My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

Newsletter Quality Audit Service

For: Newsletter publishers, newsletter acquirers, advertising agencies

Buildability

Newsletter metrics like open rates are unreliable, co-registration creates fake engagement, advertisers waste money on low-quality audiences

Third-party service that validates newsletter quality through engagement testing, reply rate analysis, and audience surveys

Apple privacy changes make open rates unreliable, co-registration abuse is widespread, advertisers demand better measurement

Day 1

Create audit methodology based on reply rate testing

Day 2

Test on 5 newsletters with permission

Day 3

Build simple report template

Day 4

Price at $500 for MVP version

Day 5

Validate with 2-3 potential acquirers

Survey 20 newsletter acquirers about due diligence pain points

Test audit methodology on own newsletter

Interview advertising agencies about measurement challenges

Get 3 LOIs from potential customers

$500-2000 per audit depending on newsletter size, monthly monitoring subscriptions

Proprietary methodology, database of benchmark metrics, relationships with major newsletter players

Newsletters may not cooperate with testingMarket may be too smallMethodology could be gamedLegal issues with subscriber outreach