In the six or so years that I’ve been blogging, so much has changed and while the expectations from people about what they should get for free has risen causing many a blogger to question how much their content is valued, at the same time an increasing amount of bloggers successfully generate revenue from their content – I’m one of those people.
Back when I started blogging, people said there was no money in it and I still hear naysayers say stuff like this even though there are many thousands of living examples that contradict that vision. I’ve also heard people say that there’s no revenue in email newsletters and that the value is in the list and it being responsive giving you the ability to have more of your content read, which increases your traffic and engagement, but also gives you the opportunity to sell to that list.
But it seems that there ispotential revenue in email newsletters in the form of paid subscriptions with services like Letter.ly stepping up and having over 600 paid email subscriptions on their service. Obviously we’re not to know how much money is being generated with each subscription, but to be fair, if you were writing that content for free and not generating revenue, you’re quids in!
It takes a lot of work to write and as someone who runs several email newsletter lists, it takes a hell of a lot of effort to craft content for these…or at least it does for me. What would scare me with a paid subscription is if the content was sh*te! Trust me, I have seen some awful email newsletters that promise the sun, moon, and stars, and deliver zero value and erode the credibility of the author. By the same token, I know people who work hard at their content that with the right angle could actually benefit from a service like Letter.ly.
I saw that for example, someone is charging $2/mth for their email newsletter. Imagine if you had, let’s say 500 paying subscribers – that’s $1000 a month, recurring. Not to be sniffed at.
Payments are done through Amazon, you can still give away subscriptions plus you can let them have a certain amount of free emails, and you can ‘cash out’ when you’re ready. They can also comment privately.
Personally I think this is rather cool and I actually think I may give it a go….
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hello natalie — just saw this, very cool post. I created letter.ly to sell my content, it is going really well — i am not quite at $1K / month yet, but getting close, and I am finding it really gratifying, it would be awesome to have you on the platform