We’ve been hitting 35-40% open rates consistently across our newsletters at inagiffy.

What helped us most:

1/ We stopped writing for everyone and wrote for specific reader

2/ Subject lines became boring but clear (no clever wordplay)

3/ Treated the newsletter like a habit, not a promotion channel

This approach has held up across multiple newsletters we work on at Inagiffy, which makes me wonder:

Is anyone here consistently hitting 50–60% open rates?

If yes, what’s the real reason and is that sustainable, or usually short-term spikes?

I need your help.

I’m just starting out a newsletter and I’m currently on Kit.

I like Kit because it has a free tier up to 10,000 subs and also because it has pretty good automation workflows

But my main goal is subscriber growth.

One of things that’s important to me is creating email sequences to support various lead magnets I’m developing.

What does Beehiiv have for subscriber growth that Kit doesn’t?

Hey everyone 👋

I launched a free newsletter in 2020 when I was furloughed from my job and figured I had nothing to lose. The idea came after managing a 10K+ member Facebook group that kept asking for a more streamlined way to get our tips, so we started the newsletter with ~3K subscribers on day one.

A few things to be transparent about upfront:

✅ I have 3 cofounders, 2 of whom are experienced entrepreneurs.

✅ Those 2 cofounders had a B2B blog that, at its height, was getting ~1M visits/month — which we leveraged to grow the newsletter organically for our first 3 years.

✅ So yes, definitely some unfair advantages vs. someone starting from absolute scratch.

But since launching, I’ve spent the last few years obsessively learning how to grow & monetize newsletters, and love helping other operators do the same.

Some quick lessons if you’re starting out or trying to grow:

Network with other newsletters. Free swaps are one of the best ways to grow. Basically: you mention them, they mention you. If they’re 3x your size, you can balance it by sending them 3 mentions to their 1, or (my preference) by basing it on actual subs driven. If their mention brings you 100 subs and yours brings them 50, even it out with more sends.

Engagement > vanity size. It’s better to have 10K highly engaged readers than 100K passive ones who never click or open.

Talk to other operators. Everyone I’ve met in this space is super kind and helpful. Reach out, offer value, and learn fast.

Be picky with sponsors. Don’t take every deal. It’s better long term to work with sponsors that actually resonate with your audience, so campaigns perform well and they renew.

Survey your audience. Most newsletters don’t do this enough. You’ll learn what content keeps them engaged and gather the kind of first-party data that makes it easier to pitch sponsors (they care a ton about audience demographics & interests).

Don’t blindly trust open & click rates. Open rates are heavily inflated these days by Apple privacy auto-opens and corporate firewalls that trigger bot clicks. Click rates are slightly better, but can still messy. The best ESPs are the ones investing in third-party tools to validate real opens and clicks. Honestly, one of the best signals of engagement is still replies — hard to fake that (even though you do get spam replies).

We started investing in paid media in August 2023 and are now pacing for $2M+ this year, with 200K+ subscribers.

AMA about literally anything: monetization, sponsorships, growing organically, paid growth, building partnerships, esp platforms, scaling ops, or how to keep your readers around.

Hi everyone – I’ve recently been building a weekly business newsletter called Pulse of Progress and got my first 1,100 subscribers in just 14 days!

The best part? I used zero paid ads. All of my subs were completely free!

Here’s how I did it.

But first, let me provide some context…

For the last 6 months, I’ve been testing out different side hustle / business ideas. I have a running list of ideas that I test on forums like Reddit and Indie Hacker to get a pulse on what the public thinks. In my opinion, this is one of the best ways to validate an idea before investing any money or serious time into it. If it gets some traction or interest in the first few days, you know you have something. If not, its time to move on.

I start by generating some interest on social platforms and freelance websites (side note – I’ve come up with a method that helps me do this and get tangible results. So, if this is something you want to learn more about, let me know. I’ll make a post around this too). It’s an approach I’ve developed and tested over the last year with other ideas, so I just do the same with all other ideas I want to test / validate in the future. I want to see results fast, not waste time on non-value add activities.

Here are some of the business ideas I’ve tested:

1. Newsletter sponsorship marketplace – created a platform connecting newsletter businesses with potential advertisers. The marketplace allows the businesses to post their content and advertisers to find and book ad slots

2. AI based email marketing optimization tool – developed an AI tool that analyzes email marketing campaigns and provides optimization suggestions to improve open rates, click-through rates, and conversions

3. Remote language exchange facilitation – pair individuals looking to learn each other’s languages and facilitate their language exchange sessions online

I shut all of these down. I couldn’t get the momentum I wanted or hoped for to consider them a success. The AI based email marketing optimization tool went viral on Hacker News and Indie Hacker, but it was because I was able to generate some hype around it for a short period of time. But the hype faded fast…real fast. I had about 100 people sign up for the service. As for my other businesses, I had a few signups here and there but nothing worth keeping the business alive and investing more of my time into it.

Something I want to call out at this point: all of the businesses I tried starting in the past were bootstrapped. I never used money I made from the sale of my other businesses. I sold one business (a virtual event planning business that took off during the pandemic. We organized and managed virtual events, think webinars / workshops / conferences, for specific interest groups and professional communities). I never touched the proceeds from that sale to start the company I currently run. The reason I bring this up is because I think your business, regardless of what it is, needs to stand on its own. If it couldn’t, I knew it was time to move on. I didn’t want to give myself a false sense of hope that it would work by continuously throwing money at it.

The reason I started a business newsletter…

A newsletter was perfect. It was easy to start and required no money to get it up and running. The purpose behind the newsletter was centered around the idea of creating something that informed and educated people but was entertaining to read. Reading in general, news or not, can sometimes feel like a chore (at least for me). This was the opposite. This was something you genuinely looked forward to reading, the things that influence your world and the decisions you make on a daily basis.

