from this.

First up… this is a pretty stellar example of what I was talking about. Not everything has to be on a blog. These guys do it via email and their website is just a landing page.

I’m not saying you need to jump into this head first… but I have to admire the simplicity of all this.

Secondly… it’s the power of curation.

As bloggers, most seem to think that value has to be in creating all original content. But, why?

In case you haven’t noticed, the internet is pretty awash in content! It’s turned into NOISE! There’s just so much stuff to read that you can’t even possibly take a crack at it. Which means… if your focus is going to be on all original content, you better bring your freakin’ a-game if you want to stand out.

But, curation is a totally different value proposition.

You’re not the one coming up with all the ideas. You’re positioning yourself as the middle-man. You act as the filter who keeps tabs on all the noise out there and you bring the most valuable/useful/interesting stuff to your market.

And, if you do the Morning Brew thing, you add a twist by making it fun to read. I mean, those guys make the boring… interesting.

So, don’t get stuck into the mindset that you have to be some kind of “guru”. That you have to create all original content.

Curation…. really GOOD curation… has real value these days.

Morning Brew took one of the most saturated markets you can possible do – business news – and rocked it simply through solid curation and some good marketing that filled a gap in a market that is stuck in it’s ways.

Can you do something similar?