How to Build and Grow a Newsletter as a Business Model

[MTF]

The business model is fantastic (especially under the Control perspective)

However, I think its main weakness is the low entry barrier, especially when it's something more generalist like Morning Brew. Everyone can create a newsletter these days; the only moat would be building a brand over time.

What do you think would be the best way to differentiate a newsletter in this case?

IMO you can't really differentiate it that much. All content-based businesses are hard to differentiate. I guess you differentiate through your own style but it's not as much differentiation as creating an innovative service or product that nobody else is doing.

As for the low barrier of entry, most online businesses have a low barrier of entry. But it's not about the barrier of entry in itself but about how easy it is to copy and steal your business.

If you have a newsletter about, say, investing in farmland, and someone else copies your topic, it's not like they can have the exact same thing as you do because it takes a lot of time to build a list and build a relationship with your subscribers.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Andy Black]

There's stacks of freelancing guides, YouTube channels, and newsletters out there. If I had a newsletter about freelancing then it just needs to be found by people who want to start or do better at freelancing, and entice them to subscribe and stay subscribed. I'd focus more on fulfilling a need / helping people / entertaining people / etc rather than trying to be different.

 

[leonft]

What's some methods of advertising newsletters.
I'm struggling to grow my list at the moment, especially for a paid newsletter.

 

[alord]

IMO you can't really differentiate it that much. All content-based businesses are hard to differentiate. I guess you differentiate through your own style but it's not as much differentiation as creating an innovative service or product that nobody else is doing.

As for the low barrier of entry, most online businesses have a low barrier of entry. But it's not about the barrier of entry in itself but about how easy it is to copy and steal your business.

If you have a newsletter about, say, investing in farmland, and someone else copies your topic, it's not like they can have the exact same thing as you do because it takes a lot of time to build a list and build a relationship with your subscribers.

There's stacks of freelancing guides, YouTube channels, and newsletters out there. If I had a newsletter about freelancing then it just needs to be found by people who want start or do better at freelancing, and entice them to subscribe and stay subscribed. I'd focus more on fulfilling a need / helping people / entertaining people / etc rather than trying to be different.

Yep absolutely, you can differentiate with a different take.

I was referring more to something more generic like Morning Brew, even though Litquidity/Exec Sum did it well targetting a smaller niche and talking their language

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

What's some methods of advertising newsletters.
I'm struggling to grow my list at the moment, especially for a paid newsletter.

Depends on the niche but overall ads in other newsletters is IMO the best option.

 

[Andy Black]

What's some methods of advertising newsletters.
I'm struggling to grow my list at the moment, especially for a paid newsletter.

Depends on the niche but overall ads in other newsletters is IMO the best option.

Personally, I'd try to setup something that brings new free and then paid subscribers daily like clockwork once dialled in. Given my skillset I'd use Google Ads. I'm not doing at the moment but it's in the back of my mind to have a go sometime.

I have a progress thread where I had a wee play:

• Growing an email list with Google Ads

 

[MTF]

Pasting a part of my post from my thread on Fastlane opportunities for writers:

I've been exploring newsletters for a few months. I have a small newsletter myself but it makes pretty much zero money (I made like $5 through Amazon Associates).

My conclusion so far is that you need to be very clear about what you want to do:

1. A free newsletter that relies on sponsorships needs to be about a big niche. Otherwise you won't make much money. The rates, depending on the newsletter, are somewhere between $100-$500 for 10,000 views for a single short text ad.

So if you have a newsletter with 20,000 subscribers and 50% open rates, you're only going to make $100-500 per newsletter. If you send it weekly, that's at most $2,000 a month for a quite sizable newsletter. You can have more sponsors but then you need to charge lower rates so either way that's not much money.

That's why being in a large niche is so important. You'll have a very hard time finding 500,000 people to subscribe to a newsletter about permaculture compared to finding 500,000 people interested in tech startups. You'll also struggle to find a sponsor for the former (while it'll be quite easy for the latter).

2. A free newsletter that relies on affiliate marketing and/or selling your own products requires you to be very good at selling and copywriting. The business model then becomes more about Internet marketing than actually writing the newsletter. You'll have to balance very well regular content with commercial stuff or people will unsubscribe.

3. A paid newsletter seems like the most stable and reliable business model. The only caveat is that there's churn and that you won't be able to make it work for many niches. Paid newsletters mostly work for topics that may possibly generate financial returns for the subscriber (stuff like investing, business, etc.).

