Paid Newsletters Medium
A free newsletter with a paid tier: extra issues, full archives or the good stuff, billed monthly on Substack, beehiiv or Ghost.
- Typical earnings
- 3-8% of free readers at $5-10/mo; $150-600 per 1,000 subscribers per month
- Per 1,000 visitors
- $150-600 (US, general niche)
- Traffic needed
- From 1.0k/mo
- Cost to start
- $0-100/mo
- First payout
- 2-4 months
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Effort
- Hands-on
- Family
- Audience revenue
- Metrics
- Paid subscribers, Free-to-paid conversion, Churn, Open rate on paid issues
Estimate paid newsletters earnings for your traffic →
Who pays for paid newsletters
Networks and programs that send the money, platforms you run it on, and marketplaces where you sell it directly.
What is Paid newsletters?
What it is
A paid newsletter keeps a free edition that grows the list and sells a paid tier with more: extra issues, the full archive, deeper analysis, a community thread, calls or Q&As. Substack made the model mainstream with one-click Stripe billing; beehiiv and Ghost offer the same with different fee structures; Kit (ConvertKit) and Memberful bolt paid tiers onto existing lists.
How the money flows
Readers subscribe by card at a monthly or annual price you set; the platform gates paid issues and pays you through Stripe. Substack charges 10% of revenue; beehiiv and Ghost charge a monthly platform fee and take no cut, which is cheaper past a few hundred subscribers. Annual plans (typically 10 months for the price of 12) improve cash flow and cut churn. Payouts are on Stripe's schedule, usually 2-7 days after each charge.
What it pays
The consistent finding across the big platforms is that 3-8% of engaged free subscribers convert to paid at $5-10 a month for consumer topics and $10-30 for professional ones. A 10,000-subscriber list converting 5% at $8 is 500 paying readers and $4,000 a month; per 1,000 free subscribers that is $150-600 a month, dwarfing sponsorships on the same list. The paid tier and sponsorships coexist well: sponsors buy the free issues, subscribers buy the paid ones.
Requirements and who pays
A list of a couple of thousand engaged readers in a topic with pricing power (finance, technology, careers, a professional field, a serious hobby) and the capacity to publish more, on schedule, than the free tier. Stripe availability in your country. Readers pay directly; professional newsletters often get expensed.
Pitfalls
Launching the paid tier too early, before the free list is large enough to convert from, is the usual failure; the second is letting the free issues weaken so the funnel stops growing. Set the paid promise narrowly enough that you can keep it every week for years. Offer annual from day one. And keep your subscriber list exportable; platform lock-in is the real cost of the convenient ones.
Properties Paid newsletters suits
Pros
- The simplest recurring-revenue product there is: write, publish, get paid
- Works from 1,000-2,000 free subscribers in a niche people pay for
- Substack, beehiiv and Ghost handle billing, gating and dunning with no code
Cons
- You commit to a schedule the paying readers expect forever
- Substack takes 10% plus Stripe fees; Ghost and beehiiv charge platform fees instead
- The free tier must stay strong or the funnel dries up
Paid newsletters: frequently asked questions
How much does Paid newsletters pay?
Typical earnings from paid newsletters are 3-8% of free readers at $5-10/mo; $150-600 per 1,000 subscribers per month (about $150-600 per 1,000 visitors for a US-heavy audience in a general niche). Finance, insurance, software and B2B audiences earn several times more than entertainment or gaming; a mostly non-US audience earns a quarter to a half of these figures. Use the calculator on this site for your own traffic and niche.
How much traffic do I need for Paid newsletters?
It starts to be worth doing at around 1.0k visitors a month. Cost to start: $0-100/mo.
How long until the first payout from Paid newsletters?
Expect the first money in 2-4 months. Difficulty: medium. Hands-on.
What kind of property does Paid newsletters work for?
It suits newsletter / email list.
Which metrics should I track for Paid newsletters?
Paid subscribers, Free-to-paid conversion, Churn, Open rate on paid issues, ARPU.
Who pays me for Paid newsletters?
This directory lists 0 networks and programs that pay for it, 15 platforms to run it on and 0 marketplaces where you sell it directly. Start with a network or platform that has no traffic minimum; move to the ones with minimums (and better terms) once you qualify.
Paid newsletters in practice: case studies
All case studies →
Lenny's Newsletter
📬 Newsletter · Tech & SaaS · 700k subscribers
Lenny's Newsletter is the clearest modern example of the paid-newsletter model working at scale for an individual. Lenny Rachitsky, a former product lead at…
Methods to combine with Paid newsletters
All alternatives →
Memberships & Paid Communities Medium
Readers pay monthly or yearly for access, extras and each other: the most reliable recurring revenue a small publisher can build.
Paywalls & Premium Content Hard
Gate some or all of your articles behind a subscription: metered, hard or freemium, with a subscriber system behind it.
Platform Ad Share & Creator Funds Medium
YouTube Partner Program, TikTok, X, Facebook, Twitch and Snapchat pay creators a share of ad revenue and bonuses from creator funds.
Paid Webinars, Workshops & Events Medium
Sell tickets to live sessions, workshops, summits and meetups, online or in person, and the recordings afterwards.
Donations, Tips & Crowdfunding Easy
Let readers pay what they want: tip jars, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-fi, Patreon-style support and one-off campaigns.
Compare Paid newsletters
Verdict
Paid newsletters scores 8.9/10 in our audience revenue ranking. The simplest recurring-revenue product there is: write, publish, get paid.
Paid newsletters networks Paid newsletters platforms Paid newsletters marketplaces