5 Best Ways to Monetize Your Newsletter in 2024

Can email newsletters make money?

With the world becoming increasingly digital, it’s a question on the minds of millions of people looking for new income streams in 2024.

The answer is—Absolutely! There are several ways you can get paid for writing a newsletter.

Email newsletters are becoming more dominant in the content-driven world, and you can take advantage of them in a variety of ways: from supplementing your income as a side hustle or even transforming one into a million-dollar publishing business.

There are endless opportunities to earn more in the newsletter space. And the ROI is nothing to bat an eye at. In fact, as of 2020, publishers and media companies are seeing average returns of $32 for every $1 spent on email.

If you want to launch a new revenue stream, or you’re looking to increase the earnings of your current business, then keep reading. In this article, you’ll learn four ways to monetize your email newsletter so you can earn more in 2024.

Let’s dive in.

1. Sponsorships & Newsletter Ads

The most popular way newsletters can make money is with sponsorships and newsletter ads.

There’s power in owning a newsletter subscriber list. When your list grows big enough and is consistently engaging with your content, you own something incredibly powerful. You have the power to influence thousands of people by simply clicking “send.” And sometimes, that means recommending a product or service to buy.

That’s where advertisers come in. Businesses are always looking for ways to get their product or service to market. One rule always applies: find an audience. If you have an engaged newsletter audience, businesses will pay you to show off their products, services, or brand within your newsletter.

Back in the day (and still to this day), businesses would pay to put an advertisement in the local newspaper. Nowadays digitally-driven companies are paying digital newsletter publishers to show off their products.

For your part, there are only a few simple steps to secure a sponsor for your newsletter. This typically means getting paid for showing off an image, ad copy, company logo, and a link back to the advertiser’s website all within your newsletter.

Businesses typically pay a set amount every time you show off their ad. As your list grows, you can begin increasing the rate you charge sponsors to put an ad in your newsletter. You could earn anywhere from $100-$10,000+ to show off a single ad, depending on your newsletters’ size, niche, engagement, and average revenue per newsletter recipient.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Another option that’s similar to sponsorships and newsletter ads is affiliate marketing.

Just like sponsorships, you’ll be mentioning other people’s products or services within your newsletter. The difference is, that instead of getting paid a set rate for showing an ad, you earn a commission.

With affiliate marketing, a brand will give you a unique “affiliate link” which you can place in your newsletter. If someone clicks on your specific affiliate link and ends up purchasing a product, the brand owner will know when a sale was made through your link.

For every sale that happens through your link, you earn a commission. It’s common to see a commission of about 5%-30%. This means if you recommend a $100 product and one of your newsletter subscribers purchases it through your link you could earn up to $30.

While that doesn’t seem like much, if 10 people buy it, you just make $300. If 100 people bought it, you made $3,000.

The earnings potential with affiliate marketing can be much higher than sponsorships since your ability to earn more is based on how well you can sell the product in your newsletter. If a $100 product is a good fit for your audience, you could earn a flat fee of $500 to show an ad. But, if you get a 30% commission on a $100 product and 50 of your subscribers buy it, you make $1,500.

Just remember, you’ll be most successful with affiliate marketing if you actually use the products you promote. Not only will it help show your authenticity, but it will be much easier to persuade your audience to buy it since you have hands-on experience with it.

3. Sell Your Own Product

Many business owners create a product, launch an email store, and then add on email marketing once they see how powerful it is.

However, many email newsletter publishers do the opposite. They start an email newsletter, realize the potential for earning through it, and come up with a product that would be a perfect fit for their audience.

Sponsorships and affiliate marketing can be powerful revenue drivers since you’re essentially selling someone else’s products for them. However, the earning potential is much higher when you simply sell your own product.

Many newsletter publishers will typically take the path of offering sponsorships and affiliate offers before realizing the true potential of simply showing their own product to their audience. It’s a great way to diversify your income, and the profit margins are higher than the other options since you don’t have to leave a cut for someone else.

You could sell a digital or physical product by adding e-commerce capability to your website. Or, it could be as simple as sending your newsletter subscribers to your Etsy shop.

4. Premium Subscriptions

Another fruitful monetization method is offering premium subscriptions. With this business model, you charge a monthly fee to join your newsletter. Subscribers simply pay a premium to receive your newsletter daily, weekly, or several times a week.

