How to Start Monetizing Your Indie Newsletter

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Getting your newsletter off the ground isn’t an easy process. You have to pick an email platform. You have to get your newsletter ready for launch and then write your first issues. Once you’ve done all that, you have to focus on growth — getting your first 1,000-5,000 readers.

Now comes the hardest part: Starting to monetize your newsletter.

As Alex Hazlett and I wrote in our story on indie newsletter business models:

You may have read a success story or two that makes it seem like growing a newsletter and monetizing it is something that can happen quickly and easily. Neither of those things are true. There is a path to success, and we’re going to detail different opportunities to monetize your indie newsletter. But it’s important to be realistic about the timeline for success. We’ve seen that independent writers often need two years — or more! — to build an audience they can monetize.

Monetizing a newsletter takes a lot of time and effort. But there is a path to success.

So let’s walk through your options and try to put together a roadmap that will work for you and your newsletter.

How to know if you’re ready to start monetizing

There’s a misconception that you can’t start to monetize unless you have a massive audience. That’s simply not true. Plenty of writers with small lists — sometimes fewer than 1,000 readers — have had success driving revenue. But there’s a common theme among each of those success stories:

They have unusually loyal audiences.

How do you know if your audience is loyal? You might be able to tell based on open rates, click rates, 1-to-1 conversations with readers, surveys, or what subscribers say when they share your work on social media. For my money, I’d rather have a small audience of superfans than a large audience of casual readers. The more loyal your audience, the more likely they’ll be to support your work.

My own newsletter is proof of this. When I started to monetize Inbox Collective, I had fewer than 2,000 readers. But on a weekly basis, I heard from readers asking me if I might consider working with them as a consultant. My audience literally told me were willing to pay me for my work — I just had to listen to them.

Deciding when to monetize also depends on who you write for and what you write about. As we covered in the business model story, there are a few questions to ask upfront before you get serious about monetization:

• Does this newsletter have a specific audience?
• Do you have something unique to share with that audience?
• Can that audience get similar types of content elsewhere?

If your answers to those questions are “yes,” “yes,” and “no,” you have a pretty unique newsletter, and you may be able to monetize sooner rather than later, even if your audience has just a few hundred readers.

Of course, simply having a sizable audience might be enough of a reason to monetize. It really depends on how you monetize. Some general guidelines to consider:

• If you’re building around advertising, you probably need at least 2,000 readers to start monetizing. Anything smaller than that and the rates you’ll charge will be too small to be worth the effort of incorporating ads.
• If you’re building around a reader revenue model — a subscription, membership, or donation — you may be able to monetize with as few as 1,000 readers, assuming that those readers are fairly loyal and you cover a unique topic.
• If you’re building around consulting, teaching, or workshops, you may be able to monetize with as few as 500 readers as long as those readers are eager to learn from you.

Identify your revenue opportunities

Once you’re ready to monetize, the next step is figuring out where your revenue will come from. Indie newsletters tend to monetize in a few different ways. Some newsletters pick just a single revenue stream, but many lean on several options.

In our guide to indie newsletter business models, Alex and I identified five common business models:

• The Analyst
• The Curator 
• The Expert
• The Reporter
• The Writer

We also identified how each model is monetized. You can use this resource to figure out where you might want to start.

The Five Types of Indie Newsletter Business Models

Of course, your newsletter might not neatly fit in one of those models! So let’s talk through each option.

Selling a subscription or membership

Many newsletter platforms allow readers to pay you directly for access to content or community. And because of the way these newsletters make money — a reader might pay you as little as $5 per month for your newsletter, or as much as a few hundred dollars per year — subscriptions or memberships might lead to significant revenue (read: tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) in the long run.

If you want to build a subscription or membership strategy, think about what you’ll offer readers in exchange for a recurring payment. Most newsletter writers tend to build their paid offering around at least one of these four pillars:

• Content — This is the most common benefit of a paid offering. You’d be creating some sort of content — like premium articles or podcasts — on a regular basis for your readers, and they’d pay for access to it.
• Conversation — Some newsletters offer conversation as part of their paid offering. This might mean regular interviews with experts, like live conversations through Zoom or other platforms where paying supporters can join and ask questions of you and these experts. Or it might mean creating opportunities for you to engage directly with readers, either 1-to-1 or in a group setting.
• Community — You may want to build out a private community, through Discord or a Facebook group, where readers can engage with and learn from one another. This might work particularly well if you regularly join in with the community to ask questions or share ideas.
• Desire to support you — Readers may want to pay for your newsletter simply because they like you and want to see you do well. They care less about the benefits — they just want to support your work.