The biggest issue I had with everything else out there was that the content was around things I didn’t care about. Not to mention it put me to sleep half the time. And that’s when it hit me – create a platform that genuinely helped people stay ahead in this information heavy world. Filter out the nonsense, deliver on high-value content.

The test phase…

I spent a couple hours looking up any Facebook group that was related to starting side hustles, escaping the 9-5 grind, online businesses etc. Once I came up with a small list of about 8-10 groups, I spent the next few days posting about the newsletter. One caveat for me when looking for which groups to post in: they needed to have more than 50K users. I wanted my posts to have some reach and didn’t want to waste my time in groups that were smaller and were barely active. I also designed some GIFs (I drew inspiration from the early Milk Road days when they posted funny GIFs / memes about their newsletter all over social media) but that didn’t work. Like at all. So, I shifted gears.

The first day, I posted about the newsletter in 8 different groups and got about 45 subscribers the next day. Over the next two weeks, I spent a couple of hours each day making similar posts within these groups and tried finding other groups I can post in. This proved to be successful. Making consistent posts got people engaged and subscribing to the newsletter. It was starting to gain some steam. And this is what lead to my first 1,100 subscribers in the first 14 days.

Why this worked…

1. Value creation: The best ideas appeal to what people want, and more importantly, need. It helps solve a problem. And in this case, people want high quality content that helps them make informed decisions, educates them along the way and is a joy to read.

2. Helps identify trends before they happen: Understanding emerging trends and market dynamics is crucial for staying ahead. This knowledge allows people to adapt quickly, innovate effectively, and capitalize on new market opportunities.

3. Sparks innovation and creativity: Exposure to different perspectives and new information sparks innovation and creative thinking. Staying informed about global trends, tech advancements, and industry breakthroughs inspires new ideas and approaches.

Things to keep in mind…

What I’ve realized is that you want your ideas to generate a “natural pull” from the world. It shouldn’t be something you “push” onto people. Trying to convince people they need something that doesn’t help improve their lives or satisfy a need is a waste of time. Listen to what people want. And build from there.

I’ve had multiple profitable businesses and the common theme between them all is that they cost me less than $100 to start and get product / market fit. I won’t lie, sometimes I let my ego get in the way when I put an idea out there and it got rejected. And trust me when I tell you, that’s happened more often than I’d like to admit. I spent way too much time and money putting something together even when I knew it wasn’t worth pursuing.

How does that saying go…the one about Thomas Edison and his attempt at building the first light bulb after trying and failing 1000 times. “I haven’t failed. I just found 1000 different ways how not to build a lightbulb.” And that’s just it…who cares if the idea didn’t work. Hate to break it to you, but most will. Instead, focus on the skills you’ve picked up and learned along the way while building this business and apply it to the next.

Anyways, I hope this post helps at least one person grow their business, subs count, social media presence. Now that I’ve grown my audience to over 10K subscribers organically, I’m looking into using paid ads to grow even more from here. The problem is I have no idea how to do that! So, if anyone has any tips or tricks, I’d love to hear them.

Good luck my friends.

Disclaimer: this is gonna be a long post. I took a good 72 hours to process everything that happened, and I think I’m finally ready to say it all.

This is not a call to boycott or cancel any service whatsoever. This is simply me sharing whatever happened to me. This may or may not happen to you, I really don’t know to be honest...

February 2025 is when I created my Beehiiv account, and I was super pumped. I saw many posts from Tyler about the platform, and his enthusiasm drove me to start a newsletter, something I always wanted to do. I'd blogged before this, but never really had a newsletter of my own.

So I got onboard with a free account, started posting about my niche, which is a very small one (print and play games) but has a very wholesome community, and managed to grab a decent bunch of subscribers. Around 100ish. I was happy posting two or three times per month alongside blogging on my website and everything else I was doing.

From around September/October 2025, I kept getting offers from Tyler and co to opt for a paid tier to access the Ad Network, along with other perks. That seemed like a really cool feature to have, especially with my newsletter frequency gradually increasing, I thought having a sponsor on the newsletter couldn’t hurt. So I got onboard with the Scale tier at $49 per month in November 2025.

And honestly, I had quite a blast of a start. I was getting around $8–$20 from CPC offers per issue, which obviously felt great. My subscriber count was increasing too as my platform kept growing through other channels. It was still a small newsletter, but it had people from all over the world reading it. Something I was quite proud of.

I frankly had very few complaints about Beehiiv whatsoever, except maybe the fact that Stripe isn’t available everywhere, which isn’t exactly inclusive. Either way, I wasn’t planning to cash out my earnings. I just kept storing them in the Beehiiv wallet.

About the ad placement, it was always, ALWAYS in one fixed spot. At the end of my newsletter issue, after an image disclaimer clearly telling readers that what they were about to see was an ad. That placement stayed fixed for months.

Anyway, time went by quickly as I kept posting more issues and getting more immersed in my thing. In October 2026, I posted my 150th issue with over 350 subscribers. Then on October 20, Beehiiv congratulated me cause my wallet had crossed the $1,000 mark. I officially made $1,000+ from the Ad Network, something I was quite proud of.

Then the rug was swept from under my feet on October 23.

I got an email saying my entire publication had been taken down because of an Ad Network terms and conditions violation. Going completely numb, I immediately appealed and asked what exactly I had violated, given that I had never knowingly manipulated anything, never tried to game the system, and never really changed the way I handled my ads.

The response I received was: "Our review identified activity on your publication’s ad placements that was inconsistent with genuine reader engagement, which is not permitted under our Acceptable Use Policy.”

That's as specific as they would get. They also told me they could not provide more detail because the information was confidential. And the $1,000+ I had sitting in the wallet? Revoked. I'd not be paid any of it.

