How to earn $500/month from your laptop

I recently started monetizing this newsletter after it hit 10000 subscribers.

It took me approximately 3 months to get here.

When I started this newsletter in early November and it gained traction quickly, I knew I had something special in the works.

It all happened quickly but far, FAR from easily.

In my first month of monetization, I’m easily going to clear $500 (over Rs.40,000).

I get quite a few questions regarding this nowadays either directly through email, LinkedIn, X or Skool DMs.

A lot of people either want to start their own newsletters or already have and want to experience similar growth to mine.

The most common question I get is about what should I focus on in the beginning - audience growth, product creation or monetization via ads / sponsors?

It makes me a little sad to see that while people have the right idea with being interested in my business model, they’re asking surface level questions instead of the general principle that they can transfer to their own newsletter, X, Instagram or Youtube.

Let’s break down the main principles to start your own Synthesizer business (I’ll explain the term in another letter).

But first, if you're interested in solopreneurship content like this, you'll definitely enjoy Newseum (they recently published an article from Tyler Denk, the CEO of Beehiiv)

Specific Knowledge

That tweet sums up specific knowledge perfectly.

In my video, I mention an elderly woman I know who makes a lot of money teaching how to knit online.

That’s specific knowledge.

My rule of thumb is, if traditional educational institutions do not teach it, it’s specific knowledge.

Knitting, how to start a newsletter, how to setup a cleaning business, how to win at fantasy sports would all count as specific knowledge.

Accountability

(If you like these tweets from Naval Ravikant, I break down his entire thread in the video below:)

“What should I name my business / product?” should never be a question.

You need people to attach positive outcomes in their lives to your name.

I can write a newsletter about habit formation, but if you’ve read Atomic Habits, chances are, every time you think about habit formation, you’ll think about James Clear and not me.

On the other hand, if you start taking Ashwagandha as a supplement and notice an increase in your energy levels throughout the day, you might attribute that positive effect to me and thus be more likely to pay attention the next time I write about supplements.

This trust building via value distribution is highly lucrative. Through the same notion, you are also more likely to click on one of my sponsored posts since you now hold my opinion in higher regard than other newsletter writers.

Do you see how this quickly spirals once you gain leverage?

Leverage

Hammer this next line into your mind.

There are 4 forms of leverage - capital, labour, code and media.

Capital and labour are old school, if you’re just starting out, it’s unlikely you’ll have access to these.

Code and media are creating the New Rich.

Code is a hard skill - tricky to learn, difficult to master, neigh on impossible to get so good that you create something people pay for (but I still recommend that you try)

Media is the most exciting form of leverage today.

It’s permissionless, free and so easy to leverage that a child could do it.

If you record a video about a process and work and mail it to all the new hires instead of conducting 3 different meetings, congratulations, you just leveraged media.

If you write a tweet once and it get’s seen by over 500 people, yep - leveraging media.

How I’m doing it

If I write a newsletter once and it gets read by ~4500 different people (usually around what these letters do) and ~200 people click on the sponsor link with a CPA of $2 each, that nets me $400.

Do you see how quickly these numbers can get crazy?

That’s because I’m utilizing all 3 of these principles, specific knowledge (research into the topic of the newsletter), accountability (there’s a reason it’s called The Sujal Kumar Letter) and leverage (~10.3k subscribers)

I am writing this to open your mind towards the best business model in the world today.

You can do this with anything.

Eg -if you’re preparing to become an investment banker, there’s no excuse to post content about how you’re doing it.

The possibilities with this model are endless but there’s only so much info I can fit into an email, if you want to go more in-depth about this stuff, you can see my Youtube channel below. That’s all from me.