Welcome to Newsletter Operator!

In today’s edition:

• The 10 best niches to start a newsletter in

• How to make your first $10k online

• And much more

Let’s dive in…

Deep Dive

The 10 Best Newsletter Niches

If you’re interested in starting a newsletter but don’t know what to write about, this is for you.

So many people I talk with struggle with what their newsletter should be about.

The generic advice is: “Write about what you’re passionate about.”

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

You still need the ability and skill to monetize that passion.

And some niches are MUCH more lucrative than others.

The Formula For Picking a Niche

When picking a niche, ask these 3 questions:

• What are your passions and interests?

• What unique experiences and skills do you have?

• How can you monetize and how lucrative is this niche/topic?

You want to pick a niche that:

• You’re genuinely interested in (so you can stick to it)

• You have experience in (so you can create insightful content)

• Has lucrative monetization opportunities (so you can build a successful business)

Which Niches Can Be Monetized Best?

Some newsletter topics and niches can make much more money than others.

To understand why, you need to know how newsletters make money.

There are 2 primary ways newsletters scale to 7 figures in revenue:

1. Sponsorships/ads - Promote a product — get paid for that promotion

2. Owned Products - Promote and sell your content, product, or service

Let’s break down sponsorships:

If you want to build a newsletter that will be mostly monetized with sponsorships, you need to know WHO sponsors newsletters.

The biggest newsletter sponsors are almost all in these categories:

• SaaS

• B2B software

• Personal finance/investing

(According to Who Sponsors Stuff, SponsorGap, and 40+ newsletters I’ve worked with).

If you want to build a business around sponsorships, you should build an audience that these advertisers want to get in front of.

• B2B software and SaaS companies want to reach decision-makers at companies that have buying power.

• Personal finance and investing companies want to reach high net worth investors.

Now, let’s talk about owned products…

How do you sell your own product or service to subscribers?

The most successful newsletters I’ve seen sell products that help people:

• Make more money

• Save more money

This could mean:

• A subscription that gives stock tips and investment insights (Examples: Motley Fool, Agora, Bankless)

• Online course or membership that helps you start and grow a business (Justin Welsh, Ship 30 for 30, StarterStory, Trends)

• Online course or membership that helps you be better at your job and start/advance your career (Lenny's Newsletter, The Pragmatic Engineer, Byte Byte Go, Reforge)

The 10+ Best Newsletter Niches

Here are the newsletter niches I would pick if starting today:

1) Finance and investing (stocks, crypto, real estate, VC, PE, angel investing, personal finance)

This is a massive category with dozens of lucrative niches inside.

I would pick a hyper-niche within finance and investing to start with:

• Small-cap stock investing and trading

• Self-storage real estate investing

• Investing in single-family homes

• Personal finance for founders

2) Luxury (Watches, cars, fashion, drinks, jewelry)

Another massive niche with many great niches to pick from.

I would start a newsletter based on one item or category:

• Wine

• Yachts

• Cigars

• Bourbon

• Watches

• Sneakers

• Sports cars

• Every day carry

• Women’s or men’s fashion

3) B2B (HR, marketing, IT, healthcare, media, banking, etc.)

Industry Dive (a B2B media company with millions of newsletter subscribers) sold for $525 million in 2022.

This is one of the biggest acquisitions in media ever.

B2B newsletters are lucrative because if you build an audience of business owners and operators that have huge purchasing power, the sponsorship opportunities are massive.

B2B newsletters have the highest ad rates I’ve seen.

CPMs can be $100-$500+ while most B2C newsletters sell ads in the $30-$50 CPM range.

Make sure you pick a B2B niche where the professionals who work in that industry and job function actually buy stuff.

And the more stuff they buy, the better.

For example:

• Marketers have big budgets to spend (a part of their job is often buying things to help their company grow).

• On the other hand, customer support employees don’t have much buying power or decision-making ability on what they buy.

This is why there are dozens of marketing newsletters and very few newsletters about customer support.

Which B2B niche should you pick?

There are so many possibilities.

Industry Dive has 30+ publications ranging from agriculture to legal, to manufacturing, to cybersecurity, and many more.

WorkWeek covers marketing, media, healthcare, sales, and more.

All of MorningBrew’s new newsletter offerings have been B2B: RetailBrew, MarketingBrew, HR Brew, IT Brew, CFO Brew, and Healthcare Brew.

If you want to start a B2B newsletter you should pick a niche that:

• You have deep experience in

• Has buying power and decision-making ability

4) Sports betting and fantasy sports

I love this niche for 3 reasons:

• The readers are super passionate

• The opportunity to sell sponsorships to sportsbooks is huge

• Readers are willing to pay for information to help them win more

There are already a few super successful newsletters in this niche:

• FootballGuys has 600k+ free subscribers and thousands of customers who pay for their subscription

• FasntasyLife has 400k+ free subscribers and recently raised $2M from investors

5) Local news

Local newsletters are awesome.

Here’s why:

• Most local news companies are old and outdated.

• They distribute newspapers or magazines and the content is boring.

• On the other hand, local TV stations mostly cover crime and have an older viewership demographic.

There’s room in the market for a new way to get local news.

And there are already people who have built 7-figure businesses with local newsletters:

• OverStory Media Group has 14 local newsletters

• 6 AM City has 26 local newsletters

Local newsletters are simple to write and grow.

They can scale to 6 figures in one town - and 7 and 8 figures when expanded into multiple towns.

We recently broke down the business model and growth strategies on my podcast here.

6) Hyper-niche, hyper-passionate audiences

Here are 7 more niche ideas:

1. “Rush Media” — Newsletter about fraternity/sorority news, culture, and events. There are 750k+ members and 9M+ alumni.

2. Newsletter about religion (or a topic from a religious perspective). The Pour Over has 450k+ subscribers and covers daily news from a Christian perspective. This could be done from the perspective of another religion or on other topics.

3. Newsletter for a fan base: Star Wars, Warhammer 40k, Star Trek, Soap Operas, Marvel, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering, etc.

4. Newsletter about expensive hobbies: Reef keeping, motorcycling, fishing, hunting, camping, crochet, quilting, etc.

5. Newsletter about collectibles: Sneakers, coins, trading cards, stamps, comics, dolls, antiques, vinyl records, etc.

6. A newsletter that tracks and summarizes open start-ups, people who share income reports, and build-in-public content.

7. A newsletter about being a better dad or mom