Newsletter Creators Can't Grow Subscribers
73 posts across 20 communities in the last 30 days; 32% from r/Newsletters.
“I’m launching the first issue of The Testing Shortlist today: a deliberately narrow newsletter about UK product-testing, usability and consumer-research opportunities involving actual testing. Five opportunities made Issue #001. I shared my checking template here earlier this…”
“Numbers are fine, growth is slow but real, and yet: I have 500 subscribers and the last thing that got a reply was two months ago. I'm not asking how to get replies - I'm trying to understand the psychology. People read enough, they open at 42%, and they say nothing. What I've…”
“wow that's a lot of news, thanks for putting this together paul. the openai dots thing is interesting but i already can't keep up with my regular work, maybe an agent doing it for me is not worst idea. also that usps amazon pilot sound miserable for workers, imagine finish your…”
Creators are facing significant challenges growing and monetizing their newsletters. Many struggle to gain subscribers, generate revenue, and maintain consistent engagement despite dedicated effort and experimentation. The data reveals a harsh reality: most newsletters remain small, and few achieve substantial scale.
SOURCES (60)
“I've paid for X Premium for a while and I'm still at a few hundred followers. Most of what I post disappears in the first hour. When you're small, the people who'd actually like your stuff never see it. So I made XPacts . You…”
“I’m launching the first issue of The Testing Shortlist today: a deliberately narrow newsletter about UK product-testing, usability and consumer-research opportunities involving actual testing. Five opportunities made Issue #001. I shared my checking template here earlier this week. The launch lesson has been about positioning: “more links” is easy to explain, but it isn’t the value I’m trying to offer. A live-looking page is not the same thing as live recruitment. Finished recruitment, unclear a”
“Emails can make up like 30% of your revenue you should be sending atleast 2 emails a week. And set up email flows. It can go either way depending on your niche, could be a small product range or large one. That all depends. But ultimately, just keep launching ads, improving ads, sending emails. Doing post purchase surveys and understanding what customers want. [re: Those of you with stores doing 500k+ how did you get there and what strategy proved the most efficient? Also did you have an “edge””
“Hello guys, you might remember me from my newsletter Wifi Moolah. I usually pick one side hustle every month and build it from scratch and try to show my readers whether it makes money or not. Last month I did this with a cold email agency, this month I am building a niche job board. So far, I have built it out using a job board software. I am not much concerned on the design and all perspective but my main goal is to monetize it. Here are some ways I can think of monetizing it: The traditional”
“Numbers are fine, growth is slow but real, and yet: I have 500 subscribers and the last thing that got a reply was two months ago. I'm not asking how to get replies - I'm trying to understand the psychology. People read enough, they open at 42%, and they say nothing. What I've noticed: I reply to every single person who emails me (when they do, it's usually a correction or a question - never a 'great issue!'), and the people who DO engage are the ones who've done some”
“I have several local news newsletters that have grown to a really respectable size, but I need to monetize them if I'm going to keep going. I really don't want to turn into an ad agency though. I built the software that it runs on and ads are actually matched per subscriber, but at the moment all ads have been for friends and family companies. The thought of having to deal with a bunch of peoples ads and constantly swapping them out and billing every one seems like a full time job. How e”
“I am subscriber of both Lenny's newsletter and Stratechery (by Ben Thompson). I have been thinking about both products and their businesses. The value of lenny's newsletter (including the podcast) is primarily helping mid and mid+ product managers to land a promotion or a better job. The product is the opinions of lenny's guests. If you think about it, you listen to his pods because of his guests. It's a lot of best practices and a lot of takeaways from his guests. Stratechery is”
Lets help each other submitted by /u/Piratelis [link] [comments]
“Anyone need help scaling their newsletter? Currently getting great cpa on alot of platforms and im are working on my portfolio so willing to do it for free for month including creatives. Im only taking on a couple so wont be able to do everyones. pm or comment if your interested! cheers (still taking on new people + youll need an adbudget in order for me to run the ads) submitted by /u/DreamLoopss [link] [comments]”
Standalone signup page for secondary newsletter?
“One new subscriber yesterday. For an indie dev, that’s a big day. YourMeal: Food tracking, no sign-up needed. But one subscriber a month doesn’t move the needle yet. What are your tips for distribution channels? Please drop them below 👇 submitted by /u/Adventurous-Gift3370 [link] [comments]”
“My newsletter is at about 1,300 subscribers and I'm seriously close to the free tier limit on my platform. The jump from free to paid is... a jump. And it's not that the money is absurd, it's that I'd be paying for a big growth machine I don't really use. I don't run referral programs, I don't sell ads, I don't do boost campaigns. I write, I send, I check open rates, I reply to emails. I did the same math last year with a different tool and got half-way through th”
“Hey everyone, I'm a econ student (with a big interest in private equity) and I've just started writing a free finance newsletter called The Price Ledger. Before I get too far in, I'd really like some honest input from people here. The idea is simple: I pick a deal, a market move or a commodity story, find the numbers behind it, and show the working so readers can check it. I try to label what's a fact, what's a calculation and what's just my opinion. I also publish the as”
Love your newsletter! And looking forward to the results!
