Trying to understand the business of Paid Newsletters

Had a breakthrough about a month ago that helped me crack the code on free vs $5/mo vs higher price point newsletters.

Primary Drivers.

I've been blogging for over a decade, but wouldn't consider anything I've written in those years being worth $5/month to read. The main reason is because that wasn't the goal. I wasn't trying to create value for people, I was only writing out my thoughts on different subjects.

Recently, though, I wanted to take a swing at a paid newsletter. The path forward is well worn at this point - many people have created a ton of value with their newsletters.

Rather than trying to get as many subscribers as possible and hope that a large enough percentage would "convert" into paying members, I went a different route.

A paid newsletter is a product. Products need to have value that exceeds the cost, or people won't buy.

The fastest way to create value is think about the Primary Driver that is motivating someone to pay a monthly subscription.

For example - if your newsletter has a list of curated websites for sale that would take the reader hours of their own time to find every day, you're saving them time and money. And, they could potentially use your curated information to create even more value if they were to go purchase a website from your list.

Another example - I pay $50/mo for one newsletter from Tiny Little Businesses. Each month they only release two issues of the newsletter. But - the promise that they make to subscribers is that the newsletter will help you create new businesses and quickly grow them to $6k per month revenue streams. Not a bad trade off with that context in mind.

So - what are you promising in exchange for $5/$15/$50 per month that hits on of the Primary Drivers of your audience? Do they want to make more money? Start a business? Are they motivated by status or vanity or variety or entertainment?

Know your audience, understand how your newsletter helps them get what they really want, and make a promise to them that you're going to deliver 10x the value of your monthly subscription (in so many words, not specifically...)

Hope that helps, happy to clarify if anything I said is unclear.

Btw - you can see my nl at newsletter.craftsmancreative.co

Here's what a subscriber-only issue of a paid Substack newsletter looks like. In the issue archive, subscriber-only posts have a padlock badge and it's up to the author to decide which issues, if any, to make public.

Many of the posts on that page are free, and some are paywalled (the lock icon). Most paid newsletters work like that, where additional content is "premium" and gated. E.g. For my own newsletter, Avoid Boring People, I write 1 long free monthly post and 3 shorter paid weekly posts [1].

Some others charge for the community instead e.g. pay $X to join a private slack group.

Others monetise via ads within the newsletter.

I did an updated review of Substack here if helpful.

[1] I think of my paywall more as a show of support for my writing; all the paid posts eventually get hosted on my personal site for free

These are open blog posts. You can also 'lock' these blog posts, so readers can see the title and a small excerpt of the post, but cannot read further.