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Welcome to The Hustle Stack, your weekly hit of smart marketing plays, simple side hustles to grow your income without eating your time, founder hacks, and much more.
No fluff, no filler, just valuable, actionable insights you can skim, save, or stack into wins.
Let’s dive in. 🚀
This Week’s Hustle Stack:
Marketing Play of the Week: The Creator-Whitelisted Ads Flywheel
The $2K+ PM Simple Side Hustle Hack: Newsletter Sponsorship Matchmaker
This Week’s Hustle News: Creator Money Tsunami + AI Agents Go Mainstream
Tool of the Week: Canva Magic Studio
Time-Saving Hack: The “Record Once, Delegate Forever” SOP
Founder Success Story: Jose Ramirez & Hopr’s “Everyone Said No” Raise
🎯 Marketing Play of the Week
The Creator-Whitelisted Ads Flywheel
What it is
Run paid ads through creators’ profiles instead of your brand account (“whitelisting”), then systemise it so it becomes a repeatable acquisition engine — not a one-off collab.
Why now?
Creator economy ad spend is on track to hit $37B in 2025, growing 4x faster than overall media.
Platforms like Agentio just raised $40M to automate creator ads across YouTube and social. Translation: brands are betting heavy on this channel.
Why it works
Ads from creator handles feel like recommendations, not billboards.
You borrow their trust + audience and control copy, targeting, and budget.
Performance data compounds: each winning creator/ad combo becomes an asset you can scale.
How to use it (in 4 steps)
Find 5–10 “mid” creators
5–50k followers in your niche, strong comments (not just likes).
DM: “We’d like to run a paid campaign through your account. You get paid + we handle everything.”
Create 2–3 simple ad scripts per creator
1 x “personal story” angle
1 x “before/after” transformation
1 x “here’s what I’d do if I were you” tactical angle
Whitelist + launch
Run ads from the creator’s handle to your landing page or lead magnet.
Start with 3–5 ad sets per creator at low daily budgets.
Build the flywheel
Double down on creators/ad angles with the lowest CAC.
Drop the rest. Add 5 new creators each month.
Eventually, you’ve got a rolling “portfolio” of creator ads printing warm traffic.
💵 The $2K+ PM Simple Side Hustle Hack
The Newsletter Sponsorship Matchmaker
You know how there are tons of small newsletters (1k–10k subs) with highly engaged readers… and tons of brands who want sponsorships but have no idea where to buy them without getting ripped off?
You sit in the middle — and take a slice.
💡 The Concept
Become a mini “ad rep” for indie newsletters:
You find niche newsletters
You find brands who want access to those audiences
You broker sponsorship deals
You take 15–20% of every placement
No inventory. No product. Just matchmaking.
🛠 The Build
Time needed: 5–8 hours/week
Startup cost: basically $0 (email + spreadsheets + Stripe)
Skills: light outreach, basic copywriting, being organised
📌 Step-by-Step
1. Pick 1–2 niches
Examples:
DTC & ecom operators
Bootstrap SaaS
Health & performance
Creators & solopreneurs
Search X/Twitter, Substack, Beehiiv for newsletters with 1k–15k subscribers.
2. Sign small newsletters first
Pitch:
“I connect niche newsletters with aligned sponsors and handle everything for you. No cost unless I bring you deals. Want to be on my list?”
Collect:
subscriber count
open rate
CTR
audience profile
minimum ad price
3. Source sponsors
Look for brands already spending in the niche:
tools
SaaS
courses
info products
agencies
creator services
Pitch:
“I rep a few niche newsletters your ICP already reads. Want a simple test package with 3 placements and guaranteed audience fit?”
4. Package simple offers
Example test bundle:
3 newsletters
1 placement each
$500–$800 per placement
You invoice → you pay newsletters → you keep 15–20%.
📊 The Math (Conservative)
4 sponsors/month
Each buys a $1,000 test package
You take 20% → $800/month
After renewals + 2–3 new sponsors:
➡️ $2K–$3K/month in recurring placement fees
➡️ No inventory, no fulfillment, no customer service
➡️ Just connecting dots founders don’t have time to connect
📰 This Week’s Hustle News
1. Creator Ad Spend Is Exploding
IAB just dropped a stat: Creator economy ad spend is projected to hit $37B in 2025, growing 4x faster than total media. IAB
What this means for you
If you sell anything online, you should have at least one creator-driven channel (UGC, whitelisted ads, affiliate, or co-branded content).
