Pick a subject you can write about every week and send an email people open. AI drafts it faster, but the reason anyone subscribes is that a person is choosing what matters.
~720 people search this every month → steady · US, measured
These named newsletters disclose revenue from advertising, subscriptions, licensing, and adjacent services. Revenue is reported by the publisher or platform rather than audited.
Forbes reported that Rowan Cheung's bootstrapped Rundown AI booked $3 million in 2024 revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and AI workshops. Its later $7 million figure was a projection and is not used here.
Forbes · 2025 ↗Yaroslav Sobko grew Cyber Corsairs from roughly 4,000 to more than 50,000 subscribers. Beehiiv reported $16,600 in July revenue across ads, Boosts, premium subscriptions, direct sponsors, and an adjacent newsletter agency.
beehiiv · Apr 2025 ↗Matt Brown's Extra Points covers the business of college sports. Beehiiv reports about $200,000 in annual revenue from paid memberships, advertising, sponsored content, and university licensing.
beehiiv · 2026 ↗Where it sends fromowns your list and handles delivery
Free until the list is real, with a custom domain and proper analytics when it is.
Costs nothing until you charge readers, then takes 10% on top of card processing.
Art and coversthe one image per issue that earns the open
Reusable header templates so every issue looks like the same publication.
Handles lettering better than most image models, which matters on a cover with a title on it.
Fewer than most people assume, but they have to be the right ones. A few hundred readers in one clear niche is a sellable audience for sponsors or a paid tier; a few thousand people who signed up for a giveaway is not. Open rate matters more than list size to everyone who might eventually pay you.
beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers and you keep the list cleanly with a custom domain, which suits you if you plan to sell sponsorships. Substack costs nothing until you turn on paid subscriptions and then takes 10% on top of card processing, which suits you if reader payments are the plan. Moving later is possible but you lose your archive's URLs.
It can, and those newsletters are the ones people stop opening. The model has no view on what mattered this week and no access to anything that did not already get written about. Use it to draft and tighten; the choosing and the opinion are what someone subscribed to.
Three ways, usually in this order: sponsorships, paid subscriptions, and affiliate links to tools you genuinely use. All three work better against a reliable habit than against a big list, which is why sending on the same day every week matters more than growth tactics.
Run this hustle? Get featured, or tell us what we got wrong.
Income and demand tiers reflect what we found in public reports and search data, verified to the level shown. Nothing here is a guarantee of earnings.
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