Subscription typically refers to a newsletter where access to exclusive content is the sole benefit. Membership refers to newsletters that offer access to something else — like conversation or community — instead of or in addition to content.

Start with the pillars you think are most essential to your success, and give yourself the chance to listen, learn, and adjust as you go. The benefits you offer on Day 1 may — and probably will — change over time.

Let’s also talk about setting a price for this paid offering. You’ll notice that a lot of paid newsletters charge $5 a month or $50 a year. That may be the price that many default to, but it’s not necessarily a best practice. I always recommend starting a bit higher than you’d think with your price point. Maybe it’s $7 or $10 a month, or maybe it’s higher. You can always offer free trials to readers to temporarily lower the price. Or you can permanently change the price later on — just remember that it’s easier to reduce the price if it’s too high than it is to raise it if it’s too low. 

To figure out your annual rate, first set your base monthly price, then multiply that number by 10. (So a $10 per month subscription becomes a $100 per year annual rate.) Two reasons I recommend that pricing strategy: One is that readers will see that they save money over the course of the year by going with the annual rate and end up paying a larger amount up front. The second is that every time Stripe (which powers nearly every subscription or membership platform) charges a credit card, they take $0.30 (plus 2.9% of the total payment). If you’re billing annually, you’d pay a single $0.30 fee. But for that same subscriber, billed monthly, Stripe’s taking $3.60 per year — and those fees really add up as you grow your paying audience.

Before you set a price, consider two key factors:

• How big is your potential audience? Do you write for a massive audience or a niche one?
• How easy is it to find the content you create? Are there lots of other writers or creators in this space, or will readers find this content exclusively in your newsletter?

Hard-to-find content for a niche audience, like a business-focused newsletter, might be worth hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per year. Content that’s easy to find elsewhere, and that’s intended for a massive audience, might be worth less than $100 per year. Think about where your newsletter falls on the spectrum below, and use that as a starting place to price your offering.

Let’s take this a step further and look at two examples of newsletters — both fictional — to help you understand how I might recommend pricing a paid offering.

First, let’s meet Jim. He writes a newsletter about learning how to grill, which he spun out of a popular Instagram account he created a few years ago with grilling videos and tips. He’s decided to go the subscription route. He’ll publish four articles every month for free, and on top of that, paying subscribers will receive a monthly post with exclusive recipes and Jim’s reviews of the best grill-related products to buy.

Now, let’s think about that chart above to decide how to price Jim’s newsletter:

• How big is the potential audience? — Jim’s writing about grilling, which appeals to millions of readers. I’m not saying he’ll eventually have an audience in the millions, but he certainly writes for a large potential audience.
• How exclusive is the content? — There are already lots of blogs and social media accounts around grilling, though Jim has a unique voice in this space.

Based on that criteria, I’d place Jim in the top right quadrant of the chart. I’d suggest pricing his offering somewhere between $50-$100/year.

Here’s a second example: Meet Janet. She writes about how businesses can grow an audience on social media, which she started after creating a Facebook group for people working in social media roles. She’s decided to go the membership route — building a community is what she’s most interested in. Like Jim, she also writes four articles per month for free. But her members get interesting additional benefits, like an annual one-hour social media strategy session with Janet, plus access to expert-written social media tutorials and the ability to join community forums where others can share feedback and assistance.

• How big is the potential audience? It’s not quite as big as you might think. Since she’s not offering general social media tips — she’s writing for people who run social media accounts for big companies or organizations — it’s a bit more niche.
• How exclusive is the content? Some of the benefits — like that annual, hour-long strategy call — are incredibly exclusive. Janet might be the kind of expert who charges $150-200 per hour for private consulting work, making that benefit pretty valuable.

So I think Janet’s newsletter falls into the bottom left corner of that chart. I might recommend that she charge at least $250-350 per year for her newsletter.

Before you (or Jim or Janet) launch a paid strategy, I’d recommend surveying your audience to see if they’re interested in the features or benefits that you want to provide. That sort of survey — done a few weeks before a paid launch — can be a good check-in to make sure your strategy lines up with what readers might be willing to pay for.

Several email platforms, like AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, and Substack, offer the ability to sell a subscription or membership as part of their platform. Some take a cut of revenue, and some do not. I broke down the different fee structures in this guide.

If you’re not using one of these tools, you can try a service like Memberful or PayPal to sell your paid offering and then connect the apps to your email platform using Zapier.

Selling advertising in your newsletter

Some indie newsletters bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per year via advertising. The secret is to find advertisers who will bring additional value to your readers. The best advertisers complement the work you’re doing with your newsletter.

