Is it Too LATE To Start a Newsletter in 2024?
I sure hope it isn't...
I'm starting a micro-niche business from scratch, using "the list" as my main revenue channel.
So buckle up, because you're sitting front seat...
And we're headed on a journey from $0 to $85,000 in MRR.
Sound good?
This week's deep dive is an absolute banger...
The Autopreneur - The First 3 Steps to 7 Figures
Starting a business will make you feel like an idiot...
All....the....time.
After starting 7 businesses, I've learned a few tricks that get hundreds of leads, drive thousands in revenue every month, and position myself as a unique authority.
And it's what you'll be learning in today's 11th edition of The Autopreneur.
So I'm starting at the beginning again...
Houston, Prepare for Liftoff.
"[FIRST NAME GOES HERE], what would you do if you lost everything...and had to start all over again?"
Now THERE'S a question I want to explore deeper.
There's a ton of shitty business advice out there:
Newsletters are dead.
Starting a business is extremely risky.
Build the product first, then go find customers.
You should only start a business selling what you have experience in.
You need a great idea, perfect timing, and luck to build a $1,000,000+ business.
I don't have time to tell you why these gurus are wrong, but after 17 years working for myself you can take my word for it.
Here's how most businesses ACTUALLY start: When you become your first customer.
Any business I've started came from my desire to solve a problem I was sick and tired of.
Million dollar ventures aren't just cool ideas you have. They're thoughts that spawn from the depths of your unconscious mind.
These business ideas drive you insane, day and night. They won't leave you alone.
Next thing you know...
You're creating a business for a problem that you absolutely despise.
But before we ask our family and friends to look at our "Next Big Idea," we MUST become private investigators first.
Last week I threw out a long list of micro-niches that I thought might be primed for a newsletter style business.
After researching a bunch, here's what I narrowed it down to:
Organic Gardening for Small Backyards
Side Hustles for Creative Professionals
Vanlife Conversion Tips for Beginners
Gut health solutions for Anxiety and IBS
Mobility for people who sit at a desk all day.
All of these topics I have an interest in, have problems I suffered with, or have become a customer for.
I ended up picking number 1...but with a big twist.
But before I tell you what I picked...
Here's where it all started:
Step 1 - Find the "A-Listers"
Where do most influencers hide out? On social media of course.
So I put myself in the shoes of a potential customer for these niches, and began typing in queries into Google and YouTube.
I found the most popular YouTube channels, talking about the exact questions the niche's customers would have.
Then I went to these influencer's main websites, most of them blogs, and copied the website URL.
Next, I went over to Similarweb.com, signed up for their free 7 day trial, and used their "Website Performance" tab to do some traffic stalking.
Example: One of the magazines I subscribe to is called "Backwoods Home Magazine." A publication about homesteading and becoming more self-sufficient.
You can see their home site at backwoodshome.com.
I bought it from a Facebook ad last winter. <-- REMEMBER THIS FOR LATER
Someone once said, "If it has a physical magazine, that means there's a huge market of buyers."
Physical products cost money, time, and require heavy distribution.
Look at the BWH mag results in similarweb:
Here we can see not only that BWH is getting a 650,000 visits every 90 days, but similarweb also provides a list of "similar" websites within the niche too.
This is next level data, real-time information that ChatGPT can't offer you...
As expected, 91% of their traffic comes from the US & CAN.
Unexpectedly, the demographic is split evenly amongst males and females. This crowd also seems to be an older community with 75% of visitors above the age of 45...
Probably why a majority of their social traffic comes from Facebook.
Analyzing some of the competitors below...
I did extensive research on the top 10...and about 20 other websites in the niche. None of them came close to the traffic that Backwoods Home Mag had.
How can a quarterly magazine, that doesn't send a daily email, have SO much organic traffic?
Answer: SEO.
They've had the blog running since the dawn of the social media.
There's thousands of blog articles on their website ranking in Google for a ton of random search strings. A lot of the blog articles are centered around trending or controversial topics within the niche.
They also have an adjacent partner magazine at selfreliant.com which is such a beautiful salt + pepper asset class to have.
They're probably building two separate lists and sending traffic back and forth to each.
Another reason why having an email list is a great business asset.
It gives your business tangible value.
So after weeks of researching the 5 niches, here's why I didn't pick the others:
Why Not Side Hustles for Creative Professionals?
Data shows that this was too general of a topic for too general of an audience demographic. Not enough "raving fan" communities built around the type of content I would be producing. Would be a go wide + deep and not the strategy I'm looking for with a micro-niche asset. This would be a great long term play for a 1-2x weekly newsletter. Something to keep in mind for the future.
Why Not Vanlife Conversion Tips for Beginners?
Research scared me a bit. Data shows that traffic is small from organic search, however, could be offset by the raving fan community of Vanlifers on social media (Instagram + YouTube). People love watching YouTube videos about unique conversions. What scared me is that no one was running any ads, which could be a blue ocean or a dead market. The rush to convert a van during 2020 is now over with, and a lot of social media van lifers are "quitting" van life altogether. We can also assume that most people living on out of a van are probably trying to "penny pinch," although the cost of converting a van is fairly expensive. This topic actually spawned the revolution of my gardening niche selection...we'll dive into this later.
