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⁉ What Is This?
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⁉ What Is This?
Starting Something From Nothing
Welcome to the journey of building a newsletter-based business from absolute ZERO. My name is Jesse Gambino and I’m on the path of, hopefully, building a business where I can work for myself rather than “the man”. I’ve been inside tech start-ups working through blood, sweat, and tears helping build other people’s dreams for the past decade. There’s no reason I can’t do the same for myself.
This weekly newsletter will review some of my biggest lessons and learnings, things I wish I had done sooner, issues I’m currently working through personally and professionally, as well as a monthly investor update for you. While there are no actual financial investors, I view you, the reader as my investor. You are investing your time and energy into reading something that will hopefully help improve your situation. I hope it motivates you to do what you have always wanted to do. Take the leap and thank yourself later.
The internet can be a dark and mean place sometimes. This will be a place of positivity but blunt truth as well. Let’s build a community together where we can learn from each other and grow together. Here’s to the first issue, thank you for being here. 🍾
📈 Investor Updates
Spoiler Alert: There Are No Financial Investors
It’s just me bootstrapping this thing spending upwards of $500 per month funding the growth and platforms needed to run this, all while unemployed. Some might call me an idiot (me, I’d call myself that). But writing The Daily Tater has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever taken on. For that reason alone, I’d continue to fund this personal project until I financially can’t any longer. I will not go into debt to fund this, but I have been lucky enough to build up a bit of savings to live off of while I continue to search for new employment, so I will be using that. My goal is to build a profitable business that will continue to grow for years to come. Let’s dive into some visuals and metrics that we’ve achieved so far.
Growth:
1st Post: 11/6/23, 3 recipients (I was 2 of them for testing purposes)
54th Post: 2/14/24, 1,901 recipients (I remain just 2 of these for testing purposes)
Main Channels:
Sparkloop has provided a majority of the subscribers. When individuals join a newsletter, we are sponsored as a newsletter they would also enjoy.
Twitter/Reddit have been the other two biggest growth levers. I have been posting each newsletter in the r/MLB channel with little issue but just got banned this week. When I start to venture into the individual team Reddit channels, I start to run into issues as well and have been banned from several from simply posting the link with a title. I think the Reddit growth lever for me might be done, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze anymore.
Priorities:
Profitable growth. I need to start really monetizing ASAP. My savings are dwindling as I’ve now been unemployed since November. To accomplish this I’ve signed up for Passionfroot which will help me attract advertisers, as well as Shopify to create some merch for our most dedicated readers. Figuring out how to master Sparkloops Upscribe and Beehiiv’s Boost monetization is among the top priorities as these have driven just north of $400 in revenue so far.
TLDR:
Total Spend: $1,909.76
Total Revenue: $502.61
Asks:
Please give me any feedback on The Daily Tater if you are a subscriber so I can produce the best possible content.
🕸 Wild West Of The Web
My Favorite Internet Content This Week
Zuckerberg is ready to go toe to toe with Apple and doesn’t hold any punches in this comparison of the Vision Pro to the Quest (Twitter)
More people watched the Super Bowl than watched the moon landing 🤯 (Twitter)
The new Deadpool movie trailer featuring Wolverine debuted. This will be a comic book movie peak for me from my childhood. (Twitter)
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