Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
Why I killed my paid newsletter
|
Running a paid newsletter is all the rage. You can turn on paid subscriptions on Kit or Substack by connecting them to your Stripe account, pressing a button, and asking people to subscribe. A paid newsletter looks crazy attractive. Substack even slapped a calculator on the homepage at one point so aspiring newsletter owners could salivate over potential monthly profits. All you have to do is write your newsletter and forget about all that marketing. What creator wouldn’t love that type of business model? The paid newsletter option is lucrative if you already have a massive and or committed audience. This model worked for Bob Dunning, a former American journo turned big Substack writer. Authors like Hanif Kureishi and Salman Rushdie have also succeeded with this model. However, all three had audiences before starting their paid newsletters. The paid newsletter model is proven for specific niches like investing, business≤ and tech. Think the Morning Brew or Bankless. That’s because readers in those niches have a good chunk of disposable income. I’m not a massive fan of paid newsletters for every creator. Running a paid newsletter can feel like pouring water into a bucket with holes. You’re constantly pouring in new subscribers while others leak out through churn. The churn rate of a typical paid newsletter subscriber is about three months. So unless you’re onboarding more paid subs than you lose every week, you’ll hit an income ceiling. You’re also committing to a content hamster wheel. With a newsletter as the product, you must deliver on time to paying subs. If you enjoy writing a regular newsletter, that’s not an issue, but some creators hate the idea of productizing something for $5–10 a month. Creating a paid newsletter means keeping your best content for paying subs. But gatewalling top-tier content slows down the organic growth rate of a newsletter. That, in turn, can slow down monetization unless you’re a whizz with ads. Granted, Substack addresses this problem somewhat by enabling newsletter owners to send free and paid newsletters to their lists. I experimented with a paid newsletter for a few months. It was somewhat profitable, but I hardly earned quit my job money. Plus, my newsletter grows organically via the Kit creator network, so I don’t like gating my content as it slows my flywheel down. I turned off paid subs and focused on promoting my offers and landing sponsors. I’ll probably try a paid newsletter in another niche in 2025. In short: try the paid model and see if it works for your niche. Write on, Bryan Collins PS If you like reading these daily emails, you’ll love my private, no-cost Telegram channel. I share behind-the-scenes content about how I’m growing my content business. My goal is to help you add $3–5k to your business in 2025. Join here |
Letters From the Desk of Bryan Collins
Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
I tested Google Gemini’s content creation capabilities. I wanted to see how it stacks up against ChatGPT and Claude for creating business copy. Google Gemini offers two interesting “gems” (think custom GPTs) for content creators: Copy Creator and Writing Editor. Copy Creator helps write taglines, mission statements, and social media posts. Writing Editor focuses on fixing grammar and improving content structure. I put both through their paces using content from my daily newsletter. When I fed...
Your existing content is like an untapped gold mine - most creators keep digging new holes instead of mining what they already have. I’ve spent years writing online, It can easily become a full-time, low-paying job if you keep digging. One method for getting around this problem is building a content library of your greatest hits. It’s easier to repurpose content if you have a library that you can draw from. Another method is tracking a few key weekly stats across each channel so you can see...
I spent years obsessing over niche selection. When I was a Forbes columnist, branding myself as “the productivity and leadership guy” seemed like a safe bet. I covered topics like time management, leadership, and getting sh*t done at work.I mapped dozens of hot niche-specific topics in a spreadsheet and published articles like: The Fastest Way To Accomplish More This Week How To Use The 4 Ds Of Time Management 4 Common Mistakes New Home Workers Make I wrote about these topics not because they...