The Rise of Newsletters

The @ConvertKit team just did a low key announcement that’s game changing for creators: They’ll sell ads on your behalf for your newsletter and you get 75% of the sales. This is huge! Here’s why…

1/ Get a cup of coffee. In this thread, I'll walk you through the economics of an internet newsletter. If you want to start your own newsletter (or are just curious about what it takes to run one), this thread will give you some useful pointers.

1/ Thread: Newsletter TAM Today I polled on twitter how many investment professionals pay for newsletter/research blog/substack subscription. Almost half responded: Zero. The other half who pays for subscription, more than half of them pays for only one newsletter.

everyone talking about subscriber potential, but what BI is buying is a blue print for the next era of advertising— - 2,500,000 emails/first party data - 1,000,000 opens/active registered users - direct relationship with advertisers (non-programmatic) - emails are new cookies

Paid newsletters are trendy right now, but most creators would earn far more if they focused on selling one-time products. There's a much clearer path to $100,000/yr from books, courses, etc than from paid newsletters.

rise of the ‘renaissance creator’ 👀

Paid newsletters are over-rated: it’s grueling work, your best thinking is stuck behind a paywall, and selling products is much more profitable

For all the talk about the Passion Economy, it's still discussed mostly in terms of monetization (with a clear focus on subscriptions) There's so many opportunities to reinvent engagement and distribution, too 3 recent examples from @packyM @kanakhey and @jarroddicker 👇

1/ I think Substack is in the process of deciding whether they want to take Shopify’s approach or Etsy’s approach, or some combination of both...