Starting a Newsletter, Darling?

Last week, I gave an online workshop ALL about Substack paid newsletters: how to write one, what to write about, how to charge for it, and best practices over a decade+ of doing this professionally as a multi-million dollar creator & newsletterist (internet creep that I am).

You can still buy a recording of that workshop right over here. You’ll have instant access to download the workshop—a fun thing to watch over the weekend. 💃

One of the questions I get asked the most?

When would you use Substack versus the other delicious newsletter platform I’m always yammering on about, Kit?

And so I thought: LET US HAVE A LITTLE NEWSLETTER SERMON, SHALL WE? (I promise that’s the only time I will ever use the word “sermon.”)

There are only three types of newsletters you can write that will make you any money:

• The newsletter you write to sell your services or products
• The newsletter you write to sell advertising
• The newsletter you write to sell a paid subscription

1️⃣ The first one? A newsletter to sell your services or products? This is the OG newsletter. It’s the one you write for free in order to build your reputation, gain credibility, and demonstrate your awesomeness to readers—who later will (hopefully!) become clients and customers. This is how you make money with this type of newsletter: by selling something off the back of it. In this way, this type of newsletter is really all about both lead generation and sales: it knocks out both with a 1-2 punch!

2️⃣ The second type of newsletter is the one you ALSO write for free, but the way you make money with it is by selling ads & sponsorships. Think: The Skimm or The Hustle. The key to running this type of newsletter is four-fold: (a) Knowing exactly who you want to read it; (b) Creating consistent, systematic content that attracts that exact group of people; (c) Using ads to grow the newsletter and get more of that exact group of people; (d) Then selling that attention to companies who are trying like hell to reach that exact group of people.

3️⃣ And, finally, you have the third type of newsletter: the paid newsletter. This is the one where your audience directly pays you for a subscription. This is ALSO the one that’s hot, hot, hot right now, and for good reason: it’s one of the most scalable, simple, powerful, wonderful ways to earn an income from anywhere in the world. If you can create something that has enough value that people actually want to pay you for your advice? Or your ideas? Or your curation? Or your ability to analyze and break down hard-to-understand concepts in an easy, digestible way? Then it’s one of the best business models out there, because you do the work once—and thousands of people can benefit. (Contrast this to 1:1 work, where you can only help one person at a time, and equally, only get paid by one person at a time.)

Of course, a newsletter can also serve as a hybrid of all of these, if you have paid subscribers and you take on sponsors and you also use it to sell your services, courses, products, books, etc.

BUT—here’s the catch: some of these work (way) better with different types of newsletter software.

HERE IS MY VERY OFFICIAL ADVICE ON WHICH TO USE.

Ready?

1. Use Kit if you want to write a free newsletter to sell your products & services. (Especially if you want to sell digital products, because there’s a beautiful built-in commerce feature that makes this DROP DEAD EASY. 🤤) The interface has recently gotten an awesome glow-up, and it’s a very user-friendly, gorgeous way to do newsletters & email marketing. Also use Kit if you want to set up automated email sequences that go out automatically to new subscribers, helping to give every single person a VIP experience and make them personalized offers with personalized deadlines, without having to constantly create new content all the time. (I teach this method in Selfish School.)
2. Use Beehiiv if you want to write a free newsletter and sell ads and sponsorships. I say this because the founders are ex-Morning Brew employees who were specifically in charge of growth and marketing there, so they’ve built this tool to be best-in-class for this type of newsletter. Beehiiv is geared specifically for this, even though you can certainly take on advertisers & sponsors with any other newsletter platform, too. But, Beehiiv has mega superpowers when it comes to this area specifically: They have their own ad network, so you can actually start getting paid to place ads in your newsletter—very cool. They have a super helpful integrated calendar where you can schedule your posts and your ads and see it all in one place. (LOVE.) Upon subscribing, Beehiiv can automatically show your readers a survey on the next screen—after they’ve given you their email address and you’ve already got that locked down—that’s going to ask your readers to select their interests, so you can therefore sell more targeted ads. (Advertisers like knowing that they are going to reach exactly the folks they’re hoping for—whether it’s by interest, age, occupation, or something else.) There are advanced reporting and analytics that you can use to show advertisers how many opens, clicks, attribution, etc. And, the company is growing at the speed of light (no surprise), constantly adding new tools and very advanced capabilities that, in the past, were only reserved for huge newsletter brands with their own developers. (For example, the ability to create multiple landing pages to test and optimize performance, design different welcome flows for new readers, or integrate lead magnets into bespoke automated journeys). I’ll be testing all of this out for a new local newsletter I’m experimenting with—I’ll be sure to report back periodically here with my findings!

I hope this helps!

If you’re thinking about starting a Substack, definitely grab the on-demand recorded version of my workshop from last week. I walk you through the back-end features & we talk everything strategy, charging money, deciding on a topic, and PLENTY of little-known tips, tricks & wisdom from a decade+ in the newsletter game.

In the meantime, what questions about newsletters do you have? Leave ‘em in the comments by clicking the button below, and I’ll do my best to see if I can help! ✨ ⬇️

Have a WONDERFUL weekend,

Ash