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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.