What's up everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.

On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses and I try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes.

How did they get to where they are today?

How did they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own profitable internet businesses. If you've been enjoying the show and you want an easy way to support the podcast, you should leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts.

Probably the easiest way to get there if you're on a Mac is just to visit NDHackers.com slash review. In today's episode, I sat down with Scott Keyes, the creator of Scott's cheap flights. I first spoke to Scott on the podcast about three years ago. he had started a paid mailing list where he would send out cheap deals on flights, and he'd grown it to about 600,000 subscribers

and $4 million in annual revenue, which is huge. He's actually grown it much more since then,

but he's facing a bit of a crisis today because, as we all know, COVID-19, this global

pandemic has really affected the travel

industry and people just aren't flying anymore. So I wanted to check in with Scott, see how he's

doing, and get some tips about how a company can survive in a crisis like this. Also, Scott is

kind of an OG in the space of paid newsletters, paid content, which when he started Scott's

cheap flights wasn't super popular, but today is blowing up. So we spent a lot of time in the

latter half of this episode talking about how to start a paid newsletter, how to grow on, find

an audience, and what his tips are for succeeding in this ecosystem today. I hope you enjoy

the episode. Scott, we're living in very difficult times

for the travel industry. It's hands down the hardest hit sector of the economy due to COVID-19.

Hotels are suffering. Tourism is basically dead right now. And I think air travel is probably

the hardest hit of the entire travel industry. And meanwhile, you've got a business where you're

basically sending daily emails to people to help them save on flights. How are things going with you?

Well, when you lay all that out, it sounds stressful as hell. I'm not going to allow it.

Like it doesn't sound like a very enviable position. And, you know, frankly, if you had told me

a few months ago what coronavirus would look like

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