Rief's Three-Category Newsletter Map
Sort any newsletter idea into one of three structural categories before you write a word, so you know which economics you are signing up for.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Austin Rief, who built Morning Brew to roughly $75 million of revenue, double-digit profit margins and 250 people, says he is pessimistic about anyone relaunching a general-business four-million-subscriber Morning Brew, but very optimistic about newsletters generally, and he resolves that with an explicit split. He divides newsletters into three categories: editorial newsletters (the Substack, Packy McCormick style long essay of 2,000 to 10,000 words), aggregation-at-scale newsletters (what Morning Brew and The Hustle did, general business, going for raw Tam), and 'Morning Brew for X' (the same summary aggregation format but aimed at a narrower audience where tone lets you capture a much larger percentage of a smaller Tam). He treats a fourth shape, the classic five-bullet Friday roundup, as a separate lightweight thing. His verdict is that the biggest opportunity today is 'Morning Brew for X': find a growing industry, ride the tailwind, and own it with a distinct brand. He then adds selection criteria for X, namely that X works far better when it is a profession, a job title or a B2B category than when it is a hobby like fly fishing or basketball, and that if you go consumer it has to be a high-dollar consumer, 'the newsletter for Ferrari owners' or 'the newsletter for Rolex owners'. He classifies Sean's Milk Road as the best of both, hitting both crypto consumers and crypto professionals.
Origin
Rief built the aggregation-at-scale category himself with Morning Brew, then spent years watching which newsletter launches worked and which did not, and codified the answer into three buckets he uses to judge any new newsletter pitch, including Sean Puri's Milk Road.
Core principles
- 01Pick the category before the topic, because the category sets the ceiling
- 02General-business aggregation at scale is a closed window, not a repeatable playbook
- 03Tone lets a niche capture a far larger share of a smaller Tam
- 04A profession or job title is a better X than a hobby
- 05If you go consumer, go where the consumer already spends heavily
How to run it
- 1
Classify the idea into one of the three categories
Decide whether you are building an editorial newsletter (long-form single-author essays), an aggregation play going for general scale, or a 'Morning Brew for X' niche aggregator. Be honest, because each has different cost structures and different ceilings.
Pro tip If the honest answer is 'general business aggregation at scale', treat that as a red flag, since that is precisely the category Rief says he is pessimistic about repeating.
- 2
Stress-test the X
Check whether your X is a profession, job title or B2B category rather than a hobby. Rief's stated rule is that if X is finance, or something B2B, or a job title, it works better than if X is fly fishing or basketball.
Watch out Hobby niches feel easier to write for and are much harder to monetise, because there is no professional buying the reader's attention.
- 3
If it is consumer, force the high-dollar test
For consumer audiences Rief's criterion is that it has to be high dollar. His examples are the newsletter for Ferrari owners or the newsletter for Rolex owners, audiences that already spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the category.
Pro tip The dual-purpose sweet spot is an audience that is both a consumer segment and a professional industry, which is why he calls Milk Road the best of both worlds.
- 4
Check the industry is growing so you can ride the tail wave
Rief's instruction for the 'Morning Brew for X' play is to find a growing industry, ride that tailwind, and own it. Growth in the underlying industry does the subscriber acquisition work that a stagnant niche will never do for you.
Watch out A tailwind can reverse. Rief was later sceptical of AI wrapper businesses for exactly this reason, so a tailwind is a reason to move fast, not a reason to relax.
- 5
Build a genuinely distinct brand inside the niche
Once the category and X are fixed, the differentiator is tone and brand, not information. Rief's framing is to build something really distinct in that niche, because tone is what lets you take a large percentage of the Tam rather than a sliver of it.
In the wild
Sean Puri applied the aggregation format to crypto rather than general business, texting Rief and Sam Parr to sanity-check the idea before launching. Rief says it perfectly fits the framework, and classifies it as the best of both worlds because crypto is simultaneously a consumer passion and a professional industry, so the newsletter reaches both retail readers and people who work in the sector.
→ In under a year Milk Road became the biggest daily crypto email, profitable, at seven figures, built bootstrapped and in spare time.
Rief judged that Morning Brew's general business tone was not specific enough to support a general Morning Brew subscription or a general Morning Brew event, so instead of verticalising the product he verticalised the audience, launching B2B newsletters for retail professionals, HR professionals and other job titles.
→ The B2B newsletters could be pre-sold to a B2B SaaS advertiser and were break-even before the writers were even hired, and Rief judged that path easier to get to $100 million of revenue than the subscription path The Hustle took.
Common mistakes
Trying to relaunch the general-business aggregation play
Rief is explicitly pessimistic about building the next general-business, four-million-subscriber Morning Brew. That category was won in a specific window with specific economics, and copying the most famous example is copying the one category he says no longer works.
Choosing a hobby as your X
Fly fishing or basketball feel like passionate niches, but Rief's criterion is that X works far better as a job title, a profession or a B2B category, because that is where advertiser budgets and professional urgency live.
Going consumer without checking the spend level
A consumer newsletter only works if the reader already spends heavily in that category. Skipping the high-dollar test leaves you with an engaged audience nobody will pay to reach.
Is it for you?
Best for
Operators deciding what kind of newsletter to launch, and investors trying to judge whether a newsletter can get big
Not ideal for
People who already have a working newsletter at scale and are optimising monetisation rather than choosing a category
From the transcript
“basically I split up newsletters into three categories one are the editorial newsletters right you have your sub stackers your packy mccormick's”
“I think the biggest opportunity is what Sean did which is morning brew for X you find a growing industry you just ride that tail…”
“if you're going to go consumer route right target consumers it's got to be high dollar it's got to be the newsletter for Ferrari owners…”
From the episode
Austin Rief: Building Morning Brew, The Ultimate Guide to Building Newsletter Businesses, Side Hustle Ideas, & More
Austin Rief