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[redshift]

3. A paid newsletter seems like the most stable and reliable business model. The only caveat is that there's churn and that you won't be able to make it work for many niches. Paid newsletters mostly work for topics that may possibly generate financial returns for the subscriber (stuff like investing, business, etc.).

Agreed on subscriptions being the most stable/reliable model. It doesn't meet the commandment of time, however. You'll have to keep writing somewhat regularly to keep readers subscribed, so only makes sense if you are really into the topic. Even so, might be challenging if you want to take a few months off and not publish content as subscribers might expect new stuff.

I don't think it only works for investing, business, etc. Substack has all kinds of newsletters about seemingly random stuff with hundreds/thousands of paid subscribers. You can just browse through the discover page to see some of them.

 

[MTF]

Agreed on subscriptions being the most stable/reliable model. It doesn't meet the commandment of time, however. You'll have to keep writing somewhat regularly to keep readers subscribed, so only makes sense if you are really into the topic. Even so, might be challenging if you want to take a few months off and not publish content as subscribers might expect new stuff.

The assumption here is that you're the expert. But if it's a curated or opinion-based newsletter you can hire other writers to do it for you.

I don't think it only works for investing, business, etc. Substack has all kinds of newsletters about seemingly random stuff with hundreds/thousands of paid subscribers. You can just browse through the discover page to see some of them.

Is there any way to search for paid newsletters? I could only search for newsletters in general. But still, there would be no way to guess how many paid subscribers they have.

 

[redshift]

Yeah, good point. I meant if you are writing it yourself.

If you go to substack.com and scroll down you'll see a bunch of featured newsletters. Then click on a category and sort by "Top Paid".

eg: If you go to "Health & Wellness", the top 3 are

ParentData - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $10/month
Strong As An Ox - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month

"Food & Drink", Top 5 -

a newsletter - Tens of thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
David Lebovitz Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Bittman Project - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month
What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Department of Salad: Official Bulletin - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5.50/month

"Sports", Top 3 -

House of Strauss - Thousands of paid subscribers · $9/month
Cup of Coffee by Craig Calcaterra - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
JoeBlogs - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

Yeah, good point. I meant if you are writing it yourself.

If you go to substack.com and scroll down you'll see a bunch of featured newsletters. Then click on a category and sort by "Top Paid".

eg: If you go to "Health & Wellness", the top 3 are

ParentData - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $10/month
Strong As An Ox - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month

That's an AWESOME research tool. Thank you for sharing that.

 

[Andy Black]

Agreed on subscriptions being the most stable/reliable model. It doesn't meet the commandment of time, however. You'll have to keep writing somewhat regularly to keep readers subscribed, so only makes sense if you are really into the topic. Even so, might be challenging if you want to take a few months off and not publish content as subscribers might expect new stuff.

I don't think it only works for investing, business, etc. Substack has all kinds of newsletters about seemingly random stuff with hundreds/thousands of paid subscribers. You can just browse through the discover page to see some of them.

What if someone else wrote the newsletter issues, or you queued up a few weeks worth?

EDIT: I see this was covered in later posts.

 

[Andy Black]

If you go to substack.com and scroll down you'll see a bunch of featured newsletters. Then click on a category and sort by "Top Paid".

eg: If you go to "Health & Wellness", the top 3 are

ParentData - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $10/month
Strong As An Ox - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month

"Food & Drink", Top 5 -

a newsletter - Tens of thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
David Lebovitz Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Bittman Project - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month
What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Department of Salad: Official Bulletin - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5.50/month

"Sports", Top 3 -

House of Strauss - Thousands of paid subscribers · $9/month
Cup of Coffee by Craig Calcaterra - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
JoeBlogs - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month

Exactly. These newsletters have thousands of paid subscribers for non financial related topics. People pay $15/mth for Netflix, Prime, and Disney. Why not for something they're passionate about?

Also, there's sooo much free and lengthy content out there that some people will pay for a curated and shortened version.

Great share @redshift. I enjoyed the user experience when I was writing on Substack. I didn't like their payment model though, and it didn't seem to offer much discoverability.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[redshift]

Great share @redshift. I enjoyed the user experience when I was writing on Substack. I didn't like their payment model though, and it didn't seem to offer much discoverability.

It's better now apparently. They have an app, discover page and other writers can recommend you to their subscribers (they'll see your newsletter when someone subscribes to them). I believe they have some kind of leaderboard internally to showcase who to feature in discover, which takes a while to get onto (you have to do your own initial growth). So not sure how good the discovery is for new newsletters.

Still a great option to get started with $0 monthly expenses. Once you start making some income you can switch to ghost or something else to create your own brand.

