Superpower Daily: $150,000 Annual Revenue In Only 5 Months on beehiiv

In 2023, Artificial Intelligence took the world by storm.

By the end of the year, the global AI market is on pace to reach $241 billion.

And, by 2030, it’s projected to grow to $738 billion.

Right now, creators have access to an exciting, growth-centered opportunity that’s also quite lucrative. One of those creators is Saaeed Ezzati.

Within days of ChatGPT launching back in late 2022, the software engineer living in San Francisco decided to tinker around and improve upon the tool with his own ChatGPT extension.

And, only a few months after releasing the Superpower ChatGPT Chrome extension and his subsequent newsletter, Saeed has grown his product and newsletter audience to a combined 380,000 people.

We recently sat down with Saeed Ezzati, Founder and CEO of the Superpower ChatGPT and Superpower Daily newsletter to discuss how he capitalized on the recent explosion in AI by creating new software products and a daily newsletter on beehiiv.

In the interview, Saeed was happy to share how he leveraged his background as a software engineer to:

• Create one of the most popular ChatGPT extensions

• Customize his beehiiv newsletter

• Automate his daily workflow

Five months later, Saeed is now earning a six-figure salary from his newsletter business as a solopreneur.

If you’re looking for ideas on how you can create an audience by building a great product, or you want some inspiration on how to think outside the box to build and optimize a business, then stick around to the end. This Creator Spotlight showcases how leaning on your creativity and your skillset can help you accelerate your newsletter’s path to success.

Want to watch the complete interview with Saeed Ezzati? Check out the video below.

Superpower Daily Backstory

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT was officially launched. 

Up until that moment in time, artificial intelligence was mainly for techy people and self-proclaimed “nerds.”

But, soon after launching, AI went mainstream as the software took over the world by storm. And, as AI exploded in growth, so did consumer demand for everything AI.

As soon as the software was launched, Saeed Ezzati began using it. Fascinated by it, he quickly saw opportunity gaps to improve upon it, especially when it came to how the tool is organized.

So, he launched Superpower ChatGPT just a few days later.

Saeed’s extension gives ChatGPT users the ability to sync and search history locally, export chats, create folders, pin messages, access an extensive library of prompts, and more.

Saeed shared, “The extension adds a bunch of extra features to your ChatGPT interface to enhance your experience.”

Saeed shared, “I’ve been a software engineer for the past ten years or so. Almost my whole career, I always had some sort of side project I was working on. My most recent side project was a Chrome extension that I built. It's called ‘Superpower ChatGPT.’”

While Saeed had been an engineer for years, this was his first time creating this type of tool.

He explained, “So this was my first time building an extension. I built the first version of the extension two or three days after ChatGPT was launched.”

Launching a Newsletter Inside the Extension

While Saeed toyed with the idea of charging users for the extension product, he quickly decided to offer it for free in order to build up a strong user base as he knew the value of building an audience.

He shared, “I wanted to keep the extension free for all users. To do that, I needed to have some sort of other revenue stream. The first thing that came to mind was showing ads to the users, but I didn’t want to show ads to the users without providing any value. And I didn't want to put the ads right in the middle of the ChatGPT interface.”

Saeed was stuck trying to figure out how to fuel this new product. So, he did what many successful inventors and engineers do. Instead of getting frustrated and throwing in the towel when faced with a roadblock, they just create their own solution.

He explained, “I came up with the idea of putting a newsletter inside my extension.”

He continued, “Every day, I put together all this AI news and AI tools because I know my audience is using ChatGPT. They’re interested in the AI space. So I created this newsletter around AI and I started showing that to my audience inside the extension. And, people started to like it.”

With the launch of custom GPTs last week, Saeed recently added a new Pro feature right inside the extension to showcase Custom GPTs. The very first GPT Store right inside ChatGPT:

Discovering beehiiv

Soon after launching his newsletter within his extension, Saeed started receiving a lot of positive feedback. While his focus was primarily on building and improving his extension, he found that many people were just as interested in the newsletter, so he decided to focus on it a bit more.

He explained, “Some people even liked the newsletter more than the extension itself. They started asking me like, ‘Is there any other way to read the newsletter? What if I want to read the newsletter, but I don't have the extension? Or what if I want to share your newsletter with other people?’”

He continued, “They started asking me to write it on a separate website. So I started doing some research. I looked at different platforms and, at the time, I wasn't familiar with beehiiv. But I started looking into it, looking at the feature list, and playing around with it.”

So, Saeed took a chance on beehiiv and signed up for the free version. 

He explained, “It looked very interesting to me, so I started using it. It was very easy for me to set up the newsletter.”

Because the first couple dozen newsletters were published within the extension, Saeed had to import each newsletter issue into beehiiv manually and was happy with how easy the process was.

He shared, “I transferred everything to beehiiv — everything that I already had published inside the extension. And then I transferred my contacts to beehiiv. Everything went very smoothly and I started sending out the newsletter. No hiccups. It was a very good onboarding experience for me. And now, a lot of people read Superpower Daily every day. 

Saeed began using the newsletter to fuel the growth of his extension’s user base.

“I have the link to the extension in every newsletter issue I send out. So if I have any organic users coming to beehiiv to read the newsletter, they will also see the link. They can just click on it, see a list of all the features, and start using the extension.”

If You Build It, They Will Come

While Saeed’s goal with the newsletter was to earn enough so he could spend his time building his extension, his beehiiv newsletter is now earning him ‘between $100,000 and $150,000’ per year.

Many creators get into the newsletter business by first building their newsletter and audience, then turning on monetization through product creation.

For Saeed, he essentially did everything backward by first building the product and then building the newsletter to monetize it.