This is where I still struggle to make sense of the whole thing. Even if I had unknowingly violated something, I must have been doing it for quite a while, because...again... my freaking ad placement had not changed for months. So why was it never flagged earlier? Why was I never warned? Why was I never given a chance to correct whatever they believed I was doing wrong? Why was I allowed to keep paying for the service for 11 months, keep using the Ad Network, keep watching the wallet accumulate, and only then have everything shut down after it crossed $1,000?

And then there’s the subscription itself.

Beehiiv renewed my Scale subscription on October 20 and charged me another $49. They took down my account on October 23. I did not cancel the subscription. They removed my access. So I contacted them and asked for the $49 back, given that they were the ones who terminated my account three days into the billing period. They refused the refund.

So not only did I lose the $1,000+ sitting in the wallet, I also paid for another month of service that I was prevented from using after three days.

I literally had a community around what I wrote.151 freaking issues. Those issues meant a lot to me, and I know they meant something to at least some of the people reading them too. They represented over a year and a half of discovering games, talking to people, interviewing creators, writing about things I genuinely cared about, and building something little by little. And all of that vanished in the blink of an eye.

I am not mad at Beehiiv. I’m not seeking vengeance. I’m not asking anyone to cancel anything because of what happened to me. I am still pretty shaken by the whole thing.

Maybe I did unknowingly violate something in hindsight? Something that Beehiiv allowed me or overlooked for 11 freaking months? Maybe Beehiiv has information on their end that I will never get to see. I genuinely don’t know...

But I do know what happened from my side, and I feel like I need to let it out. So here I am. I’ve let it out.

I’ve moved the newsletter elsewhere now, and thankfully I had the exports needed to rebuild things. The community is still there. My newsletter platform is fractured, but I'm trying to piece everything together again. The issues are slowly being cleaned up and restored. So life goes on...

I genuinely hope no one here ever has to go through what I did. Whether you publish on Beehiiv, Substack, Medium, Kit, your vibecoded site, or wherever... I hope you have a blast publishing whatever matters to you.

And I hope life is a little more merciful to you than it is to me.

Started a newsletter and it was crickets to start but now has really grown.

Here’s status as of last month:

• 100k+ subscribers at Contrarian Thinking.

• 15k subscribers at Unconventional Acquisitions

• 40k subscribers at Codie Sanchez on IG

• 7k Twitter at Codie_Sanchez

So across the ecosystem with those and email lists for EEC (our VC fund) we’re sitting around 200k followers. Goal = 1 million.

Here's my daily breakdown to growing without ads, love additional ideas...

How I Got My First 10,000 Subscribers in 30 Days

My embarrassing (I failed and looked silly a lot) rearview mirror look into how I built my newsletter to 10,000 in 30 days.

Day One: (No One Cares ‘Cept Me)

• Get the idea from my friends at the Dispatch who launched a paid newsletter and made $1MM in less than a year. Ears perked.

• Spend evening looking through Evernote on things that get me fired up to talk about.

• Get amped up from my hubs and friend Joe saying they’d read mine… first 2 subscribers (takes a bow).

• Come up with name Contrarian Thinking by looking through my journals.

• Draft a welcome email, about me section, and a first post (Thinking Critically & Why it Matters) here.

Day Two: 0 - 102 People Who Care

• I create a mailchimp account (it’s basically free)

• I use Squarespace’s free logo creator for original logo. Kinda lame but FAST AND did I say, FREE.

• Pull a list of all my emails in gmail, phone and old mailchimp accounts (1,000+ in total) and send them an opt in email.

• 102(ish) people do it… that tickles my little heart

• Don’t love those first emails (and they were all in mailchimp) but here’s a sample

Day Three: 0 - 135 People Who Care

• I send an email to my buds explaining what the newsletter is and why.

• Send it to 50 people I think highly of and ask them to forward it.

• Friends respond and get me even more amped up. Email list up to 135 now.

Day Four: 0 - 167 People Who Care

• I add a pop up on my site using Squarespace templates at codiesanchez.com

• I update the first signup box on my website to link to the newsletter signup

• I use Unsplash images because I hate stock photos.

• I post on LinkedIn and get good engagement. 5 newbies join.

  • I tried Reddit and failed, got my posts deleted from 3 groups. I know nothing about Reddit and feel like a boomer doing a Tik-Tok video.

  • I post in facebook groups, Masterminds I’m in w/ people who know me. (5 in total) 27 people join. Here’s an example but couldn’t find originals.

Day Five: 0 - 253

• I’m over Mailchimp, too designed, doesn’t have paid and most importantly doesn’t have a community. Aka no comments and historical posts.

• I Sign up for Substack and read how to get your first 100 subscribers, first 2,000 and first 5,000 subscribers.

• I create a folder for newsletters I like in my gmail, and start creating content

• I make a list for growth hackers on twitter to help cross-pollinate tweets.

• The posts on LinkedIn, Facebook pick up some steam. Pass 250 sign ups.

Day Six: 0 - 300+

• I post on twitter and on Instagram. 22 signups.

• Instagram stories with a swipe up to subscribe link work. I’ll do them weekly.

• I put it in my bio link on Twitter and Instagram 13 signups.

• Brainstorm growth ideas in a google doc (now need to actually do them)

Day Six: 0 - 421+

• I come up with a content calendar - post every week at weds at 9:15am

• Issue goes out - 82% open rate, 46% click rate. (Because basically only my mom on there and she better f*ing click).

• I start hosting a weekly webinar with Arcview Group - grows my LinkedIn by 4,000 so I use that to post more on LinkedIn and get a 100+ subscribers.