The main advantage is that it's quite normal to see a paid newsletter on Substack as posted above. So they've kind of normalized this business model for newsletters. If you have your own, users might be a bit less confident to pay for content, but I'm not sure. Ghost seems to be featuring a lot as well (many of which came from Substack).

 

[MTF]

How I Got My First 2000 Subscribers - creatorboom

Everything I did to get my first 2000 newsletter subscribers. Paid ads and cross promotions can be effective, but most of my growth comes from my articles.

ideaeconomy.net

Interesting article with a conclusion that a newsletter by itself is not a good business model:

What Would I Do Differently?​

If I were starting from zero today, I don’t think I’d start with a curated newsletter. Curating content alone is not enough. It’s very difficult to get shares or mentions from curated links.

Niche Websites​

I’m seriously considering shifting my focus to a niche website where revenue can be earned from affiliate commissions, website ads, and my own products. A newsletter can support this, but I don’t think it should be the primary product.


Some great examples of this are:

1. eBizFacts.com – In about 2 years, My friend Niall Doherty built a 23,000 subscriber email list and a business that earns $10k to $20k per month from reviews of make-money online courses. This is a very smart business model that drives newsletter subscribers through high-quality content that ranks in search engines.
2. Adam Enfroy built an $80k per month business in less than 2 years focusing on reviews of online business tools.
3. Chase Reeves of Matterful does travel bag reviews on his popular YouTube channel. He partnered with Pakt to create his own travel backpack.
4. MustDoCanada.com is doing really well with Canada-focused travel content. They are on the first page for most of their target keywords, they are doing sponsored video shoots with big brands, and they’ve built a massive email list. There are many opportunities when you have lots of organic traffic and a large email list.
5. AmandaRachLee has her own line of stationery products she can sell to her 2.14m YouTube subscribers.

Niche websites are a more attractive business model than a newsletter because the content is largely evergreen. Once you review a product, it can earn you income for years. You don’t need to keep publishing content every week to succeed. Most creators will encounter burnout eventually, so it’s important that your business success is not tied to your most recent content.

Also, a niche website is an asset that can sell for up to about 50 months of earnings. A site making $5000 per month can often sell for around $250k now.

This would value eBizFacts.com at about $750k and AdamEnfroy.com at up to $4m. A very solid return for a couple of years of work!

 

[jakobgreenfeld]

How Miguel Correia grew an automated investing newsletter to 3000+ subscribers

Another interesting interview with a guy who grew an almost completely automated newsletter to 3000+ subscribers.

"A lot of custom scripts to scrape the information required from multiple sources. The scripts feed all data into an Airtable. A final script fetches everything from Airtable, generates an html template, and schedules the email to be sent."

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

How Miguel Correia grew an automated investing newsletter to 3000+ subscribers

Another interesting interview with a guy who grew an almost completely automated newsletter to 3000+ subscribers.

"A lot of custom scripts to scrape the information required from multiple sources. The scripts feed all data into an Airtable. A final script fetches everything from Airtable, generates an html template, and schedules the email to be sent."

Tip for future contributions, assuming you're going to stay this time:

It would sound way less self-promotional if you just said "hey guys, I interviewed this guy and I think this is relevant to the discussion" than trying to sound as if it's "another interesting interview" you found somewhere else instead of admitting it's yours.

By the way: man you launch new products more frequently than I change my t-shirts lol. Is there any plan behind this? I'm sure I've seen at least 10+ newsletters and other projects by you launched in the last 1-2 years (and they usually all die off quickly after while they could be great products like Product Explorer).

 

[redshift]

Ghost recently launched a discovery page to find newsletters (similar to Substack). It shows the MRR for paid ones as well.

Explore — Browse publications & featured writers

Discover new publishers who are writing about Art & Culture, Business, Education, Technology and more on Ghost Explore. Submit your own Ghost site here

ghost.org

 

[MTF]

Ghost recently launched a discovery page to find newsletters (similar to Substack). It shows the MRR for paid ones as well.

Explore — Browse publications & featured writers

Discover new publishers who are writing about Art & Culture, Business, Education, Technology and more on Ghost Explore. Submit your own Ghost site here

ghost.org

Thanks for sharing. I received info about it from Ghost but didn't know they included MRR so I didn't even check this directory. So far just a handful of newsletters making at least a few thousand dollars.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[redshift]

@MTF What's the monthly cost for your Wordpress setup? Does it scale up based on subscribers (similar to ghost) or do you pay per email sent?

