Helping people make smart stock investment decisions newsletter idea → $3M/Month

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🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why did the entrepreneur bring a map to the brainstorm? To chart a course through unexplored ideas!

Onto Today’s story….

Matt Paulson started working in McDonalds to pay for his college.

Then he stumbled onto freelancer work and from there built a $3M/Month newsletter business called Marketbeat

Here is who he did it.

Matt Paulson wanted to earn money to pay for his college.

But there weren't many viable avenues for him to generate an income as a computer science student in a college town of about 7,000 people.

As a freshman in college, he worked at the cash register and the deep fryer at McDonalds for $7.00 an hour.

He didn't want to do this again.

He managed to scrape together an income doing a few odd jobs for the university,

such as working as a teaching assistant and doing minor IT work.

In 2005, he started working as the technology editor of the university's student-run newspaper.

This was the first time someone paid him to write an article.

Soon after, he found other freelance writing jobs on the ProBlogger job board and eked out $1,000 to $2,000 per month in income as a freelance writer.

It didn't take long for Matt to figure out that he should start building his own content brand,

instead of getting paid a flat fee per article to build someone else's brand.

Realizing the potential of building his own brand,

Matt decided to create a personal finance blog called American Consumer News, which leveraged his writing skills.

He contracted with other freelance writers to write here and generated advertising income.

The blog slowly grew to $5,000 per month in income after just two short years.

During the great recession of 2008,

he accidentally discovered there was an opportunity to write about stocks that were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

At that time,

people were speculating whether Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo,

would go bankrupt due to the subprime mortgage collapse.

Articles about Citibank in their blog often attracted 5,000-10,000 readers,

which was significant for them because they were previously receiving only about 30,000 visitors in a whole month.

Google Finance, MSN Money, and Yahoo Finance featured their articles, and they received a lot of traffic.

This is when they decided to shift from focusing on personal finance to concentrating exclusively on investing.

He knew that the recession would eventually end and writing about stocks would become less interesting in the future.

He also understood that it was unlikely that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft would continue to provide endless free traffic,

so he began to collect email sign-ups on every article they published.

He had a plan to start a data-driven newsletter later on.

This way, when their traffic stream eventually dwindled,

they could still send emails to people who had previously engaged with their content.

Initially, they weren't really making any money from their email list,

but he knew it would eventually become a long-term marketing asset.

In 2010, they renamed the brand from American Consumer News to Analyst Ratings Network to focus exclusively on investing.

He was still not making enough money.

He graduated from college and started working as a web programmer for a local digital marketing agency.

It took him another two years to learn how to generate serious income from his newsletter and

sell premium subscriptions to his email subscribers.

His email newsletter gained quite a bit of initial traction.

It appeared that stock investors tend to get emotionally invested in their stocks and

are eager to know the latest tidbits and news headlines about them.

MarketBeat was able to package that information and provide it to the subscribers in a convenient, real-time format.

After about six months of running the free newsletter, it had grown to about 10,000 subscribers.

At the same time, there were also requests to change the format of the newsletter, add some different data, send it earlier in the day, etc.

Subscribers wanted more customization options and the ability to track their favorite stocks more closely.

Taking all of the feedback received into consideration,

he created a premium version of the newsletter and named it MarketBeat Daily Premium.

With the premium newsletter, subscribers received the newsletter earlier in the day,

can get SMS or email alerts for their stocks, have more customizability for the newsletter,

and can set up a watchlist of their stocks to get more information about the companies they're most interested in.

When he launched the premium newsletter in July 2011, only about 30 subscriptions were sold in the first month at $15 per month.

It was not a great success, but it wasn't a total failure either.

To be honest, Matt really didn't know what he was doing at the time.

He didn't know how to properly market the newsletter, and the premium product wasn't where it needed to be yet.

After this, they tried a lot of different things to grow the business and made many early mistakes,

such as not segmenting their email list effectively and not offering enough value in their premium products,

but eventually began to figure out how a subscription business model can work.

In 2015, he rebranded again as MarketBeat.com.

They started creating additional products and services to sell more to their existing customers,

such as a mobile app, additional newsletters, and premium research reports.

Their primary focus was to grow the number of email subscribers to their free newsletters.

They generated email sign-ups through a mix of organic search engine optimization efforts and paid advertising.

Their SEO strategy revolves around being the best website to research any publicly traded company.

They strive to be the optimal place to research a stock by providing a ten-year history of a company's earnings,

financials, insider transactions, analyst recommendations, dividends, and other information.

This helped them rank well on Google, Bing, and Yahoo when people searched for stock tickers.

They were able to achieve higher than average opt-in rates by aligning the copy of their opt-in forms to the content on the page.

For instance, if a user was on a page about Google stock, the email opt-in would make specific reference to Google.

Their approach was based on the belief that if a user is researching a particular stock,

they are more likely to opt-in to an email list if the opt-in mentions the stock they are researching.

