The Potato Chip Principle: How to Turn Newsletter Content into Another Income Stream

A guest post by Rodney Daut

Hi Substacker,

Today’s post is about potato chips and digital products: a winning combo.

🥔 + 💲 = 😍

As someone who’s earned tens of thousands of dollars from digital products and worked as product development technologist for Australia’s most famous potato chip brand in my early food career [yes, I literally developed and launched new potato chips for a job!], this post is right up my alley.

Today’s post is a guest post by my online buddy,

Rodney Daut 🔥🪵⛺️

.

In it, he talks about an untapped revenue source that newsletter writers consistently overlook. His article reveals how to make your best ideas work harder for you—using content you've already created.

Over to you, Rodney…

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Sometimes the most valuable creations aren't recognized by their own creators.

Take the humble potato chip.

The potato chip was born out of spite.

And the man who invented it never saw a dime.

In 1853, at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, a chef named George Crum was dealing with a particularly annoying customer. The man kept sending back his fried potatoes, complaining they were too thick and soggy.

Fed up, Crum sliced a new batch paper-thin, fried them until they shattered with a bite, and dumped on the salt—just to make a point.

To his shock, the customer loved them. Word spread. Soon everyone wanted "Saratoga Chips."

Crum's accidental invention became a sensation.

Over time, it evolved into the snack we now know as the potato chip—the world's most popular snack food.

But George Crum?

He never patented the idea. Never packaged it. Never scaled it.

He kept making chips for customers one plate at a time while others built empires off his creation.

I bet George Crum’s spite-filled kitchen produced greasy chips like this unappealing panful. Image used under licence.

Newsletter Writers Do This All the Time

They create value week after week. People love their content.

But instead of turning that into a second revenue stream like a digital product—something scalable, something that earns while you sleep—they just keep hitting "Send" and moving on.

You're already doing the hard part.

You've already made the chip.

Now it's time to bag it.

"But I Don't Have Time to Create a Digital Product"

Here's the thing: you've already created most of the content you'll need.

Those insights you've been sharing? Those frameworks you've developed? The problems you've helped readers solve?

That's the raw material for your product.

It doesn't need to be built from scratch. It's sitting in your archive, waiting to be repackaged into a digital product

Of all the digital products, which include pdfs, checklists, e-books and tech tools, online courses are the easiest to monetize.

But turning your content into something like an online course may seem daunting if you think you have to transform it all into videos.

"Do you really need video?"

Until 2018, I thought online courses needed to be on video. I assumed people would pay more for video, so I made all my courses that way.

It was a time-consuming slog.

Then I bought a course that was delivered as a collection of PDFs.

And I loved it. The course solved a real problem—I had to help someone put together four presentations she needed to deliver in four days.

The course laid out a repeatable structure that allowed us to create those presentations quickly and with high quality. Because it followed a consistent framework, it made the presentations easy to remember—crucial since she had four speeches in four days.

She received incredible feedback on those presentations.

And I learned an important lesson: a great course does NOT have to be on video.

Text-Based Courses Are The Answer

As a newsletter writer, you already have the most valuable skill for creating courses: you know how to write clearly and engage readers. This means you have what it takes to create a high quality course.

Text-based courses offer several advantages:

1. They save your customers time. People read 2-3x faster than they listen. If you could get the same information in 10 minutes of reading versus 30 minutes of video, which would you choose?

2. They're easy to reference later. Want to revisit a specific idea from a video? Good luck. With text, you can highlight, search, or quote precisely. With video, you're scrubbing and hoping.

3. They allow for both deep study and quick review. People can read thoroughly once, then skim for what they need later.

"But I Already Have a Paid Newsletter. Won't This Feel Like Double-Dipping?"

If you run a paid newsletter, you might wonder if creating a course from similar content feels like charging twice for the same material.

It doesn't—if you approach it right.

Your newsletter provides ongoing insights, updates, and ideas over time. Your course delivers a structured, complete system that gets readers from A to Z in one package.

Here are some options to make it work for everyone:

1. Offer your course as a subscriber perk. This becomes a powerful incentive for people to join your paid newsletter. "Subscribe annually and get my complete XYZ System course (a $199 value) included."

2. Give subscribers exclusive discounts. "Paid members get 50% off all my courses." This acknowledges their loyalty while still allowing you to market your course to a wider audience.

3. If you use the two ideas above, then every time you launch a new course, it creates another compelling reason for fence-sitters to finally subscribe to your newsletter.

This approach creates a virtuous cycle: Your newsletter fuels ideas for courses, and your courses drive subscriptions to your newsletter. Each strengthens the other.

But there's still one piece of the puzzle we haven't addressed—the element that transforms scattered newsletter insights into a cohesive learning experience that people will gladly pay for.

The Missing Piece: Structure

The simplest first step to transform your newsletter content into a course isn't more writing—it's structure.

When I see successful newsletters, many feature listicles with several ideas but limited depth. You might have a few paragraphs on each idea and think, "That's all I have to say about that."

But it's not.

With the right structure—one based on a series of questions that guide your teaching—you can elaborate on that content in ways that make learning easy and implementation possible.

You're not adding words to fill space. You're following the steps a person needs to:

• Get inspired by your idea

• Understand it deeply

• Implement it effectively

This structure converts information into transformation. It turns reading into doing.

Start Content Mining Today

You don't need to write a course from scratch. You can find course ideas in content you've already created—you just need to know how to look.

The key is to select content that has a lot of engagement, actionable insights and popular topics. I explain the best ways to do this in a recent video that you can watch here (no paywall).

Are You Going to Be Like George Crum (the potato chip inventor)?

Will you keep making beautiful content one newsletter at a time?

Or will you package your brilliance into something that scales—something that turns your best ideas into a product that works for you around the clock?

You've already created the chip.

Now it's time to bag it, brand it, and build your empire.

See how by clicking here.

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Thanks for your insights, Rodney.

I agree with Rodney: text-based courses have got to be easier to make than video courses, which are (frankly) a pain in the butt. And text-based courses are not something a lot of Substack creators are doing right now.

What about you? Will you try packaging up your blood, sweat and tears past posts into a course so your readers can get your help exactly when they need it, or will you keep frying the metaphorical potatoes, one pan at a time?

Karen

P.S. Couldn’t find the free book?

If you jumped in to grab the free 10K Secrets book I mentioned last week and couldn’t find it, look in the welcome email you receive when you sign up as a free subscriber to the 10k Secrets Publication. The email subject line is "10k high fives!!!!". To get the book, look for the coloured ‘Download’ button in the welcome email.