Why Not Gut health solutions for Anxiety and IBS?
This is a health issue I've dealt with for half of my adult years. It's also one that I'm 100% sure is linked to, and can be solved with a proper diet. Which begs the question -> would the business model simply be selling natural products? Or creating a new diet? Affiliating other products and diets? Products, especially ones you ingest, take a lot to get up and selling, especially safely. And I didn't want to run a brand based off of affiliate marketing only, which most of the niche websites around this topic focus on. But the traffic is definitely there, being dominated by blogs from healthcare insurance companies and mini-niche websites. Possibly one to save in the back pocket for later.
Why Not Mobility for people who sit at a desk all day?
This was the 1b to my 1a. All of the signs were there:
Strong traffic volume
Various ways to monetize with courses, eBooks, affiliate deals, drop shipping fitness products, etc
Remote work culture is at an all time high, people are sitting more than ever
The Vitamin vs Painkiller approach --> sell painkillers, not vitamins
I could pump out content of myself doing mobility exercises at my own desk.
Here's the only downside I saw: the demographic of the search traffic was senior citizens and older. People looking for chair exercises to combat aging ailments. I am not a senior citizen, nor am I interested in writing to that market. So theoretically, this might be a blue ocean. I've still got my thumb on this pulse...but the purchasing power didn't look stronger than the niche I picked.
This beautiful data I collected up front will save me thousands of hours downstream.
I know who to target, how to speak to them, what offers to funnel hack, and where pockets of opportunity lie.
More importantly...I've validated hunches and know exactly what to avoid.
Step 2 - Spying on Winnings Ads
Here's two resources you will want to bookmark:
Keep in mind Meta owns Facebook + Instagram.
Google owns YouTube.
Looking up winning ads is the easiest way to find winning offers. These businesses aren't pissing money away on ads...they're running them to drive a serious return.
What I first did was to dig deeper into the niche: searching for Facebook pages of popular influencers and social media channels.
Searching through related interests like homesteading, gardening, tiny-homes, solar, 12and prepping.
Look at these ads...
What's the first thing you notice?
Hint: look at the "Started running on..." dates.
These MI Gardener ads have been actively running for 9 months straight.
What about these from the Backwoods Home Magazine:
Over a year now.
See that video with the woman in the rocking chair in front of a warm fire?
That's the exact Facebook ad I purchased my subscription from.
An ad that runs longer than a month is a good one.
Longer than a year?
It's printing cash.
It means the cost per lead (CPL) is lower than the EPS (earnings per subscriber).
So I started building my swipe file of micro-niche ads & screenshots.
Phase 3 - Funnel Hacking
PRO TIP --> If you want to sell more offers, you should be diving headfirst into every competitors lead gen funnel.
From there I started actually clicking on the ads, subscribing to newsletters, and screenshotting each part of the funnel.
You're not interested in what color the buttons are...
At this stage we just want to make note of things like:
The type of media and copy writing
Where the testimonials show up
What prices the products & services are selling for
What lead magnets are they using as bait.
This is GOLD.
These are lead magnets and funnels that you can use in your business today.
Here's a simple 3 step funnel from joegardener.com:
1) Setup a landing page that offers a free desirable thing (e.g. free ebook).
Give them only one action to take - the button click.
2) When button is clicked, this popup opens up.
Offer the bribe --> You give me your First Name + Email, I'll give you the free ebook...
3) Simple Thank You page with the downloadable ebook.
The CTA links to follow Joe on Instagram.
Now let's spot the opportunity.
I would improve this funnel by offering some type of upsell or a "next step" that calls out to your interested leads and turns them into immediate buyers.
You can include it right on the Thank You page.
This is how you can liquidate your ad costs, by collecting money immediately after the opt-in page.
Joe's welcome email is really professional, but again drops the ball.
He has way too many links, pictures, and CTAs for me to choose from. Keep it simple, keep it customer focused.
I'm willing to bet 80% of you reading this did not do this type of research before starting your business.
You're probably traveling down the wrong path...
One that you thought would work because a content creator on social media said so.
By not doing these three steps, you'll waste YEARS of your life failing to figure out what works and what doesn't.
If you're bootstrapping your business (like me)
Then you probably don't have that type of time.
It's not too late though...
You can still do this type of funnel hacking on your own business niche today!
Find what works, model...don't copy it, and then begin to build the pieces of your email marketing funnel.
Since we're out of time...I'll save the rest for next week's deep dive. I'll show you the specific micro-niche I picked (hint: it's not homesteading)...
And lay out my exact strategy to build my simple business model to $1,000,000 a year.
You'll want to open that email.
It's gonna be insane.
Stay tuned,
Ryan
I liked your structured approach to finding a niche. That you used data to guide you and that you showed how so I can test it myself. A lot of posts are at more shallow levels.
I also really liked the reverse engineering of Justin Welsh’s strategy.
Finally it’s a cool newsletter name. I’m trying to learn more about how I can automate my business, so I found it intriguing
Read BIP2, then the substack post, then BIP1. For sure reading the Welsh one too. Incredible stuff Ryan! Learned so much from this