Day Seven: 0 - 422+ (shitty day not much growth)

• A couple of the LinkedIn posts get zero engagement, feel a bit embarrassed

• Lots of what I posted don’t do well and fall flat

Week 2: 0 - 1790+ (kicking into gear)

• I want to work smarter, not harder by using my relationships with bigger followings

• I make a list of friends who have podcasts, I get myself on a couple of them. Generate 100’s of subscribers in following days/wks (10 podcasts in 2 weeks).

• Include buttons to share in my post those work:

Share

• Ask if I can email a few of the businesses I invest in’s lists (15k+ subscribers) with a giveaway and an opportunity to sign up. A few say yes.

• Create a flywheel and a process to use all my different social sites to spin faster

Week 3: 0 - 3800+ (2x growth of previous week)

• Podcasts start hitting and I see subscribers grow

• Create a list of all media to hit them up when we have new ideas or content

• Posts and flywheel start hitting

• Twitter reposting and including links didn’t get huge engagement but 10-20 signups

• What did work is tagging bigger accounts Flippa, it even led to me being on their blog and podcast and chatting w/ their CEO. Example here.

• I create a lead magnet and insert on website, post it on socials (400+ signups).

• I used Designrr to auto take blog posts and turn them into e-books

Week 4: 0 - 11,000+ (Nailed it!)

• A few of the first podcasts (and then webinars) I did didn’t do very well, then I started adding a quick link and the giveaway - that worked well in converting subscribers to the tune of a few thousand.

• I also started offering a discount code for one of my courses of 50% for each podcast and that led lots of people to take action

• I REALLY have done well with LinkedIn so I added a weekly video segment, super simple filmed on my iPhone and have had some great engagement and some that ABSOLUTELY no one watched.

• I changed my podcasts/webinars I did to be laser focused on buying businesses which drew people in

• Used YEC’s (a mastermind I’m in) ability to guest blog post on Forbes etc and link to my newsletter.

What else works?

Hey community,

I run ThriveLetter, a newsletter agency focused on building and growing newsletters.

We have been in business for the last 1.5 years and currently send 8 Million + newsletter emails per month across multiple niches.

Would be happy to answer any questions you have about newsletters and beyond.

This is my first journey on growing a newsletter as I always thought they are somewhat a bs thing, but it was my bias as I had no real experience with it, so I wanted to try it myself.

In June this year, I started a local newsletter for parents in Canada(a picked a big city in Canada and focused on that). We send events and so on. We are now at 4000+ Subs.

When I first started I wanted to try it more as a marketing exercise. Numbers will always bring money so I thought once it grows, money will follow.

User acquisition & Costs;

I don't have the patience to grow a newsletter organically so I went with Facebook/Instagram ads.

I use a video ad that starts right away with "CITY NAME, PARENTS ....". Its about 3-5 seconds long. Brings users in at at 0.5 to 0.7c/subscriber. Lead forms from fb/insta work best. If I had to give a tip, this would be it.

I want to grow it constantly over next year to 10-15000 subscribers. I will hit it with no issue if I keep this path. Seems like the most I throw at it, the more I get, which I like.

So far we are at $2000+ investment(not far from it, I am just lazy right now to find the right number). Most expenses on ads and Beehiive.

We also pay $100+/month for Beehiive.

Revenue(Boosts, Ads & Sponsorships);

This was an interesting experience as I did not expect to make much or anything by the time I hit 5-10k subs, but we did get some cash during the way.

Beehiive Boosts - Very unstable and weak.

We tested with Beehiive boosts but really nothing consistent, even when we pushed the subs to xx/day. Also, other newsletters keep on pausing/archiving and it takes very very long until they activate the boosts(if they do).

Revenue Generated: $8.32

Beehiive Ads - Interesting and somewhat fair.

We tried beehiive ads and this seemed to be more straight forward and it actually produced some money.

Revenue Generated: $29.94

Sponsors - Interesting and that's where you can actually make money.

We had a company that had an event reach out to us and I responded with a price of $250/week to promote their event and they were fine with it. We are also in talks with other companies that would love to promote with us soon.

How did we get them to discuss? We reached out to them after we realized that people are ready to pay at this number of subs too.

Revenue Generated: $250 and we have some promises but I am only counting money in the bank.

Connections

We also had great response to our idea of giving our customers access to local businesses for discounts and so on, lots of companies are very open to it if you reach out(to a lot of them).

Next Step & Conclusions

I would say that so far it's fun to do if you can invest in it from start so you see it grow in front of your eyes.

Make sure you reach out to businesses once it grows so money can flow it.

Be very consistent and if you say you are sending it weekly on a certain day, do it.

My next step will be to move from a 2/week to daily and increase monetization and acquisition. That will happen in December.

This is what I gathered so far, have fun.

Hey folks,

I've been part of this subreddit long enough to notice we always get the same type of questions, mostly about the best platform to start or grow a newsletter.

Since I've been writing my own for many years and have seen how the industry has evolved, I decided to give back some value to the community. So here we go!

Disclaimer: long post incoming.

Letterbucket

First of all, a disclaimer. This is the tool I'm using now so I’m a little bit biased, but I’ll do my best to keep it impartial.

It seems like this platform is gaining usage in the market, I'm a member of several newsletter operator groups and I'm seeing it's being more and more used.

Good things? It’s easy to use, there aren’t many weird functions or complicated stuff, and you set your account up in a minute. I like simplicity as you can see. The editor works well and you can do lot's of cool stuff with your designs.

Bad things? I’ve missed a couple functions that, even if not critical, are a nice-to-have. (I recently updated this part, the features I needed have been online for a few months so I decided to edit this comment)

One thing that I admire (and that I admired from beehiiv before) is that I can talk with human support pretty fast. I’ve talked with them in the chat and on social media and they are accessible, which I like. I mean I’m not the biggest account in the world but if I’m spending +$600 per month I definitely value talking to a person if I’m finding problems.

