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Extraordinarily scalable. Once you create knowledge, you can replicate it at almost zero cost.

#1. People are willing to pay for a subscription to online information

People I would never expect to pay for online courses are now taking them.

People who buy courses once-in-awhile now make them a line item in their budget. They view it as key to their career success and personal happiness.

Not only is it becoming normalized to purchase content online, it’s becoming expected.

This is a historic moment as the trend is only a few years old.

Those tools are free to start, and they don’t require that you be tech-savvy. This means you can focus on what you’re good at and what you enjoy—researching and creating content. There is no guarantee that this era of free newsletters will remain forever.

#3. Newsletters aren’t crowded yet

Although paid newsletters have been around for a few years now, they’re still in their nascent stage. This is a big deal on three levels.

First, consumers are still trying things out. Readers are still open to exploring many paid newsletters for the first time. As time goes by, they will have many pre-existing subscriptions, and they will likely be more discerning in what they pay for. This means that it will be harder to get people to subscribe to something new and harder to retain them.

Second, many niches don’t have a newsletter yet. There are thousands of niches that people would pay for newsletters in that do not yet have a paid newsletter.

Third, many niches only have low quality newsletters. Many paid newsletters are hobbies. Sure, people have monetization turned on. But, it isn’t clear what subscribers are getting and why that’s worth paying for. Furthermore, the frequency is too low to be worth paying for, because the newsletter creator isn’t putting that much time into it.

With that said, let’s jump into the broader, more timeless reasons why I think newsletters are so powerful. It took me years to realize the significance of these…

10 Non-Obvious Reasons Why Paid Newsletters Are The #1 Way To Get Paid To Learn (Paid Subscribers)

In this section, I unpack each of the reasons why newsletters are a uniquely powerful strategy for thought leaders who love to learn…

Email addresses hold their value more than social media followers over the years.

Paid newsletters allow you to focus on just creating great content rather than having to learn a basket of complex skills (growth hacking, funnel hacking, teaching, etc) that take years.

Paid newsletters are 100x more viral than courses, coaching, and consulting, because every newsletter post is sharable.

You get to spend most of your time on what you love—if you love learning and writing

You can scale without needing to build a big team or make big investments.

Having a public posting schedule is a super powerful forcing function that boosts your productivity by holding your feet to the fire.

Paid newsletters create feedback loops that lead to virality and money—not just virality.

It's super easy to get started on multiple levels—financially, mentally, etc.

Paid newsletters stay top of mind, because you are pushed an email for every post.

Paid newsletters are easier to consume, because they appear in full in your inbox, without the need for logging in.

Understanding each of the reasons in detail is important because it will help you make a more informed decision on how to monetize your knowledge. Without understanding each nuance, you are more likely to under-estimate the benefits of paid newsletters.

Social media platform algorithms eventually take the value of the follower to zero. The reason is simple.

Social media platforms have ad-based business models.

Therefore, they succeed when they show people content that they love so much that they keep coming back.

As a result, algorithmic news feeds prioritize content that gets the most engagement.

While followers may be a good signal when someone is just following a few people and the platform is less crowded, it gets worse and worse over time.

Email is different, because:

It’s not ad-based.

We receive emails in a chronological feed rather than an algorithmic one based on engagement.

Thus, we can be confident that people will at least see our newsletter in their email inbox.

Thus, the value of an email follower has held way more of its value than social media followers.

This pattern has stood the test of time. In 2003 when I first started writing, I was skeptical of the value of email. Blogging was just taking off and everyone was saying that email was dead. But 20 years later, independent blogging is faltering along and email is just as popular as ever. There isn’t any sign that this will fundamentally change.

At the same time, we can expect the value of an email to lose some of its value over time as…

People get more and more newsletter subscriptions

Gmail puts newsletters in a separate folder to manage that crowdedness

Gmail deprioritizes emails from strangers

Bottom line: In the next few years, many of your social media followers may not even see your content, but the majority of your email subscribers will still be reading each article you send out.

#2. Paid newsletters allow you to focus on just creating great content rather than having to learn a basket of complex skills

The conventional approach to monetizing knowledge online looks like this:

Traffic. Creating high-quality organic content or paid ads.

Funnel. Designing marketing funnels.

Offer. Creating compelling offers.

Sales (optional). High-ticket products often require a one-on-one sales call.

Product. This often includes something like coaching, teaching, or consulting.

If you don’t already have these skills, then success at monetization means mastery of five different complex skills that take years to master.

But with a paid newsletter, you can just focus 90% of your attention on one thing—creating great content—because the content both spreads virally and makes money.

When it comes to monetizing via courses or coaching, the virality of the content and the monetization of the product are completely separate. As a result, you constantly bounce from one to another.

