After years of chasing the next social platform, video format and algorithm tweak, publishers and creators are pouring their energy into something that's been around for decades: email.
Newsletters aren't new. We've been sending them for as long as there's been digital publishing. What's changed is how much we value them.
For a long time, the prize was reach. Build a following, get your work in front of as many people as possible and let Facebook, X, Instagram and Google handle the distribution, as long as you played by their algorithms' rules.
Then the rules changed. Sometimes gradually, sometimes overnight.
Organic reach fell, traffic became harder to predict, and publishers found themselves depending on platforms whose priorities weren't their own. A following that looked impressive on paper could become surprisingly hard to reach.
Email, meanwhile, was still sitting in the inbox.
It doesn't have the glamour of a viral video or a million followers. What it does have is something publishers have always prized: a direct line to people who've asked to hear from you. And as the newsletter business has grown, that line has become the foundation of a serious publishing and advertising model.
From rented land to the inbox
There's a phrase you hear a lot in digital publishing: owned media.
If your whole audience lives on a platform you don't control, you're building on rented land. You can spend years creating content and growing a recognisable brand, but the platform decides who gets to see it.
Social media is still useful. It's an excellent way to introduce your work to new people, and search still matters too. The risk comes from relying on either one as your only route to readers.
A newsletter works differently. Someone hands over their email address, confirms they're interested and agrees to hear from you. After that, you don't have to win a fresh battle with a feed every time you publish.
It isn't a guarantee, though. Gmail and Outlook still decide which tab or folder your message lands in, spam filters can stop it altogether, and subscribers drift away. Having someone's address doesn't mean they'll read what you send. But it's a far more direct relationship than hoping an algorithm puts your latest post in front of a follower.
That changes the economics of building an audience. A social following creates awareness. A well-kept list can deliver repeat visits, subscriptions, sponsorships and sales.
It's also why the technical side of email matters more than ever. Whether a newsletter actually reaches the inbox depends on:
- Authentication: setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC so mailbox providers can confirm you are who you say you are
- Sender reputation: built up slowly, and easily damaged by complaints and bounces
- List hygiene: regularly removing addresses that bounce or never engage
- Domain warming: increasing volume gradually when you start sending from a new domain or scale up
So the old challenge of being found through search and social hasn't gone away. Publishers now have a second one: making sure their emails arrive.
Not all newsletter platforms are built the same
The growth of newsletters has created a market for platforms that do far more than send an email to a list. The leading tools now handle subscriptions, segmentation, recommendations, advertising, analytics and referral schemes. Some provide most of what you'd need to run a small media business.
They don't all go about it the same way, though.
Substack: publishing first
Substack made its name by making it easy for writers to start publishing, build an audience and charge for subscriptions. There's very little to set up, and its recommendation and discovery features help readers find new newsletters.
The business model is simple. Publishing is free, and Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, with Stripe's card processing fees on top. On a £5 monthly subscription, that's 50p to Substack before the payment fees.
That suits writers who'd rather focus on their work than run their own publishing set-up. The trade-off is that you're living inside Substack's world. Its discovery tools can help you grow, but you're also bound by its commercial model and its rules.
beehiiv and Kit: building the business
Other platforms are more business-minded.
beehiiv combines publishing with an advertising network, referral programmes, growth tools and paid subscriptions. Rather than taking a cut of subscription revenue, it charges a monthly software fee, and on its paid plans it takes 0% of what your readers pay you (Stripe's fees still apply).
Kit, known as ConvertKit until it rebranded in 2024, is built around creators: email marketing, automation and selling products, services and subscriptions to your subscribers.
These aren't interchangeable. The right choice depends on what you're building:
- A writer publishing essays for paying readers may value simplicity and discovery above everything else.
- A publisher running several newsletters, with sponsorship inventory and detailed segmentation, will probably want more control over the business underneath.
Run the numbers, too. A flat monthly fee starts to look attractive as subscription revenue grows, because 10% of a large income is a lot more than a software bill. But advertising, payment processing, subscriber acquisition and production costs all still need factoring in.
The bigger picture is that these platforms are no longer just email tools. They're becoming the operating systems of independent media businesses.
The growth loop: helping newsletters find each other
One of the cleverer developments is the way platforms help newsletters grow through recommendations.
A reader subscribes to one newsletter and is offered the chance to sign up to another that might interest them, often with a single tick. Substack calls these Recommendations. beehiiv has Boosts, where publishers pay other newsletters for each new subscriber they send their way.
These networks can make a new subscriber cheaper to win than paid advertising or chasing social reach. The real cost still depends on the terms, the quality of the subscribers and whether they stick around and read.
The point is that growth doesn't have to mean buying traffic. It can come from publishers helping each other reach readers with similar interests.
How newsletters make money
Building an audience is one thing. Turning it into a sustainable business is another. Fortunately, newsletters have several ways to earn, and they work well together.
Sponsorships
For many publications, sponsorships are the most visible source of income. A brand pays to appear in an edition, as a dedicated slot, a sponsored section or a short message written in the newsletter's own voice.
That last option matters. A sponsorship that's relevant and fits naturally into the newsletter usually lands better than a generic banner squeezed between paragraphs. Anyone who's worked in print will recognise it: it's the advertorial, reborn for the inbox.
Sponsors also get a clearly defined audience. A newsletter about finance, technology, property or travel offers something a broad, untargeted placement can't.
Sponsorships are usually priced on CPM (cost per thousand subscribers or opens) or as a flat fee per edition. Rates vary widely depending on the audience, subject, location, list size, engagement and how prominent the placement is.
Specialist newsletters that reach valuable professional audiences can charge substantial rates. But a high CPM doesn't guarantee results. Advertisers still need to weigh up the audience, the message and what the placement actually delivers.
