newsletter-engine — launch kit

1-liner

RSS → Qwen → Beehiiv. A daily niche-industry newsletter on autopilot, sponsorship-monetized at 1K+ subscribers.

Tweet hook

Industry-specific daily newsletters at 5K subs sell sponsorships at $400-1500/issue.

The bottleneck is curation. I built it: RSS in, Qwen-summarized issue out, Beehiiv publishes.

$0 marginal cost per issue (local Qwen).

Operator economics + niches that work 🧵

Reddit

• r/Substack: "Open-source RSS-to-newsletter engine, Qwen-powered"
• r/IndieHackers: "How I'm running 3 newsletters at $0/mo overhead"
• r/passive_income: "Newsletter as passive income in 2026"

Cold-email ICP

• Industry analysts who want to launch a newsletter but don't have daily curation time
• Existing Substack writers struggling to publish daily
• Consultants wanting to spin up thought-leadership channels

Cold-email template

Subject: daily {niche} newsletter on autopilot

Hi {first} — saw your {Substack / blog / podcast} on {niche}.

Building a niche daily newsletter is half curation, half writing.
I built an engine that automates 80% of both: pulls RSS feeds you
choose, summarizes via local Qwen, drafts the issue, pushes to
Beehiiv.

You still curate the feed list + add 1-2 personal-take paragraphs
weekly. Daily issues ship at $0 marginal cost.

Want to test it on your existing feed list? Free first 14 days.

SEO content

1. "Daily-newsletter automation in 2026: what works"
2. "Sponsorship economics: $200/issue at 1K, $1500 at 5K"
3. "Beehiiv vs Substack vs ConvertKit for AI-powered newsletters"
4. "RSS curation for niche industries: 50 sources"
5. "Audio newsletter via ElevenLabs — production guide"

newsletter-engine

Programmatic niche newsletter on autopilot. RSS aggregation + Qwen summarization + Beehiiv publishing. Designed for sponsorship-monetized niches at 1K-100K subscribers.

Why it makes money

• Niche industry digests sell sponsorships at $200-$2000 per issue starting at 1K subscribers. (See: Morning Brew Daily, The Hustle, Industry Beat, B2B Bytes.)
• Qwen-powered = $0 marginal token cost. Cloud Claude/GPT for daily news at 1K-10K subs would cost $50-500/month. Qwen local: $0.
• Operator-as-owner — you run it, you sell sponsorships, you keep 100% of revenue. Or sell as a managed-service to a niche expert at $500-2000/mo flat.

Niche picks (with revenue potential)

Architecture

config.yaml (feeds + style + hours window)
     │
     ▼
fetch.py (RSS parse, dedupe, recency filter)
     │
     ▼
compose.py (rank → top N → Qwen summarize → Jinja2 render)
     │
     ▼
publish.py (Beehiiv API OR Markdown export)

Run locally

cd C:\openclaw-products\newsletter-engine
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Make sure LM Studio is running with qwen3-30b-a3b-2507

newsletter build niches/example/config.yaml --out issue.md
# or directly to Beehiiv (draft):
$env:BEEHIIV_API_KEY="..."
newsletter beehiiv niches/example/config.yaml --publication-id pub_abc

Operator playbook

1. Pick a niche. (See picks above; choose one where you have a pre-existing audience or distribution path.)
2. Configure config.yaml with 5-10 high-quality RSS feeds.
3. Run a daily cron at 6am Eastern: newsletter beehiiv config.yaml --send.
4. Set up Beehiiv ($0 to start, scales by subscriber count).
5. Build subscriber list via:
   • Twitter/LinkedIn organic
   • Comparison-blog SEO (/blog/best-newsletters-for-X)
   • Reddit r/
   • Cross-promotion swaps
6. At 1000 subscribers, list on Sponsorship marketplaces (Sponsy, Paved, NewsletterStack).

Expected timeline: 4-8 months to 1K subs in a niche; sponsorship revenue ramps from $200/issue at 1K to $1500+/issue at 5K.

Test

pytest tests/ -v