Paid Newsletter Platforms: Start a Paid Newsletter And Monetize With These 5 Platforms
Want to create a paid newsletter? here are 5 platforms that let you do it. Some of them are free.
Creating a newsletter is a new buzzword. Everyone is talking about it. You want to start one, this is a guide for you to start. This is a very beginner guide for knowing about newsletter-creating platforms. Creating a newsletter back then was different than it is today.
It is now more mainstream than it was ever before. New and improved platforms with a sole business model of giving access to the writer to start a newsletter and to give them tools to monetize. Now, running a newsletter is like running a blog.
How newsletters make money?
Newsletter make money through two potential ways;
- Through Subscription-based: In this business model, certain newsletter-creating platforms give you the opportunity to create content around a specific topic and publish free as well as paid posts. The paid posts are only available to your email subscribers who are paying you a monthly fee.
- Through getting sponsors: A lot of creators don’t choose to go paid and one of the benefits of not going toward subscription-based is, you get more email subscribers. One of my favorite Substack newsletters is charging $500 per sponsor post in their newsletter. There is a company named Swapstack that helps to connect newsletter creators to advertisers.
Some of the things you should know about running a subscription-based newsletter:
- Having a paid newsletter doesn’t mean you just have to write posts for readers who are paying. You also have to write posts for free subscribers.
- The paid subscription is recurring which means when you get a user, that user will pay a recurring fee in order to read your future articles.
- The subscription-based business model is very lucrative. The compounding effect could help you make more money after a year than you are making now.
Paid Vs Free Newsletter: A difference
What is the difference between a free vs paid newsletter? a free newsletter doesn’t charge money from the readers. It is free for everyone to join and they can read articles or posts on that newsletter for free.
A paid newsletter has two versions of posts; the free posts which are intended for giving free information to already subscribed users and to generate more email subscribers through different ways. The second version of a paid newsletter is articles only written for paying email subscribers.
Listed: 5 Best Paid newsletter platforms:
- Substack
- Ghost
- Medium:
- Patreon
- Revue
Let discuss each of newsletter creating platform in detail;
1. Substack: A Free newsletter creating a platform that charges 10% service charges
Substack is free writing and newsletter creating platform. You can create a newsletter and accommodate thousands of email subscribers without paying a cent. But, how do they make money? they make money when a paid newsletter gets a paying subscriber, for every transaction that happened between a paying subscriber and the newsletter, Substack charges 10% of the service charges.
Substack is probably one of the best newsletter-creating platforms and you can start it for free. There are no hidden charges. The platform is founded in 2016 and is improving day by day. They have recently given custom-domain access to writers.
You can read: Substack writing: How to make money writing on Substack publication?
2. Ghost.org: A paid Substack alternative:
Ghost is a paid Substack alternative newsletter creating platform. They give you access to monetize your newsletter through many ways and the content you have is always going to be on your blog. Plus, they have different custom newsletter templates that you can use on your newsletter to make it a good look.
I have a complete comparison between Ghost Vs Substack, where you could find the differences between the two newsletter-creating platforms.
3. Medium: The future of publishing & writing
The future of writing and blogging is Medium. There is a lot of good things about Medium like;
- Medium is free to join and write.
- You can join the Medium partner program and make money writing.
- There are no ads or anything. Just text.
To create a newsletter on Medium, you have to create a Medium publication and write on that publication. You also have the option to create your newsletter and submit (in email) your future stories to your followers.
In this guide, I have explained how you can create a newsletter on Medium.
4. Patreon:
Patreon is a more private or personal platform to create a newsletter. Only people who subscribe to you by paying a specific fee on monthly basis could read or watch your content. Patreon works best for creators with big social media following.
Your Patreon page doesn’t appear on search engines neither the content you upload. This makes it a more private space.
5. Revue: A Twitter answer to Substack:
Recently Twitter bought Revue which is a platform like Substack, Ghost, or any other alternatives available for creating a newsletter. Revue could be integrated into the Twitter space in the future. Revue charges a 5% transaction fee between every paid subscriber and the newsletter writer.
If you compare it with Substack, it has not that good technological infrastructure. You can have a custom domain on Revue the same way as Substack but they don’t have detailed analytics.
If I had to start a newsletter, what platform do I choose?
This is a very tricky question and you might be wondering about it too as there are too many newsletters creating platforms. If I had to start all over again, I would choose to write on Medium as well as create a newsletter on Substack.
My blog is hosted on Ghost which is one of the best content management platforms for writers with beautiful templates.
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