He explained, “My journey was kind of the opposite of most people. A lot of people start by building an audience. Once they build the audience, then they start creating a product, a SaaS tool, or something like that. And they start to sell that product to their audience.”

“As an engineer, I always had a hard time building that audience. I'm good at creating software and writing code, but I was never really good at selling or marketing. I always kind of struggled with building that audience.”

Saeed stressed the importance of leaning into the strengths you already have in order to build a business rather than simply following the crowd.

He shared, “It took me a long time to realize that the answer was always in front of me. All I had to do to build that audience was to use my skills, focus on my strength, which is creating software, and just give that to people for free, and my audience will just come to me.”

Saeed explained, “Now I have this audience and I have this newsletter. I send out an email every day. And at this point, if I want to follow the same path as other people who started with the audience, I can do that. I have the audience. Now I can build other products and try to sell them.”

230,000 Subscribers on beehiiv in 5 Months

In April 2023, just a few months after launching his extension, Saeed officially launched his newsletter on beehiiv. And, in no time at all, his list has grown tremendously.

He shared, “As of today, I have about 230,000 subscribers. When you reach 100,000, you go into the next tier on beehiiv and you have to pay more. And initially, I wasn't really making that much money. So I was trying to keep my costs low. I tried to remove a lot of inactive users from the newsletter. But now I’m past the 100,000 mark. I reactivated some of the people that I inactivated. I'm sending them an email just to make sure they still wanna receive the newsletter.”

One recent beehiiv feature to help Saeed and other newsletter operators keep their list clean is a set of brand new automations to re-engage with unengaged subscribers, remove inactive subscribers, and more.

Saeed shared, “I've been playing around with [beehiiv automations]. Until you built the automation at beehiiv, I was trying to do that manually every week.”

Why Listen to Me? I’ve built several newsletters from the ground up over the years. My latest publication is The Level Ups business newsletter. I also run support at the fastest-growing newsletter platform, beehiiv.

Team beehiiv: Responsive & Quick to Ship

We asked Saeed what his favorite beehiiv feature was and he was quick to share how positive his experience has been with the team at beehiiv in terms of support and product development.

Saeed shared, “My favorite thing about beehiiv is that I can message almost everyone on the beehiiv team on Twitter and get a response — even the founder, the CEO. I did not expect this when I first started.” 

He explained, “I remember the first person I messaged was Tyler Denk. Not only did he respond immediately — he started following me. Every time I post something on Twitter, he kind of engages with my post. I really like that the team at beehiiv is so close to the community and helping the community to grow at the same time that beehiiv is growing.”

Saeed’s second favorite thing about beehiiv is how the team is so quick to ship new product features. 

He shared, “As an engineer, I love when I see a product that is regularly posting new updates, adding new features, and making changes so fast. Since I was on beehiiv, every other week, there has been a new feature added to beehiiv just to make my life a little bit easier. And I really like that.”

Saeed explained, “When I tell my friend about beehiiv, I'm like, ‘By next week, they're going to have a bunch of new features.’ I don't even have to worry about anything.”

“There were times that I messaged Tyler on Twitter about making some small changes to the design of the page and he immediately responded. He tagged someone else on the message. I messaged him on Friday evening. By Monday morning, it was fixed, and everything was working the way I wanted it.”

The Double-Play: Newsletter & Extension Growth

First, Saeed created his extension. Then he launched his newsletter. Now, they feed off of each other, fueling growth on both ends of his business.

He explained, “I see a spike in the newsletter when I see a spike in the extension use. The extension has been the main growth channel for me.”

Saeed shared how he’s been ‘sharing the newsletter on different channels’ to ensure he’s maximizing every organic growth opportunity that he can.

”I started to share it on my LinkedIn page. I have a Discord channel where I have extension users — that has about 5,000-6,000 people. I occasionally share things that I post in the newsletter or just share the newsletter itself.”

Enjoying this Creator Spotlight? Learn how the AI With Vibes newsletter got acquired only seven months after launching on beehiiv.

Coding to Save Time & Automate His Workflow

Saeed’s double publishing strategy is one of the most unique methods of any newsletter operator we know. By publishing his newsletter both on beehiiv and within his extension, he’s able to double down on the audience growth of both assets.

But, in doing so, Saeed has also created extra work for himself.

He shared, “When I was doing the newsletter inside the extension, one of the things that took me a lot of time was just writing the newsletter itself. I was writing the newsletter by manually writing the HTML code for it.”

Saeed explained, “Once I switched to beehiiv, my work doubled pretty much because I was writing the HTML in the extension. I still wanted it to be in the extension because a lot of people still read it there.”

Saaed shared how when he finds himself doing the same thing repeatedly, he’ll typically create some code to speed up the process and make his work easier.

He shared, “I created another extension for just myself. It's basically some code, an extension that I install on my browser. Instead of writing my newsletter in the extension first, then in beehiiv, I write in beehiiv first.”

Once Saeed publishes his newsletter on beehiiv, he simply clicks a button on his beehiiv website and it downloads the entire HTML of the page and makes a few changes to the code like turning the design from a light theme to a dark theme.

He explained, “It will automatically prepare the HTML. All I need to do is just paste it into the extension. It saved me a lot of time.”

Saeed shared how one of his main advantages in the newsletter game is knowing how to code since it helps him automate plenty of his day-to-day work.

But, while he’s able to speed up certain parts of his business, one thing he believes still needs a human touch is the writing component.

He shared, “I still can’t automate writing the newsletter itself and I don't think it will get there anytime soon. It just needs a lot of human touch and I know my audience. Every version of the newsletter that I post, I learn something new about my audience. I learn about their behavior — what they click on, what they don't click on, what they like. Every day, I'm adjusting my workflow about what type of content I put in the newsletter. And, it requires a human to do that.”