Matt Paulson built a 4 million subscriber email list by publishing stock content on sites like AmericanBankingNews.com and MarketBeat, then converting readers with targeted newsletter signups. He monetizes through ads and reinvests revenue into paid acquisition, spending over $1M monthly and seeing roughly $6 return per $1 spent over 2-3 years.
One thing I get asked about all the time is my email list. Matt, how did you build a 4 million person email list? Well, initially it was 100% organic. I built some financial news websites like AmericanBankingNews.com and then I hired some writers to write onto websites. I had them write about whatever the hot stock of the day was. So in 2024 that might be Nvidia, because AI hot stocks are really hot right now. Last year maybe it was Tesla. Back in 2009 it was Citibank because everybody thought Citibank was going to go bankrupt. Then people would come to our website from Google Finance and MSN Money and Yahoo Finance and basically any place that had information about stocks, we would try to get them to link to our website. Then as soon as somebody clicked from Google Finance to our website, there would be a pop up that says, hey, would you like more news about Citibank delivered to your email every day? And then if they enter their email address and click the button, we would sign them up for a newsletter and send them news about Citibank or Apple or Tesla or whatever stock they signed up to get news about. So we had ads in our newsletter for financial products and services, and then we would also send a dedicated email for an advertiser every day. So then we took the money that we were making from our advertisers and then we reinvested a good chunk of that money into buying advertising from similar sources like other financial news sites to grow our list, the subscribers that we acquired from advertising. So we are paying other people to promote MarketBeat to sign up for a newsletter. Those people that sign up through the advertising would then in turn generate advertising revenue for us. And the whole thing kind of snowballs over time. So you get more advertising revenue, you reinvest it, and you just keep doing it. Now we're spending more than a million dollars a month in advertising, and we break even on that spend in about 90 days. And over the course of two or three years, we make back about $6 for every $1 spent to build our email list. And of course investing $1 to get $6 back. That's an investment that I'm going to make just about every day. Building a media business or a newsletter business is the type of thing that is simple, but it's not easy. It requires patience, consistency and time. But if you're willing to do the work, I really think it's worth it.
