He'll make $1.5M as a solo creator this year ft. Kyle Poyar

**Kyle Poyar** (0:00)
So I reach an 85,000 subscriber audience, and a lot of those are CEOs of big companies.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
You're on track to hit 1.5 million total revenue this year. Tell me a bit about how you think about pricing.

**Kyle Poyar** (0:11)
The advertising is probably, you know, 5 to 6x the size of the reader subscriptions. A lot of people are even uncomfortable with that sales process. People should get comfortable with it really fast because that is where the money is.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:24)
You have a lot of authority, you take a lot of care in how you craft your content.

**Kyle Poyar** (0:28)
I have over 100,000 followers on LinkedIn.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
110

**Kyle Poyar** (0:31)
There's like a cringe mountain you have to climb on LinkedIn.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:34)
You wrote a piece last June titled, LinkedIn isn't over, you're just bad at it.

**Kyle Poyar** (0:38)
This is one of the things that is like a secret behind my growth in general is that...

**SPEAKER_2** (0:47)
Your first ad partner signed for a $100,000 deal closer than a week, and you didn't even have to get on a call with them to make it happen. So, explain this, the genesis of your advertising product.

**Kyle Poyar** (1:03)
Sure. Well, I should say, I started writing my newsletter while I was working in venture capital. I wrote it for more than four years while having a full-time job as a VC operating partner, and I had no ability to monetize it, right?
I was professionally not allowed to have a side hustle outside of my main career, but I built an audience through that and also built a lot of relationships. So there were always folks reaching out to me about wanting to advertise when an opportunity arose. And around September of 2025, I decided to just go out on my own, become a full-time solo preneur. And that week, I sent out an email to one of the partners that had been contacting me. And I said, hey, here's my pricing. And they wanted to lock in not just one ad buy, but three quarters in advance and spend over 100 grand. So I quickly actually needed to incorporate as an LLC.
I had not incorporated as an LLC yet. So I incorporated as an LLC, set up a bank account, figured out how to invoice someone. The whole thing took off from there. But it was a pretty quick launch, I have to say.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:23)
So the genesis of your ad product is you had built up this audience. And like you said, you couldn't monetize it. And you're starting to think about, OK, actually, maybe I want to do this full time. The demand was there. And so you deciding to start advertising was basically you deciding to do this full time.

**Kyle Poyar** (2:41)
Exactly. And I mean, I was honestly in some ways testing the waters to see if there was interest, right? Like I said, prices that I thought were reasonable and that I thought could support a living and then some and be worth it to not go out on the job market and try to find another full time job. And so it was one of those things that was like, hey, I'd be pretty happy doing this full time if I get paid for it.
And so I did. And I have to say, I am someone that does a lot of pricing, advising for companies, and then talked to a lot of other newsletter writers. Looking back, I underpriced. I charged what I thought was an awesome rate that I'd be really happy with. And now I'm like, wow, I should have charged 50 percent more. But it's a benefit of hindsight.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:29)
Well, tell me more about that. I mean, you're a pricing expert, you figure this out for your own advertising and subscription product. I mean, you have five different business lines. We'll get into all those a little later, but tell me a bit about how you think about pricing an ad product and a subscription product both in as much as anybody listening who sells these products could learn from you.

**Kyle Poyar** (3:49)
So when I think about ad pricing, like what people talk about with ads are usually the cost per thousand impressions, right? Which is basically how many views are you going to get and then how much per thousand impressions can you charge. Or cost per click, like those are pretty common in the digital ad space. In B2B advertising, if you have a niche enough audience, that style of pricing is just so irrelevant. It's so underpriced relative to the value because like if you're like, so I reach an 85,000 subscriber audience and a lot of those are CEOs of big, you know, big companies. If one of my ad partners can sell a hundred thousand dollar deal, like after a quarter of advertising, they've made a great ROI on that independent of like the cost per thousand impressions could be through the roof. Like what matters for them is that they saw ROI. So I kind of knew that going in and I wanted to move away from any sort of like guaranteed impressions or cost per click. I didn't want to talk about clicks at all. I wanted to talk about defined packages. So I had quarterly, essentially offerings and those offerings would include things like advertising inventory, but also an ability to block competitors while your ads run. So you're essentially the only partner in the category, which is really important for companies that have competitive environment, VC backed, trying to win in their space. I also write the ad copy myself. So it's in my voice partnering with companies that I believe in and am able to tell their stories in a compelling way.