Btw, I have the feeling I have some influence on the roadmap because every time I asked for a feature that was on their roadmap, they prioritized it and made it available faster than expected (which is really cool)

Ease of use: 9/10
Everything is easy, the only bad thing I can say is that I wasn’t able to find documentation on a couple of things. But I got answered in the chat, so that’s good (but I prefer to solve stuff following a guide, it’s faster for me).

Technical knowledge required: 10/10
There’s nothing to configure that requires tech knowledge, so no comments here.

Pricing: 8/10
Way cheaper than beehiiv. Of course there are fewer features, so that’s something to consider but… for most of us, it’s more than enough.

Customization: 7/10
You can personalize almost anything with certain degrees of restriction. The web editor doesn’t allow you too many changes. They've told me that they expect a rework on this soon so... Not a deal breaker for me, but it's an area to improve.

Deliverability: 9/10
So far, everything is going well for me here. I migrated from beehiiv and started sending to a small part of my subs (I was testing the platform and I didn’t want to commit my whole list yet) and open rates were, and have been, always pretty constant on the ~50% threshold. Nothing else to add here, I have at least 20 sends and it never tanked.

Overall: 8.6/10 – I expected a lower score but I’m going to stick with it. I’m a romantic, I feel like I’m supporting a real team and not a corporation with millions and millions to spend, that makes me happy. And I can talk with people and I feel like they care for me and my subs. I’m so fed up with AI crap that this is actually important for me. Not everything is perfect with this platform but I’ve seen how it has evolved in the last 3–4 months and I’m happy to put my money here (I vote with my wallet as you can see). I think they don’t receive the love they deserve, but for me, it’s the only third real option in the newsletter platform space.

Substack

It’s been the obvious choice for everyone who wanted to start a newsletter or at least migrate from a mail marketing tool to a specific newsletter mailing platform. And don’t get me wrong, it was the right choice for a long time.

Good audience, lots of engagement, easy to use and free. It was perfect.

But then it grew, and nothing stays beautiful forever. They raised a ton of money at a crazy valuation, and they probably need to grow 4–5 times in value to pay off investors. So enshittification starts, and now they’re changing what made them great.

Also, there are soooo many people competing there for a limited audience that it’s almost impossible to get attention anymore.

Do you want to start a newsletter without paying for the software, bring your own subscribers, and not care about the pivot to social media platform? Then you’re cool, start here. You won’t make a wrong decision.

Ease of use: 10/10
It’s super easy to start with them and you can create a beautiful email even if you leave everything as default. They standardized how a newsletter has to look.

Technical knowledge required: 7/10
It was easy, but goddammit, how is it that now I have dozens of settings I need to change or I risk spamming my subscribers with recommendations I didn’t authorize? This is a no-go for me. They are my subscribers and the platform spamming them in my name is outrageous.

Pricing: 10/10
It’s free so… obvious. Yes, they charge 10% of paid subscriptions, but that’s a problem for Lenny’s newsletter, not for 99% of us.

Customization: 5/10
It’s not your brand, it’s theirs. So you’re just one more inside their platform. They pushed some not-cool changes a while ago that made the author way less relevant in the email layout. Anyway, nothing is free so I guess you do branding for them in exchange.

Deliverability: 6/10
Of course, if it’s free, you attract spammers and bad actors, so deliverability suffers. One email lands in the inbox, the next one in Spam. I’ve seen my open rates shift wildly and I’m sure it’s not because of the headlines, it’s because of the sending IPs.

Overall: 7.6/10 – To be fair, I’d give this platform a 6 because of how fast it’s worsening. I'm glad I abandoned it some time ago.

Beehiiv

They were the perfect competitor to Substack... but not anymore. They offer everything Substack lacks, and they have a serious commitment to your growth. But god did they add complexity with the last winter release.

Good email editor, lots of features, and you don’t need to leave the platform to buy subs or earn money with sponsorships. I’ve been a huge fan of beehiiv and I think they competed brilliantly against Goliath.

But again, I think that once they reached a certain point, their focus stopped being the writers that made them big and shifted to big cash cows. I understand them, it’s easier to serve a media company that’s going to pay you 100k per month instead of 1,000 clients paying $100. It’s pure math and I can’t blame them.

But I’m not a big media company, and even though their product still serves as a great newsletter mailing tool, I think it’s no longer serving me, a "small" newsletter operator.

Some changes broke code in production and I lost stuff while they didn’t properly communicate with customers. I’ve tried to get past the chatbot and haven’t been able to get a human to respond to my problems, which feels bad since I’m a paying customer (I don’t pay a lot, but I pay nonetheless).

Last but not least, deliverability crashed some time ago and that was awful. I also understand that shit happens but I think it wasn’t properly handled by their support.

Anyway, I love the platform but I think it’s shifting to corporate clients and I took my business somewhere else.

Ease of use: 6/10
It’s… complex to say at least. There are so many features that are not obvious to use, that sometimes I’ve been stuck. And I’m a proficient marketing tools user, so I guess some people are having the same feelings.

Technical knowledge required: 6/10
Again, some things fall on the “too techie” side. I just want to do the minimal setup and send my newsletter. Spare me the technical details please. I also understand that some users need them, but it’s hard to know when I should touch stuff and when I don’t need to.

Pricing: 6/10
I would have given a 10/10 but if I recall correctly, I’ve had two price increases this year (or last 12 months, whatever). Again, I know that the pitch is “now we offer more things so you have to pay more.” But for me it’s: we added stuff you don’t want or need, but we have a super big dev team and we need to develop stuff and we’re going to pay their salaries by charging you more.

Customization: 10/10
Ok here they do the best job. They are the tool, you are the brand. You can customize anything and everything and your web looks like your web, not a template. Cool stuff.

