5 Ways to Leverage Custom Pages in beehiiv (With Real Examples)

If you’ve been running your own newsletter for a while, you know how tough it can be juggling all the different pieces: your newsletter platform, your website, your social media, and everything else that comes along with running a newsletter.

The reality is that there are a ton of moving pieces.

But, with beehiiv, rather than separating your newsletter platform from your website, you get it all in one easy-to-access place. It’s an all-in-one platform, allowing you to easily manage both your newsletter and your website.

Over the past few months, we’ve had several beehiiv clients asking for more functionality from their beehiiv website than a simple newsletter feed. They were wanting more customization. More flexibility. More options. More pages. So we listened.

And, at the beginning of February 2023, we launched our latest feature: beehiiv custom pages!

For the first time ever on beehiiv, you can create your own custom web pages. In addition to your home page, landing page, and newsletter feed, your beehiiv website comes equipped with the ability to add additional custom pages.

So, what does this mean for you, the user? It’s easier than ever to launch, grow, and monetize your newsletter all on beehiiv’s user-friendly platform.

In this simple guide, you’ll learn five ways to leverage beehiiv’s custom pages to completely customize your beehiiv website and take your newsletter to the next level! Plus, we’ll break down the exact steps you need to take to create your first custom page in beehiiv.

Let’s dive in!

How to Create a Custom Page in beehiiv (Step-by-Step)

Before we show you the different ways you can use beehiiv’s custom pages to enhance your site, let’s break down exactly how you can create a custom page from scratch.

Follow along for a simple 6-step tutorial to help you create your first custom page on your beehiiv website.

You can also follow along with our beehiiv 101 video tutorial on custom pages:

1. Login to Your beehiiv Dashboard

First, log into your beehiiv account and head over to your beehiiv Dashboard. On the left navigation sidebar, click on “Settings.”

2. Go to Your Website Settings

Then, click on “Website.” Once you’re on the “Website” page, you’ll be able to customize all of your website settings, including your site design, custom pages, and navigation.

3. Head to the “Navbar” Tab

Click on “Navbar” to customize your pages and categories.

From there, you’ll see two options on the page: “Menu Items” at the top and if you scroll down, you’ll see “Pages”.

Under “Pages,” you have the option to add an internal page (which is a custom page built on beehiiv), or an external page (which would allow you to link out to a page on an external website).

4. Create Your First Custom Page

It’s time to create your first custom page! If you’ve already published a few newsletters, then you’ll notice something very familiar… The page editor here looks just like the regular newsletter email editor!

The visual editor makes it easy to add in different blocks, like an image, embedded link, or even an HTML snippet to add in custom code for even more customization.

For our custom page, we’re going to create an About page.

Once you’ve added your content to the editor, you’ll have to fill out a few page details on the right side. In order to save your page, you’ll need to add your page Title. In our example, we labeled it “About.” You also need to add your URL slug. We labeled our URL slug “about.”

Next, hit “Create Page.” We’ll come back to your new page in just a minute to finalize everything. But first, you need to create a menu item for your custom page to live under on your website.

5. Create a Menu Item

Once you’ve clicked “Create Page,” you’ll be taken back to the “Navbar” tab under your “Website Settings.” In order for your custom page to appear on your website, you’ll have to place it under a menu.

Under “Menu Items,” click “Add Menu Item.”

In our example, we’ll simply label our Menu “About.”

6. Place Your Page Inside a Menu

Once you’ve created your first menu, it’s time to head back over to your new custom page to place it inside the menu. Under your custom page details sidebar, click on the drop-down “Add to Menu Item” and select the menu you just created.

Remember to fill out all of your other page details, including your SEO title and SEO description, and don’t forget to add a photo. If you’d rather not have this page appear in search engines, then make sure to toggle on “No Index Enabled?”. This will ensure this page doesn’t appear in the search results.

Finally, click “Save Changes” and you’re all done!

Remember to view your new custom page on your website to make sure everything looks right. To do this, head back to your beehiiv Dashboard, head to the left sidebar, and click “View Site.”

You’ll notice your new page appears on your home page header navigation on the top left of your home page. Click on your new page to see how it looks live.

If you need to make any changes, just remember to head back to Dashboard>Settings>Website>Navbar and adjust your menu or custom pages however you like.

5 Ways to Use beehiiv’s Custom Pages

To give you a better idea of how you can take advantage of beehiiv’s custom pages, let’s take a look at a few different websites built on beehiiv.

For these five examples, we’ll be showing how newsletters in different niches leveraged our custom pages feature to upgrade their sites.

1. Create an About Page

Your “About” page is one of the most important pages on your website, especially when you’re running a newsletter. It’s also one of the most visited pages.