Start by identifying formats that work for you. A few to consider:

• Title sponsorships, where a newsletter is presented by a specific sponsor.
• Native ads, which might include a block of text highlighting a sponsor’s content, usually written in your newsletter’s own voice.
• Secondary ads, like job listings, classifieds, or event listings, which are sold at a lower rate than title sponsorships or native ads.
• Banner ads, where a sponsor gets an image-based ad within the newsletter, including a link out to their brand.
• Dedicated emails, where the entire body of the newsletter promotes your advertiser.

As a general rule of thumb, most newsletters sell based on a metric known as cost per opens, or CPO. (You’ll hear some writers refer to this as CPM/opens. It’s the same metric.) Many newsletters sell these at a rate anywhere between about $20 and $50 per thousand readers who open the newsletter.

So let’s say you’ve got a fairly niche newsletter, and you want to sell on the higher end of that range — $50 per thousand opens. To calculate the value of an ad, take the number of readers who opened your newsletter, divide by 1,000, and multiply by that $50 rate.

For instance, for a newsletter with 10,000 readers, a 50% open rate, and a $50 CPO, the value of an ad would be $250. (That’s 5,000 emails opened, divided by 1,000 and multiplied by $50.) And as the newsletter grows, the value of an ad would increase with it. When that same newsletter gets to 25,000 readers, if the open rate and CPO remain unchanged, the value of the ad would rise to $625.

Not everything should be sold based on opens. You may also want to sell secondary ads, like job listings or classifieds, based on a flat fee. A good rule of thumb: Take the value of a native ad, and divide it by four. That should get you in the right range for the price of a secondary ad. So for that newsletter with 10,000 readers and ads priced at $250, I might price a classified ad at about $65 per ad.

As for tools to sell ads: Some email platforms, like Beehiiv or ConvertKit, offer their own ad network, where they’ll sell ads on your behalf. This might make sense for a busy writer who wants to bring in ad revenue but who doesn’t want to deal directly with advertisers.

You could also use a platform like Passionfroot, Letterhead, or Sponsy to sell and manage your ad inventory. You could pay for a tool like Sales Pro to identify high-value sponsors for your newsletter. Or you could join an ad network, like Paved, where advertisers can find you and buy ads.

(There are also big programmatic ad networks out there, like Broadstreet, Jeeng, LiveIntent, or Passendo. These are typically only used by larger, more established newsletters due to the complexity and cost of these tools.)

Asking readers for donations

Reader revenue doesn’t have to come from subscriptions or memberships — you might create a voluntary option for readers to support you on a one-time basis or with ongoing donations.

The upside here is that you can keep your content free to all, which might allow you to reach a wider audience. The downside? Payment will be voluntary and sporadic, so expect to see far lower conversion rates and revenue than if you went with a subscription or membership.

Some email platforms, like AWeber or ConvertKit, do allow for donations as part of their built-in commerce tools. Two other options available to you: Donorbox and Buy Me a Coffee. Both allow readers to make one-time or recurring payments.

Selling ebooks, merchandise, or other products

You can sell your work directly to readers. Maybe you want to build a course based on your expertise and sell it to your audience. Maybe you want to take some of your best posts, package them into an ebook, and sell that to readers. Or maybe you want to sell merchandise — anything from books to tote bags to t-shirts.

AWeber, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp have commerce plans that allow you to sell stuff to readers, or you could turn to a third-party — like Etsy, Gumroad, or Podia — to sell products.

Using affiliate links to recommend other products

If you frequently recommend things to readers, like books or products, think about using affiliate links. These special links help a store identify which sales you sent their way and offer a small commission for every sale.

If you like a product, check their website to see if they offer an affiliate program — it may be free to sign up and become an affiliate. One tip: If you recommend books to your readers, sign up for Bookshop. They offer a 10% cut of any books sold, which is far higher than other affiliate platforms.

Consulting, coaching, or teaching

If readers want to learn from you, you can try teaching them — either on a 1-to-1 basis (consulting or coaching) or via on-demand classes. For the latter, consider a platform like Podia, where you can host and sell your classes in one place.

Consulting or coaching is often priced higher, since it’s more individualized, but it takes more of your time. On-demand courses can be built once and sold in perpetuity — it’s more work up front, but you may also see long-term revenue from them.

Hosting events or workshops

Think about what types of one-off events you could hold that a reader might be willing to pay for, from digital talks to IRL conferences. You can price these differently depending on how exclusive the event is — a private meeting where a small group of readers gets to learn from you will be far more expensive than a webinar.

Monetizing through indirect revenue

You may be using your newsletter as a way to be discovered for other sorts of work. Maybe your newsletter will lead to paid talks or open up opportunities for freelance gigs. None of these are direct ways to monetize the newsletter, but they’re still revenue opportunities you can connect back to the work you do in your newsletter.

