Are Free Newsletters Better Than Paid Newsletters?
And my decision about my Substack newsletter…
“Have you ever seen a paid newsletter? It’s where you only get a portion of the information free, then you have to pay for the rest.”
“Yeah, those are annoying.”
This was a conversation I had with my husband not too long ago.
I was showing him my Substack newsletter and how it works when he made that comment.
And he’s not wrong because I also get annoyed at paid content sometimes. Here’s an issue I run into constantly on Substack:
I’m sure you’ve run into this one too.
It happens when the owner of a newsletter you subscribe to for free starts a chat. If you want to join, you have to upgrade.
It’s an incentive for people to pay.
That’s the upside for the newsletter owner, and I have zero issues with them doing this. Substack has this feature for a reason. They want to get paid too!
But it’s frustrating if you’re not interested in upgrading right now. My DMs are full of threads I can’t participate in.
Every creator has the right to be paid for their hard work. And if you have a paid newsletter, I 100% understand why. (I pay for 2 newsletters, and they’re both worth it to me because they provide extra content I want.)
And honestly, if I come up with something good later down the line, I won’t hesitate to put that paywall back up.
So is a free newsletter better than a paid newsletter?
My friend
posted an X thread in the community we both belong to, The Inner Circle. (affiliate link)The thread was from
, who breaks down the 4 criteria needed for a paid newsletter.
The TL;DR version:
Your newsletter has to be infinitely repeatable. (Where new information is always valued.)
Your newsletter has to be tangible. (You need to offer stuff like books, reports, etc.)
It has to be objective versus subjective. (“Become happier in your relationship” is subjective. “Scripts of what to say as a divorced man when you start dating again” is objective.)
It has to be price-anchored to an upside. (Makes or saves your reader time or money.)
For Nicolas, the answer is easy. A paid newsletter is better. He makes over $300k with Write with AI.
He’s got a solid system in place.
For someone like me…
A free newsletter is better. At least for now.
I don’t have all the criteria needed.
That’s one reason why I’ve decided to move my Hustling Housewife newsletter back to free.
Here are a few more reasons:
I don’t have enough exclusive content to make paying worth it. (Even though some people have already paid. Aren’t they nice? Don’t worry. If you paid, you will be refunded.)
It’s stressful to think of exclusive content to add consistently. I just don’t have the brainpower for that right now.
Even if I had 100 paying subscribers (which is a lot and will get you the Substack bestseller’s badge), it would still only be about $500 / month, assuming everyone stayed a member. That’s not bad, but I can make that on Medium with less stress.
It’s not a great user experience when my subscribers don’t have access to everything.
I don’t feel great about promoting my ebooks or affiliate offers when people are already paying for my newsletter. (But those promotions are more profitable.)
Part of what people pay for is a community, and I don’t have any interest in running a community.
I would love to read your thoughts about paid versus free newsletters. Do you run either kind? Do you pay for any newsletters? Why or why not?
By the way, here’s another annoying thing that happened with paid content recently…
This isn’t about a newsletter, but rather a news site.
I was checking out Google Trends, and I noticed a lot of news articles about how XRP became the third-largest cryptocurrency.
My husband and I own XRP, so this is exciting news!
I wanted to read about why it’s soaring, so I clicked on a link to an article, and here’s what happened:
Somewhere behind all the ads in that tiny rectangle is the article I wanted to read. Blurred out.
Because I’m not a member.
Ugh!
(I also realize I write on Medium where my posts are paywalled and therefore, I’m being hypocritical. 🤘🏻)
I recently unsubscribed from a newsletter.
I don't mind them being paid. I'll probably have my own paid newsletter later and I'm paying for a couple of newsletters.
What I do mind is investing my time and energy in reading half a newsletter for then to be told it's only for paid subscribers.
THAT's why I unsubscribed from a newsletter that was otherwise good. I don't like being forced into buying.
It's either: send it to me so I can read it - or don't send it to me, only to paid subscribers.
I've been recommending that people make the written content free but valuable and useful on its own. Use the paywall to offer extra stuff (access to you, books, videos, guides, courses, templates, etc). It's what I do myself and it works pretty great.