Experts Exchange
A $1.65M ARR newsletter, built in 8 months.
Zero to 200K subscribers. 60% open rate. The company's top revenue lever.
Role
Director of Marketing
Year
2024-2025
A 5-million-person audience with nothing to read.
Experts Exchange had tens of thousands of email contacts. Almost none of them were engaged. Open rates hovered around 10%. Sends were transactional or promotional with no consistent editorial identity. The list existed on paper. Nobody relied on it.
The audience was 5M+ IT professionals and developers. People who follow industry news closely, care about technical depth, and have zero tolerance for marketing fluff. If the content respected their time and intelligence, the channel could become far more valuable than anyone expected.
I created ByteSize from scratch. Concept, brand, voice, production, revenue model. All of it.
Made by people who actually understand tech culture.
Every element was designed to signal inside-the-community, not marketing-department-reaching-into-it. Dot-matrix typography for the wordmark, nodding to early computing. Chip, the 8-bit mascot. Retro hardware imagery grounding the brand in IT heritage. Tone that balanced genuine expertise with irreverent humor.
Tagline: Your Weekly Dose of IT Intelligence.
A sample of the voice
“We respectfully decline to use the phrase ‘digital transformation journey.’”
Every section earns its place.
Each issue follows a repeatable structure designed for scannability, value density, and personality. Every Tuesday, five-minute read maximum.
Section 01
News Roundup
Must-know tech headlines and why they matter. From French hackers demanding baguettes as ransom to Microsoft inventing a new state of matter.
Section 02
Tool Time
Battle-tested tools that enhance productivity. Each recommendation with a personality-driven description that makes enterprise software actually sound interesting.
Section 03
Job Opportunities
Career moves worth attention, carefully filtered to exclude ghost job postings. Real roles from real companies, not algorithmic spam.
Section 04
Industry Moves
Weekly pulse check on mergers, acquisitions, product launches, and executive shuffles. The context behind the headlines.
From dormant list to top revenue channel.
Open rate
Six-fold lift, stabilized. Not a spike.
Subscribers
15K → 60K → 110K → 200K. Eight months, no paid acquisition.
Reactivation of dormant contacts through genuinely valuable content. Organic referrals from readers who forwarded issues to colleagues. Consistent quality that kept unsubscribe rates near zero. Voice and tone that stood out from every other tech newsletter.
From content channel to revenue engine.
I developed the sponsorship model from scratch: packages, pricing, sales materials, and the pitch. A highly engaged niche audience that advertisers couldn't reach at this engagement level anywhere else. 52 slots per year at 60% open and 2-3% CTR.
$80K+
Initial revenue
$1.65M
Projected ARR
2–3%
Sponsor CTR
$10K+
Early placement deals
“Revenue follows engagement, not the other way around.”
Unsolicited, from readers.
“I actually read this! I never read these kinds of emails. Very informative and entertaining. Just wanted to say thanks.”
“I don't 'do' IT, but damn, I do enjoy your newsletter. I don't even know how you found your way into my Inbox.”
“The witty take on big tech stories is the main reason I read this newsletter. It's concise, so not too much cognitive load.”
“I really enjoy the writing style. It's informative and witty and filled with asides and references that tickle my millennial brain.”
“The fact is you deliver excellent, compact content with wittiness. Short and sweet so keep it coming.”
“It's great to get some misc little news from this and that, I don't have time to look it all up myself. Love from Denmark.”
A senior PMM, growth, or head of marketing seat where the function is mine to own.
Available immediately. Remote-first, open to Chicago onsite. Targeting healthtech, B2B SaaS, and cybersecurity at Series B through public.