People want to know who you are, what you’re doing, and why to stick around. Your About Me page plays a major role in whether or not a visitor becomes a subscriber.

The reality is that people connect with people. Your About page is a perfect opportunity to build rapport with your visitors, share your expertise, and sell them on your newsletter.

Young Money is a financial newsletter by Jack Raines with over 30,000 subscribers.

Something cool Jack does with his About page?

He takes full advantage of the custom page editor’s embedded link feature. He uses it to show off some of his top newsletters that visitors can quickly dive into. The links will take any About Page visitors right to his published newsletters so they can get a taste of what his newsletter offers.

To add an embedded link to a custom page, simply head over to your custom page editor, click the “+” arrow to add a block, and click “Embed Link.” This will let you link to any URL (whether on your own beehiiv website or an external site).

2. Promote Your Own Product

There are a million ways you can monetize your newsletter.

Okay… maybe not a million. But, running a newsletter offers a wealth of opportunities to create diverse income streams. For instance, beehiiv makes it easy to monetize your newsletter with sponsorships through the beehiiv Ad Network. You can also offer paid subscriptions to build recurring revenue.

And now, you can add another newsletter stream: promote your own product on your site with beehiiv’s custom pages!

World Builders is a newsletter by Nathan Baugh that helps over 50,000 subscribers become better storytellers.

In Nathan’s case, he leveraged beehiiv’s custom pages feature to promote a course he created.

Offering a course on a beehiiv custom page is a great way to diversify your income, increase your revenue, and provide more value to your subscribers. For many creators, it’s one of the most natural ways to dive into eCommerce while running a newsletter

But, while a course is a brilliant way to offer a digital product to your newsletter subscribers, it’s not the only type of product you could offer on your beehiiv site.

You could use beehiiv’s custom pages to promote several product types:

• eBooks / Audiobooks

• Physical products

• Merchandise

• Apps

• Swipe Files

• Printables

• Coaching or Consultations

• A service you offer related to your newsletter

You could (and should) even use beehiiv’s custom pages to promote your paid subscriptions!

3. Create a Resource Page

Daily Zaps is an AI newsletter that’s dedicated to sharing the latest apps, tools, and ideas about artificial intelligence.

They took advantage of beehiiv’s custom pages by creating a helpful resource for their readers on Prompt Guides. In the resource, they quickly summarize what an AI prompt does, how it works, and then they proceed to share several embedded links to AI prompt tools.

What kind of resource page could you create for your audience that could provide value or help solve a problem?

4. Share an Event

In The Circle is a newsletter all about disc golf. They took advantage of beehiiv’s custom pages by creating a dedicated page for a disc golf event. Their page shares the event details for the “Third Annual Disc Golf Pro Tour All-Star Weekend.”

For something like disc golf that’s fueled by regional events, creating a page like this could be a great way to provide value to your subscribers and entice them to keep coming back to your beehiiv newsletter.

Even if your newsletter niche isn’t related to sports or competitive tournaments of any kind, posting about a local meetup for your niche could be a good way to further the strength of your community both online and offline!

5. Assign Multiple Pages to a Single Menu

If you want to create dozens of custom pages, it might not make sense to list them all under their own menu button on your header navigation.

While you can place up to 15 different menus on your navigation bar, we recommend keeping it to five or six for the best user experience.

Thankfully, if you have a bunch of similar custom pages, you can group your pages together under a single menu.

In The Circle has created dozens of pages related to disc golf tournaments. They took advantage of beehiiv’s custom pages and menu feature to organize all of their different events under specific menus (i.e. every event for the “Disc Golf Pro Tour”).

Now, It’s Your Turn

When launching a newsletter, you want to ensure you feel in control and you have the flexibility to customize every aspect of your business.

Unfortunately, most newsletter platforms are built as silos, meaning you have your newsletter in one place and your website in another. At beehiiv, we pride ourselves on our ability to listen to our customers’ feedback and innovate to make this the best newsletter platform in the world.

With our brand-new custom web pages feature, you have full control over your website to optimize it, customize it, and leverage it to take your newsletter to its full potential.

The five examples above are just a few ways you can get started with beehiiv’s custom pages. But, the possibilities are endless. Here are a few other page types you can use to grow your newsletter:

• Advertise page

• Contact Us page

• Donate page

• Podcast page

• Vlog page

Since our new editor supports custom HTML, the options are endless. You can drop in your own for whatever you’d like so it comes out exactly as you’d expect to make your ideas come to life.

If you’re ready to launch your own newsletter, then get started with beehiiv for free today!

Note: custom pages and navigation are only available on our Scale plan. To learn more about our paid plans and/or upgrade, visit here.