Paid newsletters typically contain unique and original content like news, industry analyses, and original reporting. The beautiful thing is that you can start a paid newsletter on just about any topic. If you can find a niche with a passionate audience, the potential to offer a paid newsletter is there.

Most people wonder…Who would pay for an email newsletter?

When there are thousands of free newsletters, what would make someone want to pay? Well, the way paid newsletters typically work is that they usually offer a free newsletter, a lite version of the premium newsletter. The paid newsletter is typically sent out more frequently and often includes juicier content.

The free newsletter acts as a starting place for people to get a taste of what the premium newsletter would be like.

Think about something like National Geographic. Magazine and newspaper subscriptions used to be huge and are still major industries. People love to consume the best content in their passion, and they’re willing to pay on repeat for quality.

The New York Times found that site visitors were twice as likely to become paid subscribers if they first subscribed to the free newsletter.

So, how much can you make from an email newsletter?

With a paid newsletter, you can easily charge $5-10 per month. However, that can get much higher - especially if you have a super specific newsletter niche.

The best part? This is recurring revenue. Paid newsletter subscriptions can offer a steady, consistent income for creators and business owners. Plus, it’s easily scalable. This means once you understand how to grow your newsletter list, your earning potential becomes limitless. Just keep growing your list and you’ll see your paid subscribers grow over time.

How Do I Create a Paid Email Newsletter?

Now that you’ve seen all the different ways you can monetize a newsletter, you might be thinking… How do I start an email newsletter business?

Starting a paid newsletter is easier than ever today with intuitive newsletter software like beehiiv. beehiiv is one of the best platforms available if you want a simple solution to starting, monetizing, and growing an email newsletter.

beehiiv offers creators and small business owners the most flexible, easy-to-use toolkit for paid subscriptions without taking a cut of your revenue. Plus, beehiiv offers an integrated ad network to easily match you with premium sponsors.

With beehiiv, you can launch and monetize your newsletter in no time, so you can grow your earnings with ease. Sign up for your free beehiiv plan today to start monetizing your newsletter!

5. Offer Coaching or Consulting Services

Lastly, you could use your newsletter as a platform to promote and sell direct access to your expertise. If your readers like your content, they might love to have personal access to you or your team. Coaching is a $20 billion industry, so there's plenty of room to get involved.

Create packages with different levels of service, and link to a service like Calendly that lets clients book time in your schedule to chat.

How To Monetize A Newsletter: Key Tips

Now that you know the top ways to make money with newsletters, here are some key tips for successful implementation:

1. Know Your Audience

As with any business endeavor, it's essential to understand who is reading your newsletter and what they're looking for. Research your readers and create content that caters to their needs.

2. Use Existing Assets

You don't have to start from scratch when monetizing your newsletter. Utilize existing resources like affiliate links, digital products, and services that you already offer in other contexts.

3. Don't Over-sell

You should never feel obligated to sell or promote something every time you send an email. Your subscribers have signed up for valuable content, so focus on delivering that first and foremost.

4. Build Your Audience

The more engaged readers you have, the easier it will be to produce revenue. Put time and effort into growing your audience by creating high-quality content, leveraging social media, and engaging with readers. Ensure you take advantage of beehiiv's built-in growth tools, like the referral program and recommendation network, to help you scale your audience.

5. Test Different Tactics

Lastly, it's essential to experiment and try new things when monetizing your newsletter. You don't know what will resonate with your specific audience until you test it out, so don't be afraid to try different strategies.

Getting Started With Newsletter Monetization

The best place to begin is by building a large, engaged audience who can't wait to read your next newsletter. If you've already done that, your next step is to experiment with different monetization strategies to find the ones your unique audience gets excited about.

For example, put together some of your best content into an ebook and see if your readers respond. Then, offer one or two coaching hours per week — if those fill up, and you enjoy doing it, you can create some packages.

Or, If you publish regularly on beehiiv and have over 1,000 subscribers, apply for the ad network program and let your advertising grow along with your audience.

In other words, build your newsletter monetization program one small step at a time. Keep monitoring the results to tailor your next step to your audience.

Monetizing your newsletter is a great way to generate additional income and build relationships with your readers. With the right strategy in place, you'll be able to grow both revenue and relationships–and signing up for beehiiv is a great place to start.

So take your first small steps toward a profitable future today!