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The dark side of paid newsletters nobody talks about
Running a paid newsletter is all the rage.
You can turn on paid subscriptions on Kit or Substack by connecting them to your Stripe account, pressing a button, and asking people to subscribe.
A paid newsletter looks crazy attractive. Substack even slapped a calculator on the homepage at one point so aspiring newsletter owners could salivate over potential monthly profits. All you have to do is write your newsletter and forget about all that marketing.
What creator wouldn’t love that type of business model?
The paid newsletter option is lucrative if you already have a massive and or committed audience. This model worked for Bob Dunning, a former American journo turned big Substack writer. Authors like Hanif Kureishi and Salman Rushdie have also succeeded with this model. However, all three had audiences before starting their paid newsletters.
The paid newsletter model is proven for specific niches like investing, business≤ and tech. Think the Morning Brew or Bankless. That’s because readers in those niches have a good chunk of disposable income.
