Every consultant, founder, and creator I know has the same problem with PR. They know they should be pitching podcasts and newsletters. They have no idea which ones, and the big media databases cost thousands a year and mostly list outlets that will never reply.
The idea: build a niche media contact list in a Google Sheet, annotated with how to actually pitch each one, and sell it to the people in your niche who need it. It is number 12 on my list of 100 business ideas in Google Sheets.
And if you already do PR or consulting, this sheet is less a product and more a very effective business card.
The idea
Start with the media that is specific to your audience. Not the national papers. The 40 podcasts, 25 newsletters, and handful of blogs that your customers actually read and listen to, especially the ones that take submissions or book guest interviews.
Podcasts and newsletters alone would make this useful. A tool like Rephonic will surface a huge number of podcasts in or adjacent to your niche, with audience estimates. Newsletters take more manual digging, which is exactly why a list of them is worth money.
Make it curated, annotated, indexed, and filterable. Curated means you left out the dead shows. Annotated means each row has your notes: what kind of guests they book, what topics they have covered recently, whether they want a one-line pitch or a full proposal, and who to email. Indexed and filterable means someone can find "podcasts under 50 episodes that interview first-time founders" in ten seconds.
The annotations are where the value sits. Add your own ideas for how someone might pitch each outlet. "This host loves contrarian takes on hiring, lead with one." "This newsletter runs reader questions, submit one." That kind of note turns a list into a playbook.
If you are a consultant or a PR person, you might worry that selling the list gives away your secret. It does not. The list is not the gold. You are the gold. Put your personality all over the sheet. Put your soul into it. When someone shares it, and they will, everyone who opens it knows it came from you. Your consulting will not suffer; it will get more inbound.
You can sell something like this for $50 to $200, depending on the size of the list and the impact it could have on a client's business. It also works beautifully as a tripwire: a low-priced product that qualifies potential clients. Someone who pays $79 for your pitch list is a much warmer lead for a real PR retainer than someone who downloaded a free PDF.
How to build it in Google Sheets
- Outlets tab. Columns: Outlet, Type (Podcast, Newsletter, Blog, YouTube), Niche, Audience size, Accepts guests (checkbox), Accepts submissions (checkbox), Contact name, Contact email or form URL, Best pitch angle, Recent topics, My notes, Last verified date.
- Pitch angles tab. Ten to twenty reusable pitch frameworks with a short example of each. Reference these by name in the Outlets tab.
- Tracker tab. A place for the buyer to log their own outreach: Outlet, Date pitched, Angle used, Status, Follow-up date, Result.
- Dashboard tab. Counts of outlets by type, a filtered list of ones that accept guests, and the buyer's pitch stats.
Features that fit this sheet:
- Data validation dropdowns for Type, Niche, and Status so filtering stays clean and nobody types "podcast" four different ways.
- Checkboxes for Accepts guests and Accepts submissions. They are faster to scan than Yes or No text.
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FILTER on the dashboard, for example
=FILTER(Outlets!A2:A, Outlets!E2:E=TRUE, Outlets!B2:B="Podcast")to list every podcast that books guests. - COUNTIF and SPARKLINE on the tracker so the buyer sees pitches sent per week as a tiny bar chart.
- Conditional formatting on Follow-up date that turns red when it is in the past. The follow-up is where most people give up, so nag them.
- Protected ranges on the Outlets tab so buyers filter without overwriting your research.
If you want to get fancy, a time-driven Apps Script trigger can email the buyer every Monday with the outlets whose follow-up dates are due. That one feature makes the sheet feel like software.
Who pays for it, and how to sell it
The buyer is anyone in your niche who needs attention and does not have a PR budget: founders launching a product, coaches building an audience, authors, freelancers, and small agencies who want a starting list for clients.
They pay for three things. The research hours you saved them. The pitch notes they could not have written without knowing the outlets. And the verification, because a contact list rots fast and a "Last verified" column is worth real money.
Pricing: $50 to $200 one-time, as I said above. Or charge $15 to $30 a month for a version you keep verifying and growing, which is a fair trade given how quickly hosts change email addresses. If you offer PR services, the sheet is the front door and the retainer is the house.
Sell it on Gumroad with a screenshot of the annotated rows, blurred enough to tease. Or use OnlySheets to sell access to the live Google Sheet, so buyers are shared automatically after paying and every verification you do reaches them immediately.
First 10 customers: pitch yourself to five outlets on your own list, using your own pitch notes. When you land two, write up exactly how, mention the sheet, and post it where your niche hangs out. Proof that the list works on the list's own outlets is the only sales page you need.
Related ideas from the list
- Create a Micro HARO for your Niche, the same outlets seen from the journalist's side.
- Feature Article Ideas and Where to Pitch Them, which adds the "what to pitch" half to this "who to pitch" half.
- Newsletter Sponsorships List, because the same newsletters that take guest posts often sell ad slots too.
Want the other 99? This is one idea from my list of 100 business ideas you can build in Google Sheets. Get all 100 business ideas as a free Google Sheet.
And if you want to learn how to package and sell spreadsheets, my course Selling Spreadsheets walks through exactly that.