What happens after you launch your monetization strategy?

The launch of your monetization strategy is an exciting moment, but it’s also just the start of this next step in your journey. There’s still lots to do over the coming months. Let’s talk about a few things you’ll want to do to make sure your newsletter is successful as you grow.

Review your data

No matter how big or how loyal your audience is, monetization rarely happens quite as quickly as you hope. It’s rare to see a writer launch a paid newsletter and see massive growth right away. It takes time — months and often years — to drive the revenue you truly want.

A few weeks after launch, you should have an initial sense of how things are going. Now’s a good moment to check in and be honest with yourself about progress so far.

Remember that slow and steady growth is absolutely OK. Let’s say you’re building around a subscription model. If you’ve got a subscription that costs $100 per year, and you add 50 new paying subscribers this month, that might not seem like a lot. But those 50 subscribers aren’t paying just one time — they’re going to be recurring subscribers who renew, hopefully, for years to come.

I want you to keep your focus on one key metric, known in the industry as annual recurring revenue, or ARR. Those 50 subscribers, paying $100 per year, are worth $5,000 in ARR. They’ll pay you that amount this year, and when they renew next year, they’ll be paying another $5,000. If you averaged 50 new subscribers every month for the next year, you’d have $60,000 in ARR and be well on your way to building a really strong subscription business.

Be aware, though, that you will see churn among those paying readers. Some will cancel their newsletter because they no longer get value for it. Others will forget to update their credit card and accidentally lose access to their subscription. No newsletter brings back 100% of its audience. But if the product is great, the majority of your users should come back year after year to continue to support your work.

If you’re building around something else, like a digital course or ads, it’s worth taking stock of the results. Maybe you’ve got survey data, for instance, that can help you understand what readers think about these offerings. Maybe you’re checking in with advertisers after their ad runs to collect feedback about how things went for them. Listen, learn, and make adjustments to your strategy.

And this is a good time to consider other monetization opportunities. Maybe you started with a subscription but are now thinking about adding a secondary source of revenue, like ads or affiliate links. Now is a good moment to decide if you want to invest some of your time in building out those secondary revenue streams. (Of course, you can always revisit these ideas down the road, too!)

Evaluate your paid offering

If you offer a subscription or membership, ask yourself: Which benefits have resonated with readers so far? Think back to those four pillars: content, conversation, community, and the desire to support you. Try to evaluate what works so far using the stats you have, such as engagement data, like page views or social media engagement, and direct feedback from readers.

You may decide that you don’t have enough data to make a judgment yet (and that’s fine!), or you may decide to pivot and adjust your benefits now. If you do so, I’d encourage you to think “add and subtract.” You may want to add in new benefits, or sunset ones that don’t resonate with your subscribers. Don’t be afraid to pivot away from the stuff that isn’t working and focus more on what does — or what might work going forward. The benefits you start with at launch will change over the coming months. The best newsletter operators learn as they go and make adjustments to serve their audience.

And perhaps you have an idea for a new benefit, but you don’t have the time to launch it yet. Put it on your to-do list, and let it go for a little while. It’s easy to overextend yourself, so give yourself permission to hold off on that good idea until you have the time to actually work on it.

One more thing: Every time you launch a new benefit, make sure you tell your audience about it. They might be excited to learn about this — and may even decide to pay for your newsletter based on that new benefit.

Speak with your readers

While you may be too slammed to reply to everyone who reads your newsletter, I’d absolutely encourage you to engage with your paying audience as much as possible. Every time they email you or reach out on social media, try to ask them some questions. What do they like about your monetization strategy? What kinds of content do they want to see more of? Is there anything you can do to improve this newsletter for them? The more you talk with your audience, the more you’ll understand how to develop your newsletter for future paying supporters.

A few final takeaways

There’s a lot here — and building out a monetization strategy can feel overwhelming. But take a moment to revisit through these four core concepts:

1.) Monetization isn’t about audience size — it’s about loyalty. You don’t need a massive audience to monetize, but you do need an audience that trusts you and values your newsletter.

2.) Consider a few different monetization strategies, but don’t try to do them all at once. Start with one or two opportunities, and try to add on additional revenue streams over time.

3.) Pick the right tools to support monetization. Talk with your email platform to see if they can help you monetize in the ways you want. If they can’t, look to outside vendors — particularly those that integrate with your email platform or ones that can connect to your platform via Zapier.

4.) Make time to review what’s working and what isn’t. If you see progress, even if it’s slow, that can be a good sign. But be honest with yourself: If something isn’t working, be willing to move on to the next idea.

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