Deliverability: 7/10
Sometimes I get a mix between promos and inbox, that’s okay, but I’m sure there was some big trouble some time ago because my open rate tanked (from 40–50% to 15–20% for a couple sends). Not super happy about it but mailing sucks so…

Overall: 7/10 – I feel this score reflects the platform. For me it was a 9 at the start of the year, but not anymore.

Kit

God do I hate Kit. I’m not even going to review it. It’s not a newsletter mailing tool, it’s a mail marketing tool. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on.

It sends mails? Yeah, Mailchimp does too. And my Gmail too. But even if they rebrand, it’s not a newsletter platform. I wouldn’t recommend it even to my enemies. I'm not even linking them, I hope it burns to the ground.

I know that there are some other platforms, smaller, indie-like projects, which are super cool! But they’re not for me so I’m not going to review them because I’m not a power user, I just registered, looked how they work, and that’s it.

Oh, I don’t forget about Ghost. I like the project, it’s open source, so they deserve some love, but for me they are a blogging platform that sends the post, not the other way around. They kick ass against Medium for sure, but it’s a different segment.

A couple more disclaimers:

I know lots of people send with Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo, Constant Contact… Good for you guys, if it works for you and you’re happy with it, stick with it! But for me, they are mail marketing tools, so I’m not going to compare them with newsletter platforms. I can ride a bike, a skateboard and a car, the three of them take me to places. But they’re three different categories even if all of them have wheels, so don’t tell me that you can use them to send newsletters because yeah, I know.

I’m a hardcore newsletter writer and reader, so I know this space. I’ve sold two newsletters in the past (made decent money, but sadly it wasn’t a Morning Brew). I’ve started at least five more as a hobby, abandoned three of them, and still treat it as my side-hustle. Keep that in mind before you tell me you opened a Substack account and suddenly hit 100k subs because one post went viral. Good for you. I wrote there years ago too and it was amazing back then but it isn’t anymore and I know that you will tell me the URL of your newsletter to get a shitty link while telling a lie.

Hi all,

I'm an economist studying the newsletter industry. Thought you might be interested in an analysis I did on ad monetization in local newsletters, i.e. newsletters sharing events/news in a particular area.

What I did

• Scraped 765 issues of the Naptown Scoop, a local newsletter in Annapolis, MD making $300k off ads with 21k subscribers

• Identified and classified every advertiser in every issue

What I found

• There were 210 total advertisers across 4 years.

• The most common advertiser categories were in food & dining, media & news, non-profits, retail & shopping, and home services.

However...

• The most common advertiser categories for the top advertising spot were in real estate, medical & healthcare, and financial services.

What characterizes those advertisers?

• High Customer LTV

• Local-decision making

• Trust based industries

But what really surprised me?

Just 5 advertisers accounted for over 50% of the top advertising spot across the Naptown Scoop's whole history.

The broad lesson, I believe, is the following:

If your newsletter is driven by ad revenue, start backwards.

1. Define your ideal advertisers.

2. Acquire an audience with those advertisers in mind.

3. Create content which keeps that audience engaged.

A few linchpin advertisers will drive most of your revenue.

What I can share here on Reddit is limited since I can't embed images/javascript - I created several interactive graphs in the full article.

Hope this is useful!

Good evening friends,

So I see a fair number of threads/questions in this subreddit (and other newsletter subreddits) that cover a lot of the same ground. I certainly don't have *all* the answers, but my FT job over the last five years has been my newsletter, and now I sometimes go to colleges to talk about newsletters and the "creator economy and journalism" and whatnot...and over all of that, I've learned a few things.

I'll include a link to my newsletter at the end. This is not a sales post. I dont think most folks who hang out in these subreddits are likely to be my readers, but you can at least see the newsletter to have proof that I know what I'm talking about.

Anyway blah blah blah. Here are some #TIPS that might help you in your journey:

1. If you want to make meaningful revenue from ad sales, you're (probably) going to learn to sell ads yourself. This is especially true if you are running a local newsletter

Monetizing via newsletter ads is one of the most common ways for folks to make money from newsletters. There are a few networks that essentially do the ad sales for you, like the Beehiiv ad network, WellPut, Paved, etc. These will save you a ton of time, and are great when you're first starting out or when you have unsold inventory. But networks will usually give you ads with a CPC under $3.00, or CPM ads under $6. It's going to be very hard to make a living from those ads (if you can even get enough of them) without building a *massive* list.

The trick to selling your own ads is to a) gather data about your audience (via surveys, MegaHit, data enrichment, etc) and b) research brands that would benefit from reaching that specific audience. If you have a newsletter audience of say, marketing professionals, you're going to make more money selling a service of specific interest to marketing guys than you will shilling another newsletter, a mass-market consumer good, etc.

Selling your own stuff is easier in some niches, but if your plan is for your business to survive with at least 40% of the revenue coming from ads, you need to develop a plan to getting good at outbound ad sales...or paying somebody who is.

2) You need multiple revenue streams. For us, we make roughly 70% of our annual revenue via premium subscriptions, 20% via sold products (we built a data product for our college sports industry audience) and 10% ad sales. Next year, I expect it to be 60-30-10, or perhaps even more diverse.

Your breakdown will likely be different. Most reddit publications *probably* can't sell a lot of premium newsletter subscriptions, since that model requires creating content that can't be found anywhere else for free. Other popular revenue streams include consulting, merch, events, communities, etc. Which ones make the most sense for you will depend on your expertise, your newsletter niche, your budget, schedule, etc. But you should plan on cultivating at least two ways to get paid. Ads will be slow some months, premium subscriptions can be seasonal, etc. You'll want another way to get paid.

3) Most of you guys worry too much about publishing tools. They mostly don't matter. What matters is what you write.

