How to create value from a broke, flaky, uncommitted audience

This week, I’m promoting Newsletter XP, a course on how to build, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter.

The undeniable star of the Newsletter XP show is co-host Alex Lieberman.

​​In 2015, Lieberman started Morning Brew, an email newsletter covering the day’s business news. Within five years, he built up Morning Brew into a 9-figure company. In 2020, he sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew for $75 million.

There’s a bit in the monetization section of Newsletter XP where Alex is asked to give an example of how he pitched big brands like IKEA on buying six-figure ad packages in Morning Brew.

​​Alex obliges.

He delivers a 1 min 24 second masterclass — the pitch he performed 10 times a day, every day, for three years.

​​His pitch is truly impressive because what he is really selling is an audience of 18-30 year olds, largely broke, uncommitted, and flaky — not an audience any serious business would be excited to advertise to.

And yet, Alex does it with such enthusiasm, cleverness, and conviction, that by the end of his pitch, I bet the IKEA marketing execs were begging him to run their ad, versus the other way around.

Once again, this pitch was how Morning Brew got to tens of millions of dollars a year in ad revenue, before Alex cashed out for $75 million.

You can use Alex’s IKEA pitch to inform your own sales strategy if you want to start a newsletter and you’re bent on selling ads to big brands for a lot of money.

Or, you can use Alex’s pitch to guide where you take your newsletter.

Because you might not be getting into the newsletter business to hang out on LinkedIn and pitch marketing managers 10 times a day.

​​The good news is, Newsletter XP gives you real options for both the ad-supported path to monetizing your newsletter, as well as the no-ad path, where you simply create content you love and get paid well to do it.

It’s all there inside the course.

​​I’m promoting Newsletter XP until Monday, Feb 25, at 12 midnight PST. During this promotion, you can get $200 off the usual price of Newsletter XP. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.