Crypto-native newsletter businesses

Crypto isn’t just a new technology, it’s a new philosophy for how creative work is produced, shared, and owned on the internet.

NFTs turn any digital media file (eg essays, songs, art, podcasts, etc.) into an economic asset that can be monetized directly. Instead of being limited to subscriptions or ad revenue, you can monetize each individual essay by minting it as an NFT and selling it to your superfans as a collectible. This enables digital media to be monetized without ... See more

Meanwhile, ads allow you to monetize publicly accessible content. However, it’s a pain in the ass to constantly go through the cycle of sourcing ad partners, closing deals, and managing the relationship.

Crypto enables global permissionless crowdfunds. As long as you have an Ethereum address and some ETH, you can participate. This opens up the opportunity for people all over the world to raise money for any creative project.

The two main monetization channels for newsletter writers are: subscriptions and ads. Subscriptions are great because they provide recurring revenue but it usually takes a bit of time to build enough trust for people to pay for a subscription. Subscriptions also suffer from what I call “the paywall paradox”.

If you put your best content behind a paywall, it’ll be harder to acquire new subscribers. But if you make your best content free, it’ll be harder to retain subscribers.

The takeaway here is that NFTs open up an entirely new design space for monetization that we’ve still barely explored.

By using crypto rails, you can issue tokens to your community to align incentives and supercharge growth. I think the coolest thing you could do with a newsletter token is give token holders a percentage of future earnings in the form of on-chain dividends. As revenue accrues to an on-chain treasury for the newsletter, token holders can periodicall... See more