“I have a handful of newsletters and a while back I automated my research process. Currently ad sales have been a little slow so I am thinking about monetizing my research app, but not sure if there would be any interest or not. Basically it will monitor any topic or location kind of like the google news feed except it can also include popular facebook groups in addition to blogs, news, events etc. It also automatically filters out all the crap; depressing crime or political articles, summarizes”
“I don’t think you did it completely backwards, but supply is usually the easier side of this kind of marketplace and can create false confidence. Twenty-seven newsletters sounds good, but until brands are willing to pay, you mostly have inventory, not a marketplace. I’d probably stop adding supply for now and go very narrow on demand. Pick one buyer profile, maybe SaaS companies targeting developers, AI teams, fintechs, whatever matches the newsletters you already have, and manually sell a campa”
“Thank you. This thread honestly pushed the newsletter idea over the finish line, so the luck is already working.”
“Appreciate the nudge. Starting with past clients only keeps it cheap and the list already trusts us. If it brings even a few rebooks a month it paid for itself.”
“Wonder if a blog/newsletter strategy would pay off so you stay top of mind for folks”
“wow that's a lot of news, thanks for putting this together paul. the openai dots thing is interesting but i already can't keep up with my regular work, maybe an agent doing it for me is not worst idea. also that usps amazon pilot sound miserable for workers, imagine finish your route and then get hit with another pile of packages.”
“Hey all - " dailymarketupdate.news " Most market newsletters suck. I skip 90% of each one, and I spend more time hunting for info than reading it. Between the jokes, the opinions and the filler, the useful bits get buried. So I made my own. It's easy to scan, easy to dive into a topic, and great for knowing what happened every day. I've been using it for my own trading and just made it public - and ofc it's free - Financial news/data should not be gatekept! Since you all kn”
“it depends on your niche. I send early on Sunday mornings, but if the weather is nice we will not see much traffic until Monday when people are back at work/school and in front of computers.”
“Depends on the niche/audience. I’d test a bunch of times over a few months and review engagement rates”
“I run this Medium publication for fun. towardsaws.com. Gets really good visits and is doing well on Google. It has over 17k+ followers on Twitter. twitter.com/TowardsAws and over 3k on Linkedin. If you were you, how would you monetize this community? I once got an acquisition offer of $10k. But didn't proceed. I do it for fun because I get to learn a lot of ideas from developers around the world when I edit articles. submitted by /u/kisancodes [link] [comments]”
“Starting a new mail club, wanting to grow to 10 subscribers by the end of the month. Any advice on promotion or social media strategy to help with growth? submitted by /u/Small_Journalist4959 [link] [comments]”
“How would you want someone to make money if they could call you and knock on your door 500 times a day?”
“Anyone notice a huge drop in open rates of linkedin newsletters??? I went from 43% on 2900 subscribers to like 50 to 60 opens and that is it, linkedin person said the metrics are right, 6 months of 40% + open rates seem otherwise submitted by /u/BandLongjumping8836 [link] [comments]”
“okay, thank you. Do you think it's better to start charging small, build up the audience,.. and then eventually price up?”
“likes are good, shares are good. comments less so, follows very few. i feel like those happen more when people recognize you, or if you are very good looking (i am ugly)”
“The money will just exit to get their return. They don't care about long term. Get in low, get out high.”
“Beyond traditional ad placements, there are several other practical revenue models that indie media can adopt: Strategic B2B partnerships: Offer tailored content, advertorials, or regional feature packages to businesses or agencies within your vertical. Cross-platform bundled promotion: Combine short-form video content (e.g., Reels, TikTok, YouTube) and email newsletters with your website content, packaging them into a unified media promotion solution for commercial operation. Grants and public”
“We have our own website and want to build the brand. I’m asking for advice of how to bring in revenue”
“Experiment results, because I couldn't find anyone posting real data on this. Context: 700 subscribers, weekly, 45% typical open rate, my own voice, zero AI ever. For three issues I used AI to draft sections - gave it my previous issues, my outline, and let it write in 'my style' (quotes because that's generous). Results: Time to first draft: dropped from about 2 hours to 35 minutes. Genuinely huge. Open rate: 44%, 46%, 43%. No change, basically noise. Replies: two of the three i”
“Very nice. I wonder if it could use (optional) browser notifications to nag the reader if they've done their weekly reading! 📚”
“Thanks for this beautiful insights. I know you are in different business but can you please give me an idea of how much setup and monthly would be reasonable to pitch them?”
“I've been thinking about starting a newsletter (most likely in LinkedIn), targeted to business leaders and business executives. But I'm worried about people seeing that the newsletter has zero (or too few) subscribers, and I'm worried that might deter people from subscribing themselves, so the newsletter would be kind of in a vicious cycle of low subscriber count. I do believe I have important contributions to add, and say them in a way that it's not that common. However, I'm”
“Hi everyone, This is v3 of Art at a Glance, my weekly art newsletter. After the first round of feedback I dropped the news section to focus on one affordable piece worth grabbing, real price, real way to buy it. After the second round I'm rethinking whether one piece per week is enough to fill a 5-minute read, or whether it should be more pieces weekly vs. a leaner daily format. Here's the latest version: Newsletter If you've got 2 minutes: Does one piece feel like enough, or thin? W”
“Is there any group/community of serious newsletter operators who talk and support each other. Share what’s working and what’s not in the group. If anybody knows, please let know, and if there is no such community, let’s build one. Comment below to show interest. P.S- obviously, it’ll be free. submitted by /u/Remarkable_Junket185 [link] [comments]”
“Honestly the best filter is just checking if the writer has ever shipped anything, most newsletters are marketing wrapped in thought leadership”
Nice list. I will add one from the AI economy side: I run RuntimeWire ( https://runtimewire.com ) for original reporting on AI startups and product moves. Most PM newsletters are great for…