Is Your Newsletter Leaving Money on the Table?

If you're creating great content, you deserve payment for your work. One of the most popular methods is by growing a base of paid newsletter subscriptions.

In this post, we'll discuss exactly how to use paid distribution to drive revenue for your newsletter. We'll also cover other methods of generating income with newsletters, such as advertising and affiliate marketing.

How Much Can You Make From an Email Newsletter?

A lot. Morning Brew, the well-known industry trendsetter, has consistently brought in millions of dollars each year.

A typical successful newsletter can bring in several thousand dollars per month, with very low costs. Many small newsletters are run by just one person, or even start as a side hustle which makes this a very approachable entrepreneurship opportunity for a creator.

How much your newsletter can make will depend on two factors: the number of subscribers you have and the value they place on your content.

Are Email Newsletters Still Effective in 2022?

Yes. People are definitely still reading email newsletters. According to research from Campaign Monitor's 2022 Email Marketing Benchmarks Report, the average email open rate was 21.5 percent across all industries in 2021 — an increase of 3.5 percent from 2020.

Email newsletters remained a highly effective way to reach your audience and grow your business in 2022, and they are still going strong.

How Do I Start an Email Subscription Business?

Building a newsletter business isn’t an overly complicated process. There are just a few steps to follow, starting with your content and readership.

Refine Your Content Plan

If you're thinking of starting a paid newsletter, you probably already have some idea of what types of content you want to create. You may also have access to your target market through social media or industry channels.

From that starting point, keep refining your ideas and growing your audience. For example, you'll want to analyze the current market to see where the gaps are that you could fill. Additionally, you'll want to be aware of any emerging trends your audience might be interested in.

Build Your Subscriber Base

Once you know what kind of content you'll offer, the next step is to build a marketing plan to reach your target audience. There are many different strategies you can use to grow your email list, including:

• Leverage your existing social media channels and contacts

• Pay for targeted ads on social media or search engine results pages

• Partner with influencers to boost awareness

• Create a referral program

• Organize contests and promotions

• Offer a free version, or free trial, to show the value of your content

• Brainstorm referral incentives to entice your subscribers to share your content with others

By taking advantage of these different strategies, you can reach your potential subscribers more quickly and begin generating revenue.

Determine Your Price

Newsletter prices start at around $5 per month, with an average of about $11.

But you can charge quite a bit more if your information is extremely valuable. For example, people will pay quite a bit more for investment or business guidance that could help them make significant amounts of money.

You can follow many different pricing strategies, but the best place to begin is by checking out your competition.

Set Up Your Platform

Before you can market your newsletter, you'll need to set up a content delivery system. The best way to do that is with a newsletter platform built for growth, like beehiiv.

beehiiv allows you to create beautiful newsletters, track analytics, and performance, manage your subscribers, and more. More importantly, it was built by the Morning Brew team, especially for creators who want to scale their businesses. Features like referrals, sponsorship, and paid distribution are built right into your dashboard.

How Do I Make Money With Paid Newsletters?

Once your content and platform are ready to go, the next step is monetizing your newsletter.

For a paid newsletter, subscriptions are the primary source of revenue. Therefore, ensure your price covers all your overhead to make this your profit center. That way, you'll always be able to prioritize the needs of your readership when weighing other revenue options.

Once your subscriber base is in place, you can consider other options such as:

• Advertising: Place ads in your newsletter to generate additional income.

• Sponsorship: Partner with brands to create sponsored content that features their products or services.

• Affiliate link marketing: Include affiliate links to brands you trust and recommend in your newsletters and earn a commission on every sale they generate.

How Do Newsletter Subscriptions Work?

Now that you have all the pieces of your plan in place, you're ready to sign up those subscribers.

Platforms like beehiiv make it easy for users to pay for their subscriptions. They’ll enter their payment information into a secure checkout page and start receiving your newsletter every week or month.

Are Email Newsletters Profitable?

Some publishers have been extremely successful. The industry giants are bringing in millions.

If you start small and create the content yourself, you can keep expenses low and generate a profit quickly. Many newsletters begin as one-person operations with very low costs.

Overall, if you create valuable content and use effective marketing techniques, your newsletter can make a sizable profit. Of course, it takes time to build up a following and monetize, but it’s an achievable goal for anyone willing to do the work.

Ready To Begin?

Email newsletters can be a profitable business if you're providing valuable content for a well-defined target market. To succeed, you'll need to create an attractive presentation, determine a pricing strategy that works for your content, set up a platform for delivering your newsletter, and monetize it with subscriptions, advertising, sponsorship, and affiliate links.

Investing in a platform like beehiiv is the perfect place to begin. The right platform will help streamline the process of creating beautiful newsletters with features explicitly built for growth and profit.