My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Negative Customer Acquisition Cost Model
A business model where customers pay you to become customers, then you sell them higher-value products or services
How It Works
Revenue from initial product (magazine subscription) covers acquisition costs, creating a negative cost to acquire customers who are pre-qualified for premium offerings
Components
Identify niche audience with expensive hobby or high-value needs
Create premium content they'll pay for (magazine, newsletter, course)
Use content to build trust and demonstrate expertise
Sell high-margin products/services to existing paying audience
Reinvest content revenue into better content and acquisition
When to Use
When you have a content product that audiences will pay for, and those audiences have expensive hobbies or high purchase intent for related products
When Not to Use
When your audience lacks purchasing power or when the content itself is your main value proposition rather than a lead generation tool
Anti-Patterns to Avoid
Example
“Flying magazine charges $50/year for subscriptions, then sells $2M homes and $7M private jets to the same subscribers. The magazine subscription pays for customer acquisition, and real profit comes from high-ticket sales.”