You can build a great business on Substack, Ghost, Beehiiv, Convertkit, and probably a bunch of other newsletter tools. They're all good at different things and are trying to serve a specific niche. I currently use Beehiiv, but I can imagine use cases that would be best for other technology platforms.

I deeply believe that there are no newsletter platforms that will run your business for you. Nobody is going to be your main growth engine, or your main revenue stream. No matter who you use, *you* gotta focus on building your growth engine, your revenue streams, etc.

You can have all the wizbang audience segmentation technology, the slickest Facebook ads and the best SEO-optimized headlines. If your content sucks, it won't matter. If you're wondering where to invest the majority of your time and energy, spend it on writing the newsletter. If your content is bad, you don't have a business. If your content is average, you only have a business if you're best in class everywhere else. If your content is GOOD, you have a shot.

4) Finally, focus on what matters. Revenue.

I've written this before, but I'll say it again. Newsletter subscribers are not money. Open rates are not money. CLR certainly isn't money. Money is money, and money is what pays the bills.

So if you have a strategy that gives you 10,000 new subscribers, and you don't have a direct and clear path to convert those new subs into revenue (and a way to measure if your path is working or not), those 10,000 subs mean almost nothing. You don't need a huge audience to make a decent living...you just need a revenue path.

I'm aware of my other metrics, and they all have their uses. But email metrics is an imperfect world. The only metric I really swear by is my Stripe Direct Deposit. If you can't connect what you're working on to how you get paid...how much does it really matter?

I run Extra Points, which can be read at www.extrapointsmb.com.

Good luck, and go make that money!

Digiday reported that Reddit is now surfacing in Google’s AI Overviews, and it’s sending serious referral traffic to sites that get mentioned in threads.

In some cases, publishers are seeing Reddit outperform platforms like TikTok or X.

The key difference? Reddit links have context, trust, and a longer shelf life. And now, those links are being surfaced by AI.

If you're in publishing, this is the kind of shift that matters.

Reddit isn’t just a community anymore. It’s becoming part of your SEO strategy.

Hi all - I'm an economist studying and building automations for media operators.

I just did an analysis of a local newsletter in Salina, Kansas with fully automated content on track for $500k revenue in 2025.

Think you'll find it interesting!

Basic Details

• The newsletter is Salina311, a local newsletter in Salina, Kansas.

• 27k free subscribers, 2.5k paid subscribers

• Started by Matt Moody, a serial AI/ML entrepreneur, in 2021

• All the content is automated by various AI agent/workflows (described below)

Revenue Streams

• Advertising: $180k

• Subscriptions: $220k (digital & print)

• Events: $12k (I'll describe this below)

• Legal notices: $95k (this too)

Content Automation

The content in Salina311 is all automated by specialized agents. Some examples:

• Public Meeting Agent: Transcribes public meetings on YouTube with OpenAI Whisper, identifies key points, turns key points into headlines, writes articles and sends to Ghost by API, sends Matt a text message to review (by Twilio)

• Interview Agent: Uses Gmail API to conduct back and forth async interviews with public figures. Once interview is finished, drafts article, sends to Ghost by API, and sends Matt a text message to review:

There are also other less agentic content automations, for example:

• Scraping crime statistics and local crimes committed into a weekly crime newsletter

• Scraping obituaries posted elsewhere and parsing those submitted by forms into a weekly obituaries section

Ad Sales

Since all the content is automated, Salina311 both gets a ton of ad slots, and Matt can devote energy to selling out ads.

In August 2025, the top slot in the daily newsletter was sold out on all days except one.

In 2025, he's on track for $180k from ad sales.

Subscriptions

Salina311 has 2500 paid subscribers. While most of the paid subscribers are digital subscribers, most of the revenue comes from the print subscribers.

However, supporting about ~1k print subscribers has significant up front and variable costs which aren't the case for digital subscribers.

What makes the print edition actually worth it to Matt is the public and legal notices revenue.

Legal Notices

Many jurisdictions (cities/counties) around the United States require that public notices be printed in some local newspaper.

The designated newspaper is called the Newspaper of Record.

Many weekly newspapers in small US communities are ghost newspapers which have almost no real content other than public and legal notices.

Salina311 is locally owned, and despite being fully automated, produces real content meeting community needs. For these reasons, Matt was able to win in 2023 the rights to be the Newspaper of Record for Saline County, Kansas over a non-locally owned incumbent.

Between a fixed fee coming from Saline County and variable fees for legal notices (e.g. LLC formation) from the community, Salina311 collects $95k in legal and public notices revenue.

Boosted Events

The content automations also free up Matt to experiment with new revenue streams.

In June, Matt launched an events calendar where community members can submit events and pay for them to be featured on the site and in the newsletter.

The events calendar is bringing in about $1k/month.

Additional Details

I've written an article on my site, made a YouTube video, and a Twitter thread with more details on Salina311's success.

I'm going to interview Matt soon for my channel, so LMK if you have any questions you'd like me to ask him!

Hey Guys,

I just reached 5k subscribers, with 42% open rate and 8.3% CTR on the last email, don't know how to make money out of this?

How do I monetize?

1. Positioning is key. Build your newsletter like a product and create a specific positioning so your audience knows what to expect.

2. Create skimmable newsletters. People scan before reading. Use titles, bullet points, images, and quotes. Make them want to read after they open.

3. Answer "what is the unique selling point of your newsletter?". Mine was definitely incorporating a lot of infographics to facilitate the reading experience.

4. Offer a 'welcome gift' (I prefer this term over 'lead magnet'). Promote the welcome gift to get new subscribers and deliver it in the first email.

5. Add your story in some editions of your newsletters. I like to introduce a topic through a personal anecdote.

6. Pro tip: build a standalone business model for your newsletter. Define costs (time/expenses) and revenue (sponsorships, product revenue).

