Paid Newsletters: Conversion Rates, Newsletter Bundles, Building a Six-Figure Newsletter

The good news is that the internet is trending back to Kelly’s vision. For example, many top writers on Substack earn far more than they did at salaried jobs. The economics of low take rates plus enthusiastic fandom does wonders. On Substack, 1,000 newsletter subscribers paying $10/month nets over $100K/year to the writer.

A bundle essentially lets a group of newsletter-writers dynamically price-discriminate: most readers are subscribing because one or two components of the bundle are great and the rest are nice-to-have, so Everything’s $20/month sticker price is implicitly charging something like $15 for one newsletter in the bundle, $1 for another, $0 for another—b... See more

Focused, quality-obsessed publications will take advantage of bundle economics to collect “stars” and monetize them through some combination of subscriptions (less likely) or alternate media forms. Said media forms, like podcasts, are tough to grow on their own, but again, that is what makes them such a great match for writing, which is perfect for... See more

What’s interesting about newsletters is that consumers are willing to pay for them. While blogs have never really figured out monetization (apart from ads), Substack alone claims more than 50,000 paying subscribers.