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Hyper-Niche, High Value: How Matt Brown Built a $200K Newsletter With 2,000 True Fans
From pricing to licensing, discover how Matt Brown created value that 2,000 loyal fans couldn’t resist paying for
Taylor Cromwell
January 29th, 2025
If you’re reading this, you probably already know the basics of running a newsletter.
You’ve built an audience, maybe even a loyal one, but the big question remains: how do you turn that into a sustainable, thriving business?
While many creators aim for a large audience to monetize their newsletter through ads, there’s another, often overlooked path: hyper-niche newsletters. Matt Brown, founder of the college sports business newsletter Extra Points, has turned this model into a six-figure success.
With just over 27,000 subscribers — and 2,000 paying ones — Brown has built a business generating $200,000 annually. How? By focusing on a hyper-niche audience, pricing for value, and exploring creative monetization strategies like licensing to universities.
In this article, we’ll break down the newsletter monetization strategies that have driven Brown’s success and provide actionable tips for how you can apply them to your newsletter.
Table of Contents
The common advice for newsletter creators is simple: grow a massive audience and then monetize through ads or platform-based tools – but Matt Brown’s approach is different.
“You don’t need millions of casual readers,” Brown explained. “You need a few thousand people who find your work so valuable they’re willing to pay for it directly.”
Extra Points targets a hyper-specific niche: the business of college sports. This isn’t a topic covered on ESPN or major sports outlets — it’s too specific for mainstream audiences. But for professionals, journalists, and diehard fans in the industry, Brown’s insights are indispensable.
Why You Only Need 1,000 True Fans
The success of the Extra Points newsletter is a perfect example of what Kevin Kelly calls the 1,000 True Fans. His argument essentially is that having 1,000 customers/readers/etc. who are keyed into your work and will continually pay for it is the most important thing for your business.
By aiming for a direct connection with your biggest fans, “You’ll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation,” Kelly wrote in a blog post. “It’s a much saner destiny to hope for. And you are much more likely to actually arrive there.”
How Extra Points Grew to Where It Is Today
Brown first launched Extra Points in 2020 on Substack after being laid off from his job as a sports journalist.
“I realized that my best chance for making money — to buy my children Lunchables to pay for my mortgage — was to go into business for myself.” His immediate plan was born from desperation, Brown remarked.
Brown quickly realized, “Oh, actually, this is my job. I’m not doing this part-time until I can go get hired at ESPN.” And thus, a newsletter business was born.
Soon, though, Brown outgrew the features that Substack could offer, and he especially felt slighted by the company’s fee for writers. “I felt that taking 10% of your subscription revenue for the product we were getting was exorbitant. I feel that way even more now.”
Why Trust Me?
I’m a former business journalist and now a content writer for B2B SaaS companies. I help founders and startups better tell their stories through social media, content marketing, and newsletters.
I love shining a light on interesting creators and helping to share actionable tips for growing an online business.
For creators aiming to monetize their newsletters, pricing is often one of the most daunting decisions.
Charge too little, and you risk undervaluing your work. Charge too much, and you might alienate potential subscribers.
Here’s how Brown navigated this challenge.
1. Create value — and let that guide your strategy.
Brown learned early on that subscribers don’t pay for the sheer number of articles you produce — they pay for the value of the content.
“In the beginning, I was so terrified about asking people for money, because I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, Netflix is $10 a month. The ESPN Plus subscription is less than $10 a month,’” Brown said.
“I initially charged $7/month, thinking I had to drown subscribers in content to justify the price,” Brown said. “But what I realized is people don’t have time to read everything. They’re paying because they like the mission of the publication and see value in what they do read.”
Brown has also launched creative products like the Extra Points Library to add more value for his core reader. His business is run on FOIA requests — public documents — that help inform his reporting on the sports industry.
After realizing he had access to thousands of PDFs in his computer, Brown packaged them all up in a way that readers could comb through.
Brown’s advice: To get your audience to pay for stuff, it either has to be content that they can't easily get for free anywhere else or something that can meaningfully improve their work or their life. This can be especially helpful for journalists because they tend to have specific topics they’ve covered in-depth, like congressional politics, higher education, or the environment, etc.
2. Test and refine your pricing.
Pricing isn’t set in stone — it’s a process of trial and error. Brown experimented with different tiers and gathered audience feedback to refine his approach.
Here’s the structure that Brown currently uses:
Free
Premium monthly: $9
Premium annually: $84
Here’s how you can test pricing:
Start with a reasonable baseline.
Use surveys to gauge whether readers feel they’re getting value for their money.
Adjust over time as your content quality and reputation grow.
Brown explained, “When I launched Extra Points, I wanted to limit how much I would be exposed to the whims of an algorithm.”
Instead of chasing the largest possible audience for programmatic revenue, Brown zeroed in on his core audience, a few thousand people who found his content meaningful enough to financially support it.
Brown’s advice on pricing: Charge more when you think you should. You can always run sales. “Set your price to what you can sustainably produce rather than what you think you have to do to get people to support you.”
3. Know when to outsource.
In the early days of Extra Points, Brown handled everything himself — from writing and editing to ad sales and technical management. Over time, he realized this approach wasn’t sustainable.
“I had to focus on what I do best: reporting and writing,” Brown explained. “So I hired someone to handle ad partnerships and sales.” This decision allowed him to scale revenue while maintaining the quality of his content.
