Security Newsletter

"A weekly cybersecurity newsletter summarizing interesting articles, known breaches, and software issues, generating $25K/year in sponsorships over seven years."
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securitynewsletter.co
Maker: dietervds
$25,000/year in sponsorships (explicitly stated by creator), with potential for more through additional sales effort

Marketing Channels

Secondary

Cross-promotion with other newsletters

Creator tried cross-promotion with other newsletters in the past but it fell by the wayside

Secondary

Paid marketing

Creator attempted paid marketing previously but did not sustain it

Ongoing

Social media and word of mouth

Content sourced partly through social media, friends, and colleagues, creating organic visibility

Secondary

Hacker News

Creator shared the newsletter in a community thread, generating interest and new potential subscribers

Growth Levers

  • Hire or outsource sponsorship sales to unlock the admitted revenue gap from underselling
  • Systematize cross-promotion with adjacent newsletters (dev tools, cloud security, privacy)
  • Create a premium tier or paid archive for deep-dive content beyond the weekly summary
  • Leverage the seven-year track record as social proof in sponsorship pitches
  • Build an automated content curation pipeline to reduce manual scouring of news sites
  • Add referral incentives for existing subscribers to drive organic growth

First Customer Strategy

The creator built the newsletter as a personal learning tool for cybersecurity, curating articles from bookmarked news websites weekly. Growth was largely organic over seven years, with limited marketing efforts including cross-promotion and some paid advertising.

Pricing Insight

Revenue comes exclusively from sponsorships at approximately $25K/year. The creator acknowledges revenue could be higher with more active sales effort but admits marketing is not their strength.

New Market Opportunities

  • Industry-specific security newsletters Commenter expressed interest in news-related ideas across multiple industries, suggesting the newsletter model could be replicated for specific verticals
  • Newsletter infrastructure consulting Creator recommended Curated for hosting/email, indicating expertise that could be packaged as guidance for aspiring newsletter operators

Key Takeaways

  • • A curated newsletter can generate $25K+/year in sponsorships with minimal marketing if the niche (cybersecurity) has strong advertiser demand
  • • Consistency over seven years compounds audience trust and creates a defensible moat against newer competitors
  • • Creators who dislike marketing leave revenue on the table — outsourcing sales is a concrete growth lever
  • • Writing to explain concepts to an audience is a powerful personal learning mechanism that doubles as content creation
  • • Using managed platforms like Curated removes infrastructure blockers that prevent aspiring newsletter creators from starting
  • • Cross-promotion with adjacent newsletters is an underutilized channel that the creator abandoned too early

Sentiment Analysis

2 Pos

Notable Quotes

"I love news-related ideas like this since I'm interested in several industries. — mkvoid"
"Cool site. I'll probably check it out every now and then. — funny_name"

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