👋 Welcome to The Ramen Hustle, your weekly newsletter serving up hot, scrappy business ideas, helping you go from zero to side hustle. The only rule? Don’t just read it. Steal it.
In today’s episode:
📰 Local profit play
🗿 Tourism with a twist
🤯 The $25,000 word
🍟 French fry fusion
THE FRESH IDEA
Local email newsletter making $300k/year with 21k subscribers
The Naptown Scoop in Annapolis, MD earns about $300,000 a year on 21,000 subscribers. A deep scrape of 765 newsletter issues found 210 unique advertisers over 4 years. The most frequent categories overall were food and dining, media and news, non-profits, retail, and home services.
But the top ad slot told a different story: real estate, medical and healthcare, and financial services dominated. These advertisers were local businesses with high lifetime value, like luxury realtors and plastic surgeons, and big corporations with real local footprints.
The kicker: just five advertisers bought more than half of all top placements in the newsletter’s history.
The bigger opportunity is simple: Local ad markets are fragmented and underserved. If you build an audience with engaged local buyers, a handful of “linchpin” advertisers can carry most of your revenue.
Newsletters from Naptown Scoop website 👇🏽
⏮️ Start backwards. Define your ideal advertisers, then program your content for the exact people those advertisers want to reach. Daily utility beats fluff: openings, closures, events, zoning news, school updates, traffic, weather, and quick profiles of small businesses.
Your model becomes audience fit plus a short list of premium sponsors on rotation. Sell predictable packages: top placement, quarterly takeovers, and annual category exclusives.
Ramen First Step: Pick one metro under 500k people. Define three linchpin categories you’ll serve. For example - luxury real estate, elective medical, and wealth management. Publish fifteen straight weekday issues to show traction, utilize social media to get subscribers, then open up to advertisers once you cross 10k subscribers.
Rate this hustle:
Experience the Next Evolution of AI Intelligence
Watch The Worlds First AI Built for Cognitive Amplification live on October 15.
See how Pressmaster.ai turns one conversation into thirty days of authentic and impactful content.
Register free to join the launch event and experience the future of AI communication.
ALTER EGO HUSTLE
If Indiana Jones started a Tourism Agency
🗺️ It won’t be your average vacation. Imagine an escape room stretched across a real city or landscape, guided by storytellers who turn every clue into history you can touch.
Travelers receive a weathered field journal: ciphers, torn map fragments, wax-sealed notes from “the professor,” and GPS coordinates that unlock the next waypoint. Each solved puzzle leads to a genuine place—a hidden mural, a quiet archive, an old mile marker—where Mr.Jones reveals the tale behind the clue and the people who lived it.
The tone is wry and daring; the promise is simple. You will solve something together, learn real history, and return with more than photos—a story you earned, one clue at a time.
🛩️ Sign me up!
ALWAYS BE SELLING
The $25,000 word that almost killed a marriage
He bought a one-word billboard over their tiny sandwich shop in NYC.
Hi wife freaked.
Two record lunch rushes later, it was paid off.
They are still married 😅
Lesson: Meet people where they are. Have clear messaging. Sometimes you don’t need all the marketing gimmicks.
HUSTLE FUSION
Cookies as the new French fry
🍪 Take a classic chocolate chip cookie, reshape it as golden “fries,” and serve it in a bright fry box. A young entrepreneur tried this and sales jumped five times. Same dough, new form, instant shareability.
It feels playful to eat, photographs beautifully, and turns a simple treat into a conversation starter. She added chocolate and caramel dips and customers began buying boxes for parties, office drops, and late night cravings.
🎯 Why it works: People love familiar formats that feel new. A fry box signals fun and portability. The cookie sticks stack neatly, stay warm longer, and are easy to share. Dips add a small theatrical moment and a higher average order. The packaging makes the product look premium, even with basic ingredients.
🍟 You don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Just put it in a French fry box.
Does your car insurance cover what really matters?
Not all car insurance is created equal. Minimum liability coverage may keep you legal on the road, but it often won’t be enough to cover the full cost of an accident. Without proper limits, you could be left paying thousands out of pocket. The right policy ensures you and your finances are protected. Check out Money’s car insurance tool to find the coverage you actually need.
QUICK SIPS
📚 Must-Read: The Taylor Swift economy has reached every town in America
📈 Trending Story: Amazon is now in the transatlantic cable business
💬 Found on LinkedIn: The Bitcoin crash - time to buy
