How tech journalist Newcomer has created a $2 million business

Simon Owens interviewed tech journalist Eric Newcomer about his career and how he’s grown his newsletter business to $2 million in revenue.

Owens writes, “Major CEOs like Dara Khosrowshahi at Uber and Tony Xu at DoorDash granted him early interviews, and in January 2021 he published a deeply reported, insidery look at the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz that got widely shared around Silicon Valley and put his newsletter on the map.

“Of course, those types of stories take a long time to report out, and so Newcomer had to develop a cadence that allowed him to pump out shorter pieces of analysis while he was working on the bigger features. He developed a penchant for pulling data together into charts that spotlighted an overlooked trend and were easy to share on social media. He described his approach to publishing content as ‘chaotic.’ ‘I think part of what people like is that they never know what they’re going to get,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I drop these stories that I’ve been reporting for a while … and sometimes I’ll just sprinkle small scoops into the middle of a random story. And I feel like the variety is part of the fun.’

“Newcomer started out charging $150 a year and eventually raised the price to $200. I asked him how he converts free readers into paid subscribers, but he didn’t seem to have a grand theory for what should go in front of or behind a paywall. Often his best reporting remains completely free to read, and then the paywall doesn’t kick in until you get much deeper into the newsletter.”

Read more here.