Also, have you made any revenue from your newsletter as of now, or any plans to monetize soon?

 

[MTF]

@MTF What's the monthly cost for your Wordpress setup? Does it scale up based on subscribers (similar to ghost) or do you pay per email sent?

For MailerLite: $0. I use a free plan because it's free up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails and I don't need their paid features.

For WordPress: $37.50 per month. I pay for quite expensive hosting at Kinsta because I wanted something very fast, scalable, and WordPress dedicated.

As for scaling, WordPress costs nothing while MailerLite will charge more for more subscribers. But even at 10k subscribers that's only $47 a month.

Also, have you made any revenue from your newsletter as of now, or any plans to monetize soon?

Just pennies from Amazon Associates ($5.54 to be exact). I do plan to monetize, most likely with digital products, but first I want to generate more traffic (I'm writing SEO-optimized articles targeting long tail keywords). I have a progress thread on the inside now for the newsletter.

 

[MTF]

MailerLite Is Shit

For MailerLite: $0. I use a free plan because it's free up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails and I don't need their paid features.

I'm not sure if I can keep recommending it. I've been waiting for over six weeks for them to fix a broken archive page (they had known about it before I even reported that). I can't give my subscribers access to past issues because the archives don't show up (they show up in preview in my admin dashboard but not when I access the public page).

I followed up two weeks after my first support request and they said they were still "investigating" it. I reached out again today after over six weeks since the original ticket but I don't expect any new developments.

Their text editor when writing newsletters is also broken and randomly messes up paragraphs.

There Are No Good Platforms for Newsletters

Here's a business idea for you that'll make you rich...

Current main newsletter delivery platforms like Substack, Revue or Beehiiv only offer ugly landing pages with no customization beyond colors. Ghost is better because it at least has themes but there's also little easy customization available as it's not drag and drop (though new theme companies are being created that figured out how to offer more customization).

Then you have email marketing providers like ConvertKit, MailerLite, GetResponse, etc. that aren't really built for newsletters. You can use them this way (as I do with MailerLite) but you get a ton of features you don't need and the set-up is way too complicated for good email deliverability. It's also complicated to implement the archive page.

I won't go back to Ghost with my Discomfort Club newsletter but now that I'm considering some new projects, I'm tempted to go back with them to the simplicity of Ghost and its awesome editor.

They released Ghost 5 back in May with some new features that may have addressed some of the issues I had with it. There are also new companies creating Ghost templates that look way more customizable than what was available earlier this year.

Five Types of Newsletters

The Five Types of Indie Newsletter Business Models | Inbox Collective

The more you understand about the type of newsletter you’re building, the easier it is to understand how to monetize.

inboxcollective.com

I don't necessarily agree with that third question ("Can that audience get similar types of content elsewhere?") as the answer will almost always be yes (as with virtually any business) and it shouldn't stop you from creating a newsletter.

ConvertKit Now Has a Sponsor Network

ConvertKit Sponsor Network - Hassle-free newsletter sponsorships

You create consistently, we partner you with brands who love your work and want to reach your audience. All the sales, reporting, payments, negotiations, and logistics are handled by our team.

convertkit.com

ConvertKit now offers a service that manages sponsorships for you. You need at least 10,000 subscribers.

How it works​

1. Join the Sponsor Network
2. We help you find and manage relationships with premium advertisers
3. You continue creating like you always have been
4. We help you earn a living by placing sponsorships in your newsletter for you

For this service we charge 20% of total sponsorship revenue for selling and placing the sponsorship + 3.5% for payment processing.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

So I ran some quick numbers and realized how incredibly difficult it would be to make good money from a newsletter monetized exclusively by sponsorships.

I found sponsorship ranges between $15 to $50 for 1000 people who view the ad. Let's assume the optimistic $50.

With a weekly newsletter with 10,000 subscribers and an average 30% open rate, you have 3000 people seeing the ad each week. This means $150 per week or $600 per month if you can sell all ad spots.

Okay, so let's say that you sell 3 ads in each newsletter. Since it's no longer exclusive, maybe you can charge half of the exclusive rate so $25 per 1000 impressions. Now you have $75*3 per week so $225 per week and $900 a month. And that generously assumes that you sell 3 ads each week and 12 a month.

Okay, so maybe let's scale by publishing twice a week (it's a tough job) and assuming you can sell twice as many ads (24 a month). Now you have $1800 a month.

And that's just revenue, without the costs of running the newsletter, marketing (that 10,000 people won't join by themselves), and hiring the writer (assuming you don't want to write for pennies). Now you're left with close to nothing, in the most optimistic scenario.

