8 Ways To Get Paid For Writing A Newsletter

Turn your newsletter into a sustainable revenue source

Newsletters are a highly monetizable asset. Let’s talk about some insights from beehiiv, that prove how big the newsletter market is -
People with newsletters 2022: 3674
People with newsletters 2023: 26345

The number of people with newsletters in 2023 is about 7.17 times higher than in 2022, and this is just on beehiiv.

Monetizing a newsletter is simple if you know how. And to clear up a few myths - you don’t need a certain number of subscribers to start monetizing a newsletter, and your newsletter doesn’t have to change dramatically for it to be monetizable.

If you need some tips on creating your first newsletter, we’ve got plenty of best-practice newsletter ideas over on a blog. Otherwise, let’s dive straight in and outline 8 ideas that can help you start monetizing and getting paid from your newsletter.

1. Charge A Subscription For Your Newsletter - And Pay No Fees

This first one may seem obvious, but a great way of monetizing your newsletter is to make your newsletter a chargeable membership.

A subscriber will pay a monthly or annual fee to access your content.

You can market this however you like, but your newsletter could be sold as exclusive access to your content every month - for your top brand followers only. As part of this exclusive membership, paying subscribers receive personal interactions from you every month, getting to see behind the scenes and gain access to perks not all followers would receive.

Many email platforms for example Substack that allow this functionality will come at a cost taking a large % of your sales every time a new paying subscriber joins. beehiiv however not only provides the same and more functionality but charges a small flat fee no matter how many paying subscribers you have.

2. Send Free Trials and Offers Via Your Newsletter

Monetizing your newsletter doesn’t have to involve making money from the newsletter itself. Instead, another way to monetize your newsletter is by sending your customers free trials and offers for your services, or products, which will result in you earning money.

Newsletters are a personal way of reaching out to your audience, and customers may be more likely to trust information coming from direct marketing than via platforms such as Instagram or traditional media, where there’s so much excess noise from other brands/creators they follow.

If you have a paid membership service that is separate from your newsletter, make sure you’re plugging it into your email lists. A discount or a free trial never goes amiss when encouraging users to sign up, either.

One thing to note with anything you do is push to drive and always create value. This creates subscriber trust, and a larger audience, and then and only then will you be able to harvest the fruit you have cultivated.

3. Use Our Ad Network To Plug Sponsors Via Your Newsletter

One of the best things about using beehiiv to create your newsletter is that you’ll be able to access our extensive ad network. Something that hasn’t yet been available to the normal creator and newsletter business. This was passed over from the team that built Morning Brew and scaled the brand to millions of subscribers, beehiiv acts as your very own sales team by strategically partnering with relevant advertisers that can bring value to your subscribers and audience.

These advertisers could range from big brands that your customers will instantly recognize and trust, to the most talked about new tech startup.

Our ad network is run by a team that has sourced millions of dollars in ad revenue, helping customers all around the world to sustainably make money from their weekly/monthly newsletters.

Our customers enjoy featuring our ad network within their newsletters to earn some extra money or fully support their media business. An example of this is Classic Nerd, a beehiiv customer that regularly uses our ad network when sending out their newsletters, updating their followers on the latest trivia around games, movies, and TV shows!

You can apply for early access to our ad network here - you’ll just need 1,000 subscribers in your account and to be an active beehiiv sender to qualify. If you need some help growing your subscribers, we’ve got plenty of tips and tricks to grow your email list on our blog.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great way to start making money from your newsletter, and it’s a lot easier than you’d think. Essentially, being an affiliate means earning commission on sales you promote from other companies’ products or services. This could involve directing your customers to purchase items from an Amazon list or using affiliate links to send customers offers for products from like-minded companies that are congruent with your own.

Now, this part is key - you really need to know your audience to benefit from affiliate marketing. You don’t want to lose their trust by encouraging them to purchase something that there’s no chance they’d be interested in. Your followers trust you to have their best interests at heart, and would only appreciate an advert if they’d genuinely be interested in it.

Make sure the companies you’re working with are similar to yours, and that you truly believe in them so that your customers continue to trust what you’re putting out there.

We recommend that you leverage beehiiv polls early on. This allows you to ask vital questions, gather data, and better understand your subscribers on a deeper level.

5. Sell Classified Ad Space

On a similar note, selling classified ad space is a great way of making money from your business. If your newsletter is going out to a large, engaged audience, companies are bound to want to work with you - especially if their audience is of a similar demographic to yours.

Let’s say you’re a lifestyle influencer, and your audience mainly consists of working professionals who don’t have a lot of spare time on their hands. You could sell ad space to a meal subscription service, and tie this into your affiliate marketing strategy. Your audience will be pleased with a discount code for a brand they’d likely purchase from anyway, and you’ll make some extra money (and form a good relationship) with a brand that has similar values to you. It doesn’t get much better than that!

This space would be a dedicated area within your newsletter that you could sell to advertisers each month. It’s potentially more valuable to a company than affiliate links, as it’s an isolated area where you can give in-depth information on a company and use offers/wording of their choice.

6. Feature a Tip Jar/Patreon Account Link

If you’re an online creator or small business, you may already be using Tip Jar or Patreon to earn some extra money in return for your content/services. If you are using these or similar platforms, make sure you’re talking about it in your newsletters!

You can create custom elements to feature in your newsletter content that remind users that every penny counts in supporting their favorite businesses/creators. These could appear as regular items in your newsletter footer that go out to your customers every week/month. Marketing these platforms to your superfans via a newsletter is a super quick way to encourage more people to help support your business.

7. Branded Merchandise

Branded merch is another great way of pulling in some extra money, and your newsletter is the perfect spot to market it. Just like with a Tip Jar or Patreon link, your branded merch could be a regular feature in your newsletter, changing regularly depending on the season or bestsellers you may want to promote.

If your customers have taken the time to sign up for your newsletter, chances are they are interested in your brand and would enjoy your branded merchandise. Our team did something similar with Morning Brew, and it was a great way of furthering our growing brand by offering our following a way to engage with us through good quality branded merchandise. We featured our branded merch in our newsletter and found it to be a great way of pulling in extra revenue via our email lists.

8. Sell Digital Products Such As Courses/E-Books

Your newsletter is a great place to market not only physical brand merch but digital products too. If you sell online courses or e-books, you’ll find advertising these to your email lists is a great way of pulling in some extra downloads. You can also market these by giving customers early access to products that may not be available to the wider market yet.

You could even segment your email lists using features on beehiiv to market specific digital products to certain audiences. This is the best way of putting the right products in front of the right people and using a more targeted approach to monetize your newsletters.

A great example of this is one of our customers, Matt Gray, who uses his beehiiv newsletter to promote his business coaching courses. Matt achieves many course sign-ups by sending course information within his regular newsletters and can remarket to people who open his newsletters too.

Monetize Your Newsletter With beehiiv

So there you have it - eight tangible ways to actually make money from your newsletter. And if you need some help, we can assist you with our extensive ad network and membership functionality.

Start a newsletter with beehiiv to begin monetizing your email campaigns. You can sign up for free with a host of great benefits, or check out some of our paid plans for exciting new features such as Unlimited Audience Segmentation, Custom HTML, and an Integrated Referral Program.

Let’s keep creating and turn those words into greenbacks.