The $2.5 Million Newsletter Secret Nobody's Talking About

In partnership with

Hey Anywhere Income family,

Remember when everyone thought email was dead? "It's all about TikTok now," they said. "Newsletters are old-fashioned," they claimed. Well, someone might have, but you get my drift…

What people don’t realise is just how serious business simple newsletters are:

Milk Road sold for $2.5 million. Morning Brew? $65 million. The Hustle? $20+ million.

Why Newsletters are Smart Business...

Whilst everyone's chasing the latest social media algorithm, the smartest entrepreneurs are quietly building email empires. Why? Because when Instagram shadowbans you or Twitter changes its rules overnight, your followers vanish. But with a newsletter? You own every single subscriber.

There is no mystical algorithm at play, just emails in a reader’s inbox. That's prime real estate in someone's attention span, and you're not competing with cat videos or dopamine fillers.

The Fatal Mistake Everyone Makes

Done correctly, a newsletter can be the golden ticket that is “passive income”.

Here's where most people go wrong: they jump straight to building "passive income assets" without understanding the foundation. They underestimate that building cash-flowing assets like newsletters requires either allocated time or allocated money - you need at least one of these, otherwise it always fails.

You've heard "you need money to make money" - well, the modern internet version is you need money OR time to make money, but you must have one of them.

How Small Newsletters Generate Real Money

Even with a modest subscriber base, newsletters can become proper income streams. Here's how you monetise:

Newsletter Ads: Browse weekly ad offers and add them to your content. Beehive makes this ridiculously easy with their ad network.

Affiliate Links: Promote products you actually use. Genuine recommendations convert because your audience trusts you.

Course Sales: Package your expertise into digital products. Your newsletter becomes the perfect sales funnel.

Newsletter Cross-Promotion: Get paid $1-2 per subscriber for recommending other newsletters to your audience.

I'm already starting to see a modest income from this newsletter, though it's all being reinvested to keep growing. The goal is to turn this into a full-time income platform, but that's still some time away, and that’s ok.

How I Built 5,000+ Subscribers

Here's exactly how I've grown this newsletter:

The Twitter Pipeline: I write viral threads challenging corporate work myths and promoting multiple income streams. Each thread ends with my lead magnet - the Master List - which is a bribe for signing up to Anywhere Income.

Newsletter Cross-Pollination: I partner with other newsletter owners. When someone subscribes to mine, I recommend theirs. They do the same. It's free growth that compounds.

The Beehiiv Boost System: When someone signs up for my newsletter, I recommend other newsletters that pay me $1-2 per subscriber. That revenue funds my own paid promotions, where I pay $0.80 per engaged subscriber through other newsletters.

Refind Ads: This newsletter discovery platform has been a game-changer. I pay $0.80-1.50 per engaged subscriber (only pay if they actually open emails within a week).

Passive Channels: Email directories like Inbox Reads, my old Medium articles, and various listing sites send me the odd subscriber here and there.

The AI Opportunity and Threat

Here's what nobody's talking about: AI is both the greatest opportunity and biggest threat to newsletters right now.

The opportunity? You can produce quality content in 5-10 minutes weekly. I use Raycast for speed and access to all of the best models like Perplexity for deep research, and Claude for writing.

The threat? Lazy AI usage creates generic content that drowns in the noise. The secret is bringing your unique perspective and experiences to AI-generated foundations.

I write all my newsletters using AI, but I spend time sharing my experiences and ensuring genuine value. It's about recognising where you come in as the human element.

Three Elements That Make a Killer Newsletter

Format Matters: When I started, this newsletter was all over the place - matched betting one week, travel hacking the next. Random content kills engagement. Now I have a strict format: every week, I analyse internet business models, run experiments, and share findings. Readers know exactly what they're getting.

Headlines Are Everything: Your subject line needs a promise plus mystery or FOMO. Once you hit 1,000+ subscribers, A/B test every headline. Beehive automatically picks the winner.

Consistency Beats Perfection: Weekly delivery builds trust and habit. Miss a week and engagement drops.

The Numbers Game

Currently at 5,100+ subscribers with plans to hit 10-20,000 by year-end. This newsletter is part of building a proper cash-flowing asset whilst providing massive value to everyone wanting to build online income streams.

Those million-dollar newsletter sales? They're proof of what's possible when you own your audience rather than renting it from social platforms. The opportunity window is wide open.

Reply and let me know - do you have a newsletter or are you thinking of building one?

Lewis

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