It's extremely hard to build a list of 10,000 subscribers. All you're getting in return, if you monetize with sponsorships only, is at best a few hundred bucks in profit.

That's a terrible business model unless you're in a super broad niche where you can build a list of several hundred thousand subscribers. But even then, it's not going to be super lucrative.

 

[MTF]

Yeah, good point. I meant if you are writing it yourself.

If you go to substack.com and scroll down you'll see a bunch of featured newsletters. Then click on a category and sort by "Top Paid".

eg: If you go to "Health & Wellness", the top 3 are

ParentData - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
She's A Beast: A Swole Woman's Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $10/month
Strong As An Ox - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month

"Food & Drink", Top 5 -

a newsletter - Tens of thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
David Lebovitz Newsletter - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Bittman Project - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month
What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5/month
The Department of Salad: Official Bulletin - Thousands of paid subscribers · $5.50/month

"Sports", Top 3 -

House of Strauss - Thousands of paid subscribers · $9/month
Cup of Coffee by Craig Calcaterra - Thousands of paid subscribers · $6/month
JoeBlogs - Thousands of paid subscribers · $7/month

I recently learned that it's a bit misleading. For example, all it takes for Substack to say that you have "hundreds" of paid subscribers is to have more than 100. So if you have, say, 102 paid subscribers, it'll claim that you have hundreds. I imagine it's the same with thousands (1001 paid subscribers = "thousands").

 

[Cameraman]

So I ran some quick numbers and realized how incredibly difficult it would be to make good money from a newsletter monetized exclusively by sponsorships.

I totally agree.

The value in a newsletter is either through paid subscription (still difficult) or using it to build trust so that people buy something more valuable from you.

I did wonder about serialising a course or book into a newsletter format and making it a paid-for subscription.

It's also difficult to make the figures work if you are using one of the big email companies. Their pricing structure assumes you will be mailing frequently (possibly daily) to your list. MailCheat(Chimp) recently quoted me over $500 per month and I only have 12k subscribers. I'll continue using the Newsletter plugin hooked up to AWS thank you.

I'm watching this thread with interest because I want to gain more value from my newsletter activity.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[MTF]

The value in a newsletter is either through paid subscription (still difficult) or using it to build trust so that people buy something more valuable from you.

Paid subscriptions seem to be a quite easy sell for money-making niches such as finance, investing, etc. and churn should be quite low (assuming you help people have a positive return on the investment). For non-commercial niches I see it as a hard sell.

It's also difficult to make the figures work if you are using one of the big email companies. Their pricing structure assumes you will be mailing frequently (possibly daily) to your list. MailCheat(Chimp) recently quoted me over $500 per month and I only have 12k subscribers. I'll continue using the Newsletter plugin hooked up to AWS thank you.

Lol there's a reason why MJ set a filter to replace Mail.chimp with MailCheat haha. That pricing is strange. MailerLite would charge you just $77 a month (and you'd get as a bonus engineers who can't fix a simple thing in 6 weeks lol).

 

[Cameraman]

Lol there's a reason why MJ set a filter to replace Mail.chimp with MailCheat haha.

Just saw that. Very funny and very true.

MailerLite would charge you just $77 a month (and you'd get as a bonus engineers who can't fix a simple thing in 6 weeks lol).

Thanks. I do check the rates for mailing companies from time to time and will add that one to my list.

I currently pay $59 a year for the Pro version of the Newsletter Plugin for WordPress and then whatever Amazon charge me for sending emails using the Simple Email Service. It seems to work out at about $1.30 per month when I send about 13,000 emails. The support from the Newsletter team has also been very good.

I really need to work on the revenue generation side now.

 

[StrikingViper69]

Just saw that. Very funny and very true.

Thanks. I do check the rates for mailing companies from time to time and will add that one to my list.

I currently pay $59 a year for the Pro version of the Newsletter Plugin for WordPress and then whatever Amazon charge me for sending emails using the Simple Email Service. It seems to work out at about $1.30 per month when I send about 13,000 emails. The support from the Newsletter team has also been very good.

I really need to work on the revenue generation side now.

That's crazy cheap

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Cameraman]

That's crazy cheap

It is and the delivery rate is excellent. You just need around 30 minutes to set everything up.
In the words of the great Johnny Rotten - "ever felt like you've just been swindled".

 

[StrikingViper69]

It is and the delivery rate is excellent. You just need around 30 minutes to set everything up.
In the words of the great Johnny Rotten - "ever felt like you've just been swindled".

No kidding.