Ask HN: Please destroy my startup idea so I don't waste time on it

1.) Hard for Content Newsletters to Find advertisers and sponsors.

2.) Very difficult for startups who want to advertise in newsletters to find similar newsletters to advertise in. (no central location - have to find advertise area on website for each newsletter or email publisher directly for smaller newsletters)

This isn't just something that's new for newsletters. I believe this was inherited from direct mail from magazines and publishers. I remember pursuing a startup idea in high school, looking for ways to reach out to highly targeted magazines, and being pointed to a directory in the library. And even the library didn't have that directory.

My Solution: BuySellAds.com type of website for content newsletter publishers.

My Minimal Test:

Advermin.com - Performable Landing page to see if there's interest in this. Landing page hooks up to mailchimp. For first few weeks, I'll send advertising opportunities from friends who own content newsletters - see if there's interest and if we can pick up steam.

Finding if publishers are interested by using howtosubscribe.com to find newsletter publishers.

My Concerns: (1) Too small of a market. Some of the data from EasyUnsubscriber.com shows me that most email newsletters are from newsletters that are selling a product or service or are extremely interested in driving traffic to their blog.

(2) The larger newsletters (highest value customers) probably don't need someone to find opportunities because they're popular enough to attract advertisers directly.

Target Newsletters include content newsletters like HackerNewsletter and Startup Digest.

Final Plea: Please poke holes in this. Tear me apart. Spit on my ideas. I want to save time and focus full attention on easyunsubscriber.com if this idea isn't worth pursuing. All input appreciated.

If nothing else, I'd like to at least make it easier for startups and small companies to have somewhere to find what these requirements are. Maybe this ends with howtosubscribe.com being a labor of love to help organize the net's plethora of newsletters.

If your proposal of selling one or two and then expanding from there. This idea would probably be suited better for someone with history of selling newsletter ads. For me, it'd be a problem of being the "wrong person to execute". Something I hear Chris Dixon & PG mention a lot.

Selling ads appropriately is also extremely difficult. Click-thru rates is another issue, but I could probably overcome this issue with unsubscribe rates data from easyunsubscriber after it finds P/M fit.

I don't think a lot of this stuff is public unless SendGrid/MailChimp/et al has open APIs which I doubt. I think publishers often fudge this data and if their open rates are bad, they inflate the numbers of don't mention them. Very difficult to monitor esp. since the data isn't open.

Do you advertise in newsletters or publish one? I'd love to hear more of your experiences.

these problems don't seem like ones normal people deal with. they're just problems for people trying to add something to their domain squatting businesses. spam my inbox with lame content, and then spam the newsletter with ads? ugh.

how about, people want really good content through email (huge assumption), but great content publishers aren't publishing content due to low advertiser involvement. the service could hook writers up with relevant advertisers who could add something to the conversation, giving the user something other than a text ad or banners. if it's a small market, the service could be very specialized and deal with people/advertisers individually.

but honestly, there's probably more money in viagra ads than there is in email newsletters.