32K subscribers, 53 weeks, and 150+ posts later, we sold Product Monk.

Here is all the tea about it.

Today, I want to start at the very beginning and tell you everything about the newsletter from its inception to selling it.

I was a product manager and I wanted to establish thought leadership in my industry.

So, I started Product Monk, hoping it would open up opportunities for product roles and gigs.

My basic idea at the time was this: if I have 10K readers for my newsletter, I will never be jobless. One shout-out will get us gigs or jobs.

But why a newsletter?

Writing online, I had the option of going the social media route as well.

And there are many people out there who have managed to create an engaged audience.

But social media is governed by dynamic and nuanced algorithms – different for each platform.

Often, people come across your social media by chance. Making them want to stay seemed time-consuming with slower ROI, especially for someone like me who is not that socially active.

I wanted a closed space to write in.

That’s why, I choose newsletters, which:

• The audience is people who actively want to read the content

• I have more control over my audience and

• Immediate, valuable feedback is possible.

And so, I dived into researching for the best Email Service Provider out there and came across Beehiiv – it is one of the easiest to start with and has features to monetize your newsletter as well.

Finding Content-Market Fit:

Content-Market Fit (CMF), much like product-market fit, is about creating content that your audience actually wants – stuff that they find helpful and interesting.

Early on, we did many experiments with regard to content.

This was the first ever piece we published on Product Monk.

After some experimentation, we finally figured out that the audience likes product case studies.

We also experimented with different post timings and days to figure out which time had the highest open rates.

Earlier, we posted on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. This later changed to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

We finally settled at 10 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Note: Keep experimenting and you’ll find your perfect time.

Feedback loops:

Getting feedback from the audience is easiest on your newsletter than any other platform.

We attached a poll like this at the end of every newsletter:

Occasionally, we also sent out an email asking the audience about what they thought of the content, and make suggestions. We were able to receive feedback like this:

We also talked to our early users a lot through feedback in emails to figure out what they wanted – and implemented that.

This is a practice we still follow – having conversations with engaged subscribers to create better content.

One thing that also helped us was optimizing content for SEO.

These were the results. We also got organic reach through SEO.

Growth:

Now, here is what we did to grow the subscriber list.

The first 1,000 subscribers were acquired through personal connections and professional networks on WhatsApp in 2 months.

Yes, it might seem daunting, but you need to be your biggest advocate, especially when you’re starting.

After we reached the 1,000 subscribers mark, we wanted to rapidly grow to 10K.

So, we experimented with community postings on Slack, Reddit, and Quora.

We answered questions related to product management and linked our newsletters so new readers could get something of value before they even subscribed to it.

Once we got a decent open rate from these new subscribers, we started running paid ads to accelerate this growth.

We took the growth to 32K before Product Monk was sold.

Monetization:

This was the tricky bit where we initially experimented and failed.

Our dead ends included info products, e-books, and affiliate marketing.

But we did end up making (revenue number) from Product Monk in (no. of months).

This happened majorly because of 2 things:

Recommendations:

Word-of-mouth remains the most powerful marketing tactic there is.

And there are 2 ways you can use that for your newsletter.

• Boosts:

  Beehiiv boosts are an amazing tool that helps you earn on autopilot.

  Essentially what it does is: you can promote other newsletters in your own and when someone subscribes through your recommendation, you earn money!

  You can read more about it here.

• SparkLoop:

  SparkLoop is an email marketing tool gives your subscribers a special link to share your newsletter.

  When someone signs up using that link, the subscriber who shared it gets a reward.

  You can choose the reward to be a freebie like a free course, e-book, or other resources your audience finds valuable.

Beehiiv Ads Network:

It is because of this that we could run ads without having a sales team.

You can choose relevant ads from trusted brands and get paid based on reader clicks or impressions.

We made $3503.40 from ads.

And the best part is that there are no sales calls or invoices – everything is managed by Beehiiv.

That’s how, just after a one-time set-up, money was credited on autopilot.

Acquisition:

All was going well.

So why did we choose to sell it? 3 main reasons:

1. Marketing Monk’s Growth:

   Because this newsletter started picking up pace, we wanted to direct our efforts into scaling it.

2. Inbound Requests:

   We were receiving inbound for acquisitions, which was a sign that people were interested in buying the newsletter.

3. Experimentality:

   Because I didn’t know that newsletters could also be sold, I wanted to try it out.

And here’s how we did it 👇

First, to find the right price, we tried 2 platforms: Duuce and Microns.

But the final acquisition was done on acquire.com.

We listed Product Monk on 20th May 2024, and on 31st May, we had the final offer.

Product Monk was acquired by Andre Borczuk, VP of Product Management at Stash.

The money was in the account on 10th June.

How much, do you ask?

The valuation was 3.3x of our TTM profit and 1.7x of TTM revenue.

It came to a total of $45K.

So, yep. That was my journey from experimenting with a newsletter to selling it profitably.

What’s next:

• Reddy continues to write for Product Monk.

• Andre plans to grow it further and monetize with info-products.

For us, we will focus on scaling Marketing Monk, boosting organic growth, and growing All Things Newsletter, helping newsletter creators like you to replicate this success.

There you have it!

P.S. If you are stuck with your newsletter growth at any point, reply to this and let’s see if I can help you out! 📈