They took out ads in co-registration advertising networks, content recommendation ads in Taboola and Yahoo Gemini, and lead generation service providers.

Social media wasn't their primary focus.

They realized that their audience, primarily 50-80 year-old men, didn't spend a lot of time on services like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest.

Some of them used Twitter and StockTwits, so marketing was done on these platforms.

They also launched a second brand called The Early Bird that offers a simplified, easy-to-scan newsletter for a younger generation of investors.

One of the key lessons Matt has learned is the importance of building a business that isn't dependent on a single customer acquisition source.

He says many people build businesses that rely exclusively on Amazon sales, Google search traffic, Facebook ads, or App Store sales and

go out of business when their preferred tech company changes the rules.

He advises that ideally, a business should have 5-7 repeatable customer acquisition sources in place to prevent the loss of business if one marketing source stops working.

He says that by building your audience with email, podcasts, and websites,

you know that you will still be able to communicate with your audience for years down the road.

With this, MarketBeat has been able to withstand algorithm changes and maintain long-term relationships with its email subscribers.

Matt says would-be entrepreneurs assume that they know what problem their potential customers are facing and that they have the solution for it.

They end up building something that nobody wants or needs.

The only two things that cause a business to succeed are building a product or service that there's demand for and

then actually selling it to someone. Everything else is superfluous.

They also created an iPhone and Android app.

They started many newsletters like MarketBeat Daily Ratings, DividendStocks.com, and TickerTalk.com.

Matt says, the biggest realization they had was that they are not a stock market website,

but rather a media company whose primary mission is to connect readers with their network of advertisers.

They have more than 4 million email subscribers, and their website attracts more than 15 million page views each month.

Now, they are making $3M/Month.

Matt says…

"Business growth happens by doing more and more of 'the boring stuff' and

doing it consistently over a long period of time."

11 reasons why he succeeded

1. He just started

• Matt began his entrepreneurial journey by finding freelance writing jobs on ProBlogger.

• He earned $1,000 to $2,000 per month as a freelance writer.

• This experience led him to realize the potential of building his own content brand.

2. Shifted to what customers wanted.

• During the 2008 recession, Matt discovered an opportunity to write about stocks on the brink of bankruptcy.

• Articles about these stocks attracted significant traffic to his blog.

• He decided to shift his focus from personal finance to investing, concentrating on this niche.

3. Collected email sign-ups before traffic dried up.

• Matt understood that the recession would end and traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft would dwindle.

• He began collecting email sign-ups on every article he published to build a long-term marketing asset.

• This strategy allowed him to send emails to engaged readers even when traffic streams dried up.

4. Launched premium newsletter based on feedback

• After running a free newsletter for six months, Matt received requests for customization and additional features.

• He created MarketBeat Daily Premium, offering earlier delivery, SMS/email alerts, and a watchlist feature.

• The premium newsletter allowed subscribers to track their favorite stocks more closely.

5. Persevered despite initial low sales

• When MarketBeat Daily Premium launched, only 30 subscriptions were sold in the first month.

• Matt admitted he didn't know much about marketing the newsletter or creating a valuable premium product.

• Despite the low sales, he continued to try different strategies and improved the product over time.

6. Became the go-to resource for their niche

• MarketBeat's SEO strategy revolved around being the best website to research publicly traded companies.

• They provided comprehensive data on earnings, financials, insider transactions, analyst recommendations, and dividends.

• This approach helped them rank well on search engines when people searched for stock tickers.

7. Diversified customer acquisition sources

• Matt learned the importance of building a business that isn't dependent on a single customer acquisition source.

• He advises having 5-7 repeatable customer acquisition sources to prevent losses if one source stops working.

• MarketBeat's diversified approach helped them withstand algorithm changes and maintain long-term subscriber relationships.

8. Validated demand before building a solution

• Matt cautions against assuming you know the problem your potential customers face and building a solution prematurely.

• He emphasizes the importance of validating demand for a product or service before creating it.

• Building something that meets a genuine need and selling it to customers are the key factors in business success.

9. Launched multiple targeted newsletters

• MarketBeat started several newsletters, including MarketBeat Daily Ratings, DividendStocks.com, and TickerTalk.com.

• Each newsletter targeted a specific subset of their audience with tailored content.

• By offering multiple targeted newsletters, they could cater to different interests and preferences within their subscriber base.

10. Realized their role as a media company

• Matt's biggest realization was that MarketBeat is not just a stock market website, but a media company.

• Their primary mission is to connect readers with their network of advertisers.

• Understanding their role as a media company helped them focus on building a large, engaged audience.

11. Consistently executed "boring" tasks for growth

• Matt believes that business growth happens by consistently doing more of the "boring stuff" over a long period.

• He emphasizes the importance of executing mundane but essential tasks day after day.

• Consistency and persistence in these tasks, rather than one-time initiatives, lead to long-term success.

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Hope you enjoyed the story and their success tactics.

Keep Zoooming!

Yours “Anti-hustle” Vijay Peduru