Sell Your Newsletter

If you want to, you can.

Did you know you can sell a solo business—like a newsletter—for real money?

Like, 6-7-8 figure real.

In the start-up world, exiting a business is lesson #1: many startup owners plan for it before they make their first sale.

It used to sound wild to me. Why would someone build a business just to sell it?

It turns out…

• Some people love building businesses, not running businesses.

• A sale can mean a big payday.

• Joining forces with a buyer can unlock growth you can’t reach alone.

For a long time, solopreneurs didn’t have this option.

Because they were the business.

But that’s changing.

From Amazon's acquisition of Beast Games for $100 million (if you don’t know, Mr. Beast started out as a YouTube creator) to Business Insider acquiring Morning Brew (a newsletter started by two college students) for $75 million, opportunities for selling solo businesses are popping all over the place.

Solo founders now sell newsletters, SaaS tools, productized services, even supply chains. And buyers are paying attention.

If you've ever worried that solopreneurship means being trapped in a business you can’t leverage, think again.

A couple of newsletter sales that don’t sound like you’ve won the lottery—but are still pretty damn impressive.

Justin LoFranco spent seven years growing his CrossFit-themed newsletter, Morning Chalk-Up, to 75,000 subscribers.

He monetised it both through sponsorships and through a paid tier. He sold it to Pillar4Media for high six figures.

Cool, no?

It’s worth noting that he had an impressive 70% open rate, partially because the CrossFit community are absolute maniacs about CrossFit.

See what happens when you niche down? He could’ve written any ol’ fitness newsletter but he was smarter than that.

You can read more about how it all happened here.

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The SCOTUSblog was founded in 2002 by Amy Howe, a lawyer and legal commentator, as the “the go-to authority on the Supreme Court.”

“Dispatch Media said Wednesday it bought legal publication SCOTUSblog for an undisclosed sum, funded by the company’s cash flow. The site will continue as is providing free content, and Dispatch will build out premium paid products.

The new addition should help bring in just under $1 million in revenue over the next 12 months. The blog had been underinvesting in itself for years and Dispatch bought it as a forward valuation rather than a backwards one, Mike Rothman, president of Dispatch, told AMO.”

AMO also called the blog “woefully undermonetized”, which, coincidentally, I think is true for most Substack newsletters.

You can read more about the deal here.

And one answer to the “how” question.

Acquire.com, an online marketplace where founders can sell their startups, has added newsletters to their marketplace.

So you can literally list your newsletter for sale.

Mind. Blown.

Why you read this:

• Because solopreneurship holds more opportunities than you think and I’m here to spotlight them for you.

• Because if you know what you’re building and why, you can create the right strategy early on and become more successful than you think (in, for example, building and selling multiple category newsletters).

The world is your oyster.

Until next time,

Maya