I built a directory of 700+ Beehiiv newsletters to help brands find sponsorship opportunities — here's how I did it in 7 phases

The problem I kept running into:

Every time someone asked "where can I find newsletters to sponsor in [niche]?", the answer was always the same: manual Google searches, cold outreach with 0 response rate, or paying $5K+ for a media kit from an agency.

Beehiiv has thousands of newsletters. Zero centralized discovery tool for sponsors.

So I built one.

bee-directory.com — a directory of 700+ Beehiiv newsletters, filterable by niche, audience size, price range, frequency, and language.

How I built it (and why I didn't use no-code):

My original budget for a no-code MVP was ~$290/month in tools. Instead I built it with:

Next.js 16 App Router (TypeScript)
Drizzle ORM + Neon Postgres (free tier)
Better Auth for email/password
Stripe for subscriptions ($79/$299/$1,999/month)
Resend for transactional emails
Vercel for deployment
Total infra cost: ~$0-15/month. Saved $275/month from day 1.

The 7-phase roadmap I executed:

✅ Public directory + filters
✅ Auth + paywall (6 newsletters free, unlimited paid)
✅ Stripe subscriptions
✅ Newsletter owner profiles + $199/month boost feature
✅ AI matching (Gemini), export CSV, weekly digest email
✅ SEO/AEO/GEO — pages per niche for LLM discoverability
✅ Pagination, teaser paywall, full landing page overhaul

Current traction:

700+ newsletters indexed across 10 niches (tech, finance, AI, lifestyle...)
Scraping scripts (no third-party tools, pure TypeScript + Playwright)
LLM-ready: llms.txt, Schema.org JSON-LD, FAQ page
65 Vitest tests across 6 files
Live at bee-directory.com

What I learned:

Shipping beats perfecting. Each phase shipped → real feedback → better next phase.
SEO for LLMs is the new SEO. Adding llms.txt + structured data is already driving organic discovery from ChatGPT/Perplexity.
Code > no-code for data-heavy tools. Custom scraping scripts + Drizzle gave me full control. Make.com would've cost $200/month and broken weekly.

What's next:

In-app messaging (brands ↔ newsletter owners)
AI-generated sponsorship pitch templates per newsletter
Beehiiv partnership discussions

Feedback welcome — especially from anyone who's sponsored newsletters before. What do you look for that I'm missing?