Staying focused on just one thing is a big deal because:

It gives you more time to focus on quantity and quality

Which helps you become world-class at that one thing

Which helps you get results faster

And helps you get compounding results

Speaking from experience, when you’re focusing on content, conversion, and product, you must constantly bounce between one thing and another. As a result, the quality of each is lower, and you’re constantly losing momentum.

Bottom line: Putting all of your attention on one thing you love gets you to mastery and profitability faster.

#3. It’s 100x more viral

Newsletters are more shareable than other monetization approaches on a few levels:

There are more opportunities to share. This year I will send close to 150+ emails to my subscribers. Every email is an opportunity for someone to share.

It’s easy for readers to share. Every email can easily be shared by a reader via email or via the Substack site.

It’s easy for you to share. You can easily repurpose the content on other social media platforms (Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn) and have it point back to your newsletter.

Thus, the product and the marketing become one. Every newsletter is an opportunity to delight current subscribers and to get new subscribers.

Contrast this with a course. If someone really likes a video lesson in a course, there is no way for them to share it because it’s behind a paywall. As a result, students can only endorse the course and the prospective student has to take their word for it.

Bottom line: The structure of online paid newsletters make it possible to just focus on the quality and quantity of your content and still grow.

#4. You get to focus most of your time on what you love

Doing a paid newsletter allows you to focus on what you love on multiple levels.

It allows you to focus on what you enjoy, because you don’t need to learn about funnels, offers, and how to be a great teacher.

It decreases the complexity of the business, which means you don’t need as much logistical help, which means you don’t have to spend as much time on recruiting and managing people.

Bottom line: Newsletters simplify knowledge monetization, which gives you more time to focus on what you love. Tapping into your passion increases motivation and helps you keep going through the tough times, making newsletters sustainable in ways that other monetization methods aren’t.

#5. It’s incredibly scalable

Ben Thompson, one of the top paid newsletter creators in the world, explains how and why newsletters can scale…

The Logan Bartlett Show

Bottom line: As you gain new subscribers, you get a greater return for the same amount of work. In other words, it takes the same amount of time to create a post for 10 subscribers as it does for 4,000 subscribers. Thus, one person could run a newsletter with thousands of subscribers.

But, in order to capture the benefits of scale, you need to be maniacal on the quality and quantity of content you create. If you go half-way, then you don’t get nearly the returns on scale. This is why all of the top paid newsletters are created by people focusing on it full-time.

#6. It’s a super powerful forcing function that boosts your productivity

We humans have a hard time doing things that don’t have an immediate, tangible payoff. Thus, writing long articles that require dozens of hours can be challenging. Even for people who can do well without it, having a deadline can still increase output.

I’m honestly shocked by how much I’m able to produce because I have a looming deadline. Every day, I wake up with a sense of urgency and a sense of clarity on what I need to do.

The trick is finding the right level of forcing function where you produce more while not getting burned out, still maintaining your love for the craft, and continually improving on quality.

Bottom line: Setting deadlines at the right frequency can make or break your success. It can boost your output and counteract your perfectionist tendencies. At the same time, going too far on post frequency can make creating content stressful and make the end result low quality.

#7. It gives you feedback loops that lead to virality and money

When you post on social media, it’s almost impossible not to be sucked in by the metrics of likes, shares, and comments.

While these metrics are helpful for seeing whether your content resonates, they do not tell you how deeply it resonates. This is a big deal, because the depth of resonance is particularly important when people decide whether to pay for something or not.

With a newsletter, you get engagement feedback and monetization feedback. For example, below are the stats on a post I made last week.

The shares number is only for shares within Substack. They do not include shares on social media or people forwarding the email.

As a result of these stats combined with my internal compass, I can zero in on the intersection of content that:

I love to create

Gets shared

People pay for

Having both feedback loops matters, because when somebody optimizes just for virality, the end result is likely to be something that others wouldn’t pay for because it’s clickbaity and shallow.

Therefore, as a result of focusing exclusively on social media virality, people might actually make it harder for themselves to monetize.

Bottom line: Better feedback loops show you the path to increase profitability and virality.

#8. It’s easy to start on multiple levels

With a course, people pay for your past, stress-tested knowledge packaged in a way that they can easily assimilate.

With a newsletter, people aren’t just paying for your past perfected knowledge. They’re also paying to:

Learn from you as you learn in public.

Get your point of view on the world.

See how you process things in real-time.

With a course, there is pressure to do a big launch, especially if you run a cohort-based course where everyone starts at the same time. Because courses are more expensive and hard to sample, they often need more marketing.

With a newsletter, you can ease into it. You don’t need to do a huge launch or even charge money at first. You can simply start posting to get a feel for your voice and what resonates. Furthermore, once you start charging, the barrier for readers to sign up is less. They can sample the product without taking a huge leap of faith. And the investment is much lower.

Paid courses typically require paying a monthly fee to a course management system. With Substack, free newsletters are free to send.

