How to scale to $100k/month with a newsletter

I had a call yesterday with a quant analyst just outside Lisbon.

He’s one of those rare all-rounders: a guy who can do it all.

He builds quantitative models based on strategies from legends like Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio. Then, he turns around and markets them to retail investors who are keen to try their own hand at quant analysis.

He’s built up a decent following on Twitter, and that’s where most of his traffic comes from.

He’s got a newsletter funnel, which means he’s doing all the heavy lifting — building the models, writing the tweets, handling sales calls. Everything.

Now, that’s both good and bad.

Good because it’s what you need to get a business off the ground. Bad because long-term? That’s going to burn you out. And it’s not scalable.

Many “all-rounders” end up stuck in the weeds because they can’t let go.

During our call, he hit me with a question: “Should I take my most viral tweets and throw some paid traffic behind them to grow my subscriber list?”

On the surface, that seems like an easy yes, right? Viral tweets have already proven they can hook an audience. Push some paid ads behind them, and you’d probably see a solid CPA.

But here’s the thing: the easy way isn’t always the smart way.

What’s smarter? First, figure out which subscribers are actually bringing in cash.

Because what’s the point of paying for a ton of new subscribers if they’re not your ideal customer?

So I asked him the real question: “How are you monetizing your newsletter?”

He’s got two revenue streams:

• A $20/month subscription

• A $5,000/month coaching service

Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

The $5K coaching service? He barely mentioned it in his newsletter, but it landed him 3 clients. Boom. Just like that, he’s making $15K/month with a relatively small list.

So the plan became crystal clear: forget about growing a big list for now. Double down on what’s already working. Focus on getting more coaching clients and use that revenue to fuel his newsletter growth.

Now, to scale that coaching service, we needed to ask the next crucial question: Who’s the typical buyer?

Retail investors? Family investment offices? Other quant traders at bigger funds?

He’s only got 3 clients, but there’s a goldmine of data in his newsletter.

Here’s the kicker: when you own a newsletter, you own that data. He already had plenty of clicks on the links mentioning his coaching.

So we came up with a plan: send a dedicated email to everyone who clicked. Offer them a little something for filling out a survey.

That way, we’d get a much clearer profile of who’s interested in his high-ticket offer.

He might discover that the sweet spot is retail investors with $5M+ in assets.

That data is pure gold.

Now, he can build his lead magnet tailored to them — something like “The Ultimate Guide to Quant Trading for the $5M-10M Investor.”

Then, and only then, should he run paid ads.

Because now he’s not just buying random subscribers. He’s buying subscribers who are primed to convert into high-paying coaching clients.

That’s how you use paid traffic to scale to $100K/month and beyond.

And in case you’re wondering, one of our clients? They’re on track to pull in $4M this year with the same playbook.

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