Is Anyone Going to Get Rich Off of Email Newsletters?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
These things are tools that lower the barrier of entry to creating but that alone doesn’t generate mass demand for creators. You will see power laws apply just like it does in many situations, and there will be a handful of people who can pull six or seven figures in something like writing a paid email newsletter.
Sure, but to create a venture scale business you only need a few hundred highly successful ones; you need around 250 power users to create a $100M business.
And creating "250 power users" at that scale is crazy hard.
Note: this isn’t about strict numbers. 1,000 true fans paying 10 bucks a month might be enough. The same paying $2 a month? Doesn’t pay the bills of a family.
I like the concept as well, because it seems a lot more approachable than trying to build a unicorn, but what if only the top 0,1% really get 1,000+ true fans? Still a power law.
The rule of thumb for email subscriber to paying customer is actually closer to 1% (compared to your 10%) which just means it's that much harder. I don't think there is a rule of thumb for "true fan" conversion, where it might be as high as 50% for something like Tesla and 1% for something like Comcast.
Really? Maybe not every family (and definitely not in the Bay Area), but those numbers work out to $120-240K/year, with no requirement on where you live.
EDIT: I can't be trusted with mental math. Leaving the above unchanged, but it's answering a comment that used different numbers that never actually existed. The correct numbers are $24-120K/year, which is obviously a very different discussion about feasibility.
This may hold true for music, given a long enough time. Not so much with a newsletter which is limited by the language (at best two), and has a quite limited shelf life.
So "1000 true fans" is already a big filter.
In fact, e.g. for 2017, 99% of the 377 billion streams were from the top 10% of 2017’s most-streamed tracks alone. Less than 1% of streams accounted for all other music.
Substack is like the person who sold tools to the gold prospectors during the gold rush. They will probably do okay.
Also, I think you are discounting what a lot of "creation" is, as it is a much larger area than is generally considered, IMO.
For example, there seem to be a lot of erotica going on in patreon and elsewhere, where models sell prints and special content (e.g... nipples?).
Or, there is a ton of videogame streaming going on, which should be considered content creation, and some of the millions of twitch streamers actually make good money.
Many people also sell special content connected to their podcast/streaming whatever, I just ended up yesterday on a financial youtube channel where the author has a paid-only weekly chat with the subscribers.
The only thing which I think won't increase much is writers self-publishing. That seems to already have been a thing for years now.
And how many are making a living out of their Patreon? Most Patreons I’ve seen are hobbyists making a few bucks on the side. Those aren’t careers, so the 100k number is meaningless. (In fact, I looked it up, and 100k is the number of “creators” making at least $1, or have at least one patron.[1])
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/patreon-business/
Edit: The TechCrunch article further down claims that Patreon had about 4300 creators earning $1k/mo at that time.
Most of which make close to nothing (server costs, and way less than 10K/year).
>And it's not a super popular platform yet.
No, but it's the #1 platform for direct fan support.
For those interested: howitactuallyworks.com
Everything old is new again, sometimes.
When's the last time you published to that newsletter?
I have a paid newsletter, and I’ve started a community / education site dedicated to the model, as I couldn’t find one when creating my own.
Let me just say this... people are going to get rich off of paid newsletters, full stop.
But like anything else, it’s a many will play, few will win game.
There are examples of newsletters that have done well, and many examples of newsletters that have not.
In my opinion, given the choice between creating a blog and starting a paid newsletter, the choice is a pretty simple one.
Blogging is heavily saturated.
Google is downright hostile towards new, small publishers.
CPM rates are looking downright anemic.
The legal requirements behind affiliate offers are becoming complex, and sometimes confusing to understand.
On the newsletter side you have enhanced discovery, instant monetization with rates chosen by you, an implied audience that is “in theory” additive by nature, not just hit and bounce. Yes, you’ll have churn, etc. but that is how I am viewing the value prop.
Is there some sort of a push for this particular niche or something?
Search for “The Launch Book” and you’ll find how to use email to sell.
So, yo dawg.
There are lots of examples of newsletters that make money, but if you're only counting single authors who aren't venture backed and who don't have a following from some other medium and aren't already famous within their industry, and who are making money off of paying subscribers or ads rather than from consulting, the number is fairly low.
For example, a newsletter providing curated governmental data related to animal welfare can't charge much because most animal welfare groups are struggling to operate on the small donations they get. However, a newsletter tailored for the opposite group (commercial farming) will make a lot more money because its audience is willing and able to spend 10x compared to the former.
Same goes for finance vs human rights (not that they are necessarily opposed), and so on.
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Forbes: "Morning Brew’s native advertising revenue averages $200,000 a week thanks to more than 40 active clients, including Microsoft, JPMorgan and Allbirds."
However, everyone will get rich.
Rich with information that may not be available online (like what certain people did on their YC application to get in...). Overtime I think this/Twitter will be a great platform for people who want to enrich themselves knowledge-wise rather than getting "clickbait" from random posts online.
At any rate, i think it's worth pointing out that you can always blog (and please support rss!). If the goal is to make money, maybe newsletters are one way to avoid grimy ads, but that said, how many newsletters are filled with ads and affiliate crap anyways?
I like the idea of getting emails for stuff I am consistently interested in. I just don't get the hype.
An ISP I worked at in early 00s sent a lot of spam (I’m sorry) and it was insanely profitable.
I am. I am surprised they don't make the X "click here to download a virus".
Pop up a chat window next, 1-2 second after I closed the newsletter box, and I'm even angrier.
Pop up a third thing and I'm out. Disruption is already bad enough in our modern world... but building systems specifically to disrupt is just garbage.