Finally, paid newsletters have a low skill barrier to entry. Writing a long post like this requires years of experience. With a curation newsletter, you can add value to others by simply finding great resources (books, tools, photos of workspaces, letters of note, articles, podcasts).

Therefore, starting a newsletter has less pressure. In many ways, it’s like a minimum viable product (MVP) for your thinking. It’s an early, basic version of a product that meets the minimum necessary requirements for use but can be adapted and improved based on customer feedback, allowing you to get paid to further develop and refine the product.

Bottom line: A newsletter eliminates your excuses for procrastination and gives you the freedom to figure things out while earning money right from the start.

#9. Paid newsletters stay top of mind, because you are pushed an email for every post

To succeed with an online course, students need to build a habit of visiting the course and consuming the content. Therefore, they typically need to remember to revisit the course on a consistent basis without any prompting.

With the newsletter model, it’s easier. Students are notified every time a new lesson is released. Even if students don’t read every newsletter post when it comes out, they are at least reminded that the newsletter exists.

#10. Paid newsletters are easier to consume, because they appear in full in your inbox, without the need for logging in

Courses can be annoying to use. You need to remember three things:

Where to log in

What your password is

What lesson you were on

With newsletters, the entire lesson fits into your email inbox. Thus, someone could start consuming each lesson immediately.

In the end, newsletters are great, but they’re not perfect…

The Hidden Downsides Of Newsletters

Newsletters aren’t all sunshine. There are definitely risks/challenges to various newsletter models. In this section, I share the biggest ones that I’m aware of…

The Golden Handcuffs Problem

The Wooden Handcuffs Problem

Newsletters Aren’t For Everyone

Newsletters Aren’t Guaranteed To Keep Growing As A Category

The Content Treadmill Risk

The One-Year Transition

As a thought leader, I always make a point to think through the counter arguments to all of my conclusions. To that end, one of my favorite quotes is…

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.—Richard Feynman (Nobel laureate)

Caveat #1. The Golden Handcuffs Problem

It is in our nature to constantly evolve and change as we go through life. Our values, goals, preferences, and curiosities all evolve—sometimes in major ways.

Even if our newsletter is financially successful, we may get the itch for new challenges.

At this point, you may become a victim of your success. Sure, you could leave, but that might mean letting go of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in recurring annual revenue.

At the same time, if the newsletter is entirely built around your personality, story, and knowledge, then you are the business. Therefore, it will be hard or even impossible to sell.

Bottom line: If you don’t have a strategy that fits with your goals, values, and current level of commitment, you might find yourself stuck in a slog that you hate, even if your newsletter is profitable.

Caveat #2. The Wooden Handcuffs Problem

Another possibility is that your newsletter plateaus on a level of subscribers that provides an important side income, but isn’t profitable on an hourly rate for you. You try everything you can to get new subscribers, but you aren’t able to meaningfully increase them.

Therefore, on the one hand, you feel pressure to keep your current subscribers happy and keep earning the side income. But, on the other hand, you feel overworked and underpaid.

As a result, leaving will feel like ripping off a band-aid. And you might risk staying for months or years too long.

Caveat #3. Newsletters Aren’t For Everyone

The newsletter model isn’t for everyone. In fact, I think it’s only the #1 approach to monetization if a few things about you are true:

You love learning and sharing what you learn. People who love learning want to keep on learning. With newsletters, there is an incentive to keep learning and posting about new things. However, with something like speaking, your incentive is actually to keep delivering the same speech over and over.

You’re already an expert in other monetization methods. If you love and already have expertise/reputation in speaking, coaching, or consulting, then the calculations of starting a newsletter change. It may make more sense to keep doing what you’re doing.

You think more like a creator than a tech-backed entrepreneur. If your goal is to work yourself out of a job and create a saleable asset, then a paid newsletter based on your thought leadership probably isn’t the right fit. But if you want to develop your unique voice, have a learning lifestyle, and do meaningful work that you’d enjoy even if you weren’t getting paid, then it could be a great fit.

Caveat #4. Newsletters Aren’t Guaranteed To Keep Growing As A Category

Earlier in the article, I made the prediction that paid newsletters represent the beginning of the Knowledge-as-a-Service (KaaS) revolution. As such, I make the prediction that KaaS will be the #1 way that knowledge is monetized.

I could be wrong. Perhaps…

Emails lose their value because they become so crowded.

The number of people willing to pay for multiple paid newsletters is really small.

The number of people who have the personality and desire to succeed at the newsletter is much smaller than it appears.

Caveat #5. The Content Treadmill Risk

You might overcommit on your deliverables to subscribers, which means you overwork yourself, which means that creating your newsletter becomes a grind. Furthermore, you might be so rushed to post every day that you lose sight of quality. As a result, you’re working hard but not getting any traction.

Caveat #6. The One-Year Transition

If your subscribers commit to an annual plan, then you’re committed to delivering the newsletter for another year until you stop accepting new annual members.