Programmatic comes to the inbox
Not every publisher wants to sell every sponsorship themselves. That's created a market for newsletter advertising networks, which match publishers with advertisers and automate much of the buying and selling.
beehiiv runs its own ad network for publishers on its platform. LiveIntent, a long-established email advertising specialist, was bought by marketing technology firm Zeta Global for $250 million in 2024, which tells you how seriously the industry now takes inbox inventory.
Depending on the network, ads can be chosen using audience, campaign and contextual signals, and some support dynamic creative that changes depending on who's reading. This is where newsletters start to look like the wider programmatic advertising industry: inventory that can be packaged, targeted, measured and sold through structured processes.
For publishers, it's extra revenue without building a sales team. For advertisers, it's access to audiences that are hard to reach through ordinary display advertising.
The details vary, though. Networks work in different ways, and how well they can measure and personalise depends on the technology involved and on subscribers' privacy settings.
Paid subscriptions, affiliates and more
Advertising is only part of the picture. A newsletter can also earn through:
- Paid subscriptions: a free edition to attract readers, with premium articles, research or analysis for paying members
- Affiliate links: commission on products and services it recommends
- Its own products: courses, events, books or merchandise
- Communities: paid access to a private group or forum
The right mix depends on the audience. A specialist financial newsletter might justify a paid subscription with research readers can't get elsewhere. A consumer title may be better suited to sponsorships and affiliate links. A creator with an established following could combine subscriptions with courses and events.
There's no universal formula. But a newsletter that combines a free audience, paying subscribers and relevant sponsors isn't at the mercy of any single advertiser or income stream.
None of that makes success automatic. A large free list isn't necessarily a profitable one, and even a small paid audience can be expensive to win and keep. The real question is whether readers bring in more than the newsletter costs to produce and send.
Privacy, data and the changing value of the inbox
The newsletter boom has arrived just as digital advertising is rethinking how it identifies audiences and measures results. Third-party cookies face growing restrictions, privacy laws such as GDPR limit how personal data can be collected and used, and Apple and the browser makers have clamped down on tracking.
Against that backdrop, a relationship built on an email address is very appealing.
When someone signs up, the publisher gets a direct way to identify them and usually a good idea of what they want to read about. That's first-party data: information a business gathers through its own relationship with its audience, such as sign-ups, clicks and reading habits. There's also zero-party data: things a reader tells you on purpose, like the topics they tick in a preferences form.
Both help publishers understand their readers, as long as they're collected and used properly.
An email address isn't a passport to someone's whole online identity, though. How it can be used depends on consent, the law and platform policies. It lets a publisher recognise a subscriber in its own systems. It doesn't give permission to follow that person around the web.
For advertisers, the appeal is usually simpler. A newsletter about AI engineering, commercial property or luxury travel has already gathered readers with a shared interest. Brands can reach them in a context that makes sense, instead of relying solely on behavioural targeting. That doesn't remove the need for privacy safeguards, but it explains why specialist newsletter audiences are worth so much.
The engagement paradox
Then there's the awkward question: is anyone actually reading?
For years, the open rate was the standard measure of engagement. Then, in 2021, Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection with iOS 15. When it's switched on, Apple Mail downloads an email's images, including the tiny tracking pixels senders use to count opens, in the background, whether or not the person opens the message. It also hides their IP address. To the sender, plenty of unopened emails now look opened.
So open rates can paint a flattering and misleading picture. Publishers need to look at a wider set of signals:
- Click-through rate
- Replies
- Conversions and sales
- Subscription renewals
- Revenue per subscriber
Click-to-open rate (CTOR) can still help in some situations, but because it's calculated from opens, it inherits the same problem. Treat it as one measure among several.
The more useful question is whether readers are doing things that matter. Are they clicking through to articles? Replying to the author? Buying something? Renewing? Those actions say far more about the health of a newsletter than a headline open rate.
The inbox isn't going anywhere
It's tempting to frame the rise of newsletters as a backlash against social media, but that's not the whole story. Social platforms are still good for discovery, and search still sends readers to publishers. What's changed is that businesses have become much more aware of the risk of depending on a single channel.
Newsletters offer another route to an audience, one publishers can build over time with consistent content, reader trust and a clear reason to subscribe. The technology has caught up, too. Publishing, advertising, paid subscriptions and growth tools that once needed half a dozen separate services now come in a single platform.
For advertisers, that means audiences grouped around specific interests, with a more direct relationship between publication, reader and sponsor. For publishers, it means more ways to turn an audience into a business.
None of this means every newsletter will succeed, that email is immune to change or that social media is finished. Deliverability problems, subscriber fatigue, rising acquisition costs and shifting platform rules are all very real.
But the idea underneath is a compelling one. Instead of chasing reach forever, publishers can invest in relationships with readers who've chosen to hear from them.
Perhaps that's the real story of the newsletter economy. The inbox hasn't suddenly become exciting. Publishers and advertisers have simply worked out how much the relationship it makes possible is worth.
When so much else depends on algorithms, rented audiences and ever more complicated ad tech, there's something reassuringly simple about that. Sometimes the next big thing isn't a new platform at all. It's making better use of the one we've had all along.
Sources and further reading
On AdDeck:
- Email & Newsletter Ads: how newsletter sponsorships work, with benchmarks and an example.
- Ad glossary: plain-English definitions of CPM, open rate, opt-in and other terms used here.
Elsewhere:
- beehiiv: Pricing and plans. Features by plan, including the ad network and its 0% take on paid subscriptions.
- Kit: ConvertKit completes its rebrand to Kit (Business Wire, October 2024).
- SiliconANGLE: Zeta Global to acquire LiveIntent for $250M (October 2024).
- Apple: Mail Privacy Protection & Privacy. How Mail Privacy Protection loads remote content and hides your IP address.