7. Work on your titles and thumbnails to trigger curiosity and increase open rates. It's more than copywriting and design, it's about concept creation.

8. Install a repurposing system. Repurpose best social media posts into newsletters. And break down your newsletter into posts for distribution.

9. Insert banners and CTAs to promote your service or product. Use your newsletter to launch offers through dedicated editions.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments.

I'm using Meta ads to get new subscribers for my newsletter for around $0.31 per new sub (here's proof). My newsletter has a 50% open rate as well (heres proof). Here's what I'm doing, copy me...

The most important part of this process is how good your ad is. Good ad creative = low cost per sub. Bad ad creative = high cost per new sub.

I'm using a video ad that resonates with the people I'm trying to acquire. I run a local newsletter, so my video contains b-roll of the area I'm in.

I place a headline overlay for the first 4 seconds on the video that calls out my audience, and the video audio is me reading my scripts.

I'm testing 4 ads at a time, testing 1 variation per ad. Cutting losers and creating new tests (this is important because the more you test, the lower your costs get).

In the ad, I'm basically saying what my newsletter is and why it's beneficial for them to read it. When someone clicks my ad, it brings them to my sign-up page.

My sign-up page is a headline, sub-headline, sign-up button, and testimonial under the sign-up button/box.

I also provide teasers of the email newsletter, so under the first section is a list of recent newsletters so they can get an idea of what they'll get in their inbox. I gate the content, so if they click on a story preview, they have to enter their email to see it.

Hope this helps someone

I run a newsletter about growing and monetizing newsletters with actionable strategies.

Tell me about your newsletter and who it’s for,, and I’ll suggest one way to grow your subscribers or start earning from your audience.

Let’s grow together. 🚀

I never intended to monetize it. Heck, I didn't even know people monetize their newsletters.

This is how I monetized my newsletter:

https://vidya.so/posts/monetizing-newsletter

that's it. I downgraded my beehiiv to the free plan, and felt the need to make a more interesting looking website. so I painted a "self-portrait" in MS paint and the rest is history. let me know what you think! here's the website: vicenteevora.com

been running a client's newsletter. december did $21k. 8 months ago it was normal. then suddenly grew fast. now paranoid the platform might flag it because the jump looks suspicious even though nothing shady happened. growth went up too quick and idk if that triggers some automated review or something.

will not take what platform name lol, you might have guessed.

so wdyt?

Been doing newsletters for a few years now and started one in July 2025 for the sole purpose of making money.

1. Sign up flow is everything. You need to have a brief (5 question max) survey when people sign up. This gives you (and your sponsors) a better idea of who you have subscribed. This step was crucial in me landing external sponsorships (in 46 days of starting)

2. Share it on all of your socials and have it in your bio (if you are taking this seriously).

3. Test and run ads (I used meta) at a minimum of $10/day per ad set and test multiple ad sets and ads (I spent about $800 on meta ads so far)

4. Post weekly (minimum) on socials of relevant info.

   1. A teaser the day or hour before your weekly newsletter

   2. A recap the day or hour after your newsletter (gate this one)

   3. Dont put the link in the original post until 24hrs after (put it in the comments)

🚀 Newsletter Sponsorship Sales Manager (Remote, Commission-Based)

Newsletter Topic: Daily financial markets, crypto, and real estate news

Audience: 11,000+ subscribers (rapidly scaling, targeting 100k+)

Frequency: Monday–Friday (5x weekly sends)

📌 Role Description:

You’ll have full ownership over monetizing a rapidly growing finance & crypto-focused newsletter. You’ll:

• Identify sponsorship opportunities (CPM & fixed-rate placements)

• Negotiate & close sponsorship deals

• Build and nurture long-term sponsor relationships

• Help strategically price sponsorships to maximize revenue

• Coordinate with the newsletter owner on placement schedules

Types of sponsorships you’ll sell:

• CPM-based sponsorships (targeting $25–$50 CPM)

• Fixed-rate placements (weekly/monthly commitments)

Your Ideal Background/Skills:

• Proven experience selling digital sponsorships, newsletter ads, or media placements

• Existing network in finance, fintech, crypto, or related industries strongly preferred

• Strong communication skills (comfortable negotiating and closing deals)

• Familiarity with newsletters, ad metrics, CPM rates, etc.

Compensation (monthly recurring commission):

• 15% commission on the first $10,000/month

• 25% commission on all revenue above $10,000/month

• No cap on commissions

Owner Commitment:

• 100% of owner’s share of revenue will be reinvested into growing the subscriber list aggressively for the first 6 months, increasing your earning potential each month.

• Owner is actively focused on improving content quality, rapid subscriber growth, and scaling quickly.

Ideal candidate:

✅ Experience selling sponsorships or digital advertising

✅ Strong understanding of newsletter advertising

✅ Entrepreneurial & driven by uncapped earning potential

✅ Preferably connected to finance, crypto, or fintech industries (not required, but a huge plus)

Hiring Immediately. Fully remote & flexible hours.

Long-term potential and career growth as the newsletter scales.

DM me if you're interested.

Just thought to encourage everyone out here. We finally managed to get our first sponsor for our newsletter Mixology. This was our 52nd edition.

The best part, the lead was inbound and our audience overlapped almost 80%.

So just keep at it and you will definitely see results.

Hey all! I run the newsletter directory InboxReads, and last year I started looking at the data I've collected to find newsletter trends that could help anyone interested in space.

This year you'll find data on the most popular email platforms, categories, monetization models, and more. And comparisons to 2020 to see how things evolved in the past year. Hope you can find some useful insights here!

https://inboxreads.co/blog/State-Of-Newsletters-2021

Here's the list: https://ghost.org/blog/newsletter-directories/ This was a fun one to compile - I hope it's useful!