Creative Monetization Strategies for Premium Newsletters
Paid subscriptions form the backbone of Brown’s revenue, but they’re far from his only source of income.
By thinking outside the box, Brown has diversified his revenue streams in ways that other creators can learn from.
Licensing
One of Brown’s standout strategies is licensing his newsletter to universities as a resource for sports management programs.
“Textbooks are expensive and often out of date,” Brown remarked. “By licensing my newsletter, I provide fresh, relevant content at a fraction of the cost.”
The idea came to Brown after realizing that many sports management programs relied on outdated, overpriced textbooks. He saw an opportunity to position Extra Points as a modern, affordable alternative.
By approaching professors and offering bulk subscriptions at discounted rates, Brown made it easy for universities to integrate his newsletter into their curriculum.
To further sweeten the deal, Brown added perks like guest lectures and exclusive research access, ensuring that his offering stood out as a valuable resource for both educators and students.
“For a couple of schools, we would even do a deal where we would include it in the university library system, so the athletic department can have access to it, and the law school or the business school, and then they cut me a $3,000 check every year for licensing,” Brown said.
He continued, “A lot of entities are willing to pay a premium to reach 20-year-olds, and it saves people a lot of money and time.”
There are some growing pains to adding a new type of revenue stream, Brown added, but it’s definitely a model that other newsletter founders could follow.
“It's a long sales cycle, and we weren't able to scale it quite as much as we had hoped. But it was a really important revenue strategy to help us grow in years two and three.”
Licensing solves a problem for universities, while creating a scalable revenue stream for Brown. It’s a win-win: students get up-to-date content, and Brown gets recurring income from institutional partnerships.
How You Can Use Licensing With Your Newsletter
Licensing isn’t limited to Brown’s niche. If you create specialized content, consider pitching it to institutions or organizations that align with your audience.
Maybe it’s digital marketing or venture capital — there are a ton of ways you could get creative with this.
Actionable tips:
Identify potential institutional partners — universities, nonprofits, or corporations — that could benefit from your expertise.
Offer bulk pricing or tiered access levels to make it an easy “yes” for decision-makers.
Include extras like webinars, Q&As, or exclusive content to sweeten the deal.
Interactive Products
Brown didn’t stop at licensing. He also developed a video game that ties into the themes of his newsletter, offering his audience a new way to engage with his content.
ADS4000 is a computer game that simulates what it’s like to actually run a D-I athletic department — from hiring new coaches to fundraising, talent management to broadcast rights questions, facility improvements to angry parents, and more.
While not every creator will build a game, the principle holds true: think beyond traditional monetization models.
From merchandise to digital tools to courses, there are countless ways to leverage your niche expertise.
Going back to the 1,000 True Fans thinking — how else can you add value to your core audience that they can’t find anywhere else?
Journalism vs. Content: The Key to Premium Subscriptions
In a crowded newsletter market, one of the biggest challenges is standing out. For Brown, the answer lies in creating journalism — not just content.
Content: General, easily accessible information that’s often repackaged or aggregated (e.g., curated links or basic how-to guides)
Journalism: Original, deeply researched reporting that offers unique insights and value
“Curated newsletters have their place,” Brown explained. “But if you want to charge for a subscription, you need to offer something irreplaceable.”
Brown’s readers don’t just want news — they want a deeper understanding of the financial and operational decisions shaping the college sports industry.
“People pay for expertise, perspective, and stories they can’t find anywhere else,” Brown explained.
How To Create Premium Content Worth Paying For:
Invest in original reporting, expert interviews, and deep analysis.
Speak directly to an audience with expert-level knowledge or specific needs.
Build trust and loyalty by consistently delivering value.
Matt Brown’s journey is proof that a profitable newsletter doesn’t require a massive audience. Instead, success lies in identifying a hyper-specific niche and delivering so much value that your audience sees your content as indispensable.
Whether it’s through deeply reported journalism, innovative revenue streams like licensing, or creative offerings like a video game, Brown has built a six-figure business by focusing on the right strategies for his unique audience.
For other newsletter operators, the key lessons are clear:
Start by understanding your audience and their specific needs.
Experiment with pricing to reflect the value of your work, not just the volume of content you produce.
Don’t be afraid to think beyond subscriptions — opportunities like licensing or niche products can diversify your revenue and make your business more resilient.
Most importantly, prioritize quality over quantity and build trust by delivering original, deeply valuable content that readers can’t find anywhere else.
Brown hopes his story can help inspire other journalists on a mission.
“If I can figure out how to do this in a world that matters only a little bit, financial reporting and college sports, my hope is then that somebody who wants to chase down immigration politics in the UK or about what's happening higher education in Baltimore can do this, too,” Brown remarked.
“The only way to do that is to figure out monetization strategies that work for people [ journalists and full time creators] that are going to make this their job.”
P.S. beehiiv provides the tools you need to grow, monetize, and manage your newsletter. Our toolkit makes it simple to start your own premium paid newsletter, so you can turn your audience into recurring revenue. (And don’t worry, we don’t take a cut from your revenue — we’re not like the other guys.)
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale like Brown, the possibilities with beehiiv are endless. And if you’re a journalist, you might be a great fit for beehiiv’s Media Collective. Learn more about the program here.
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