Pure “brand account only” strategies are going to feel like shouting into the void.
Steal this:
Build a simple creator program page on your site (“Partner with us”)
Offer: free product + revenue share on sales they drive
Track with unique codes or links — then promote top creators back to your audience as social proof.
2. AI Agents Are Becoming “Digital Staff”
Microsoft rolled out Agent 365, a tool for managing fleets of AI agents like you’d manage employees — setting roles, access, and guardrails.
Intuit also announced new AI agents and a $100M+ deal with OpenAI to bake AI deeper into TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, etc.
What this means for you
You’re not competing with just “bigger teams” — you’re competing with teams who have dozens of tasks automated.
Founders who treat AI as “junior staff” (with SOPs + clear roles) will out-execute those who treat it as a toy.
Mini action item for this week:
Pick one repetitive task (weekly report / invoice follow-up / content outline)
Write a 5-step SOP
Use AI (or a simple automation) to do steps 2–4 automatically.
⚡Tool of the Week
Canva Magic Studio — Your One-Stop Creative Ops Desk
What it is
Canva’s all-in-one AI suite (Magic Studio) that now covers:
Auto-generating designs from text
Smart photo & video editing
Magic write/copy
Even AI-powered Sheets and design insights. Canva+2Canva+2
Why it’s great for hustlers
You can ship social posts, ad creatives, lead magnets, and pitch decks without a designer.
New features let you generate short video clips from prompts (great for hooks + B-roll). Lifewire
Quick example use-case (30 minutes, full funnel asset set)
Use Magic Write to draft a simple lead magnet outline (e.g. “5 mistakes {your niche} makes with X”).
Use Magic Design to generate 3–5 ad creative variations from that copy. Canva+1
Use the video tool to create a 5–8 second hook clip to run as ads or Reels.
Drop everything into a landing page mockup (Canva template) and hand it to your dev / Webflow / landing page tool.
You’ve just done what used to take a designer + video editor + copywriter.
⏳ Time-Saving Hack
The “Record Once, Delegate Forever” SOP
Instead of writing long SOPs you never finish, do this:
Pick one annoying recurring task
Example: updating your product database, exporting reports, publishing a weekly post.
Record your screen once
Use Loom / Screen Studio / native screen recording.
Talk through what you’re doing and why.
Send it to AI to auto-transcribe + outline steps
Ask it: “Turn this into a checklist SOP with clear steps and edge cases.”
Hand it to a VA or AI agent
Human VA + AI combo is ideal:
AI drafts the work (e.g. fills fields, drafts copy)
VA checks & clicks publish.
Every time you catch yourself thinking “ugh, not this again”, hit record.
Future you will never do that task manually again.
🚀 Founder Success Story
“Every VC Said No” — How Jose Ramirez Built Hopr Anyway
This week’s story: Jose Ramirez, founder of Hopr, a non-alcoholic, hops-based drink brand out of Sydney. Startup Daily
He started Hopr in 2020, mixing hops, adaptogens, and nootropics in his kitchen after getting worried about his own drinking habits. Startup Daily
Over the last two years, Hopr has grown 10x+, moved warehouses six times, and is now stocked nationally. Startup Daily
Every local VC told him “no” — wrong category, too operational, not “scalable enough.” He kept going anyway, leaned on his customers and community, and just closed a $3M seed round led by strategic angels and FMCG veterans. Startup Daily
3 takeaways you can steal
“Unsexy” categories can still be rocket ships
VCs wanted SaaS margins; Jose built a real-world product with real-world demand — and still raised.
Community can be your cap table
He turned fans into investors when traditional money said no. If you already have true fans, you might be closer to funding than you think.
Relentless iteration beats perfect planning
Six warehouse moves in two years = constant constraint-breaking.
If you’re waiting for the “perfect setup” before scaling… you’re probably overthinking.
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👋 That’s a wrap for this week’s Hustle Stack. 👋
Thanks for reading, your time’s valuable, and we aim to make every issue worth it.
Got a hack, tool, or success story we should feature? Hit reply and share it, we love hearing from readers.
See you next week with more sharp plays, side hustles, and founder wins. 🚀
Stay sharp,
The Hustle Stack Team