How Often Should You Send Your Subscription Newsletter?
Written by Casey Botticello
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There are countless articles already published which explain the ideal posting schedule of a traditional email newsletter. But for the thousands of writers who have joined the passion economy during the last few years, this question is outdated and irrelevant.
The real question that writers are asking, is how often should I send out my subscription newsletter? This is not a question of semantics. When someone pays for access to your content, they expect a different caliber of content.
“How often should I send out my subscription newsletter?”
This is a critical question. The post schedule and frequency of a subscription newsletter involves a series of trade-offs.
For example, your paid subscribers are (presumably) receiving premium content that free sign up readers are not. But does this mean that you shouldn’t also send paid subscribers the content received by free sign ups (in addition to their premium content)?
Conversely, you don’t want to inundate your paid subscribers with too much content. You (most likely) want your paid subscribers to only receive high quality content. For paid subscribers, less is often more. They expect to get regular and concise newsletter issues with valuable or entertaining information.
Since they are paying a premium to access this content, it typically will not include external ads, lengthy self promotion, or CTAs encouraging them to “become a paid subscriber” because they already are a paid subscriber.
However, a major part of running a successful paid subscription newsletter is the ability to convert free newsletter sign ups into paid subscribers. And besides the direct in-newsletter advertisements, what is the best way to convince free sign ups to take action become a paid subscriber? Demonstrate your value by publishing high quality content.
Of course, if you are already producing high quality content, that is exclusively available to your paid subscribers, you may find yourself in, what I refer to as, “The Subscription Newsletter Content Paradox“:
High quality content and frequent advertisements are essential to get paid subscribers, but you can’t simply give away all your best content for free. If you offer too much of your high value content to your free sign ups, there will be little incentive for readers to pay for access to premium content, and those that do pay to upgrade may be disappointed. Having readers feel unsatisfied will ultimately result in a higher newsletter churn rate and possibly frustrate your readers.
Luckily, now that subscription newsletter platforms such as Substack, Revue, and Ghost have been around a few years, there are a lot more subscription newsletters to look to as examples and data to help you pick the right frequency for sending out your Substack newsletter.
I’ve also personally been operating a subscription newsletter (Blogging Guide), so I can offer my insight and share the data I’ve collected so far.
High Value Content Production Capacity
While this article is focused on addressing the question of how often writers should publish their subscription newsletter, this question cannot be answered without first addressing a writer’s capacity to produce high quality content.
One (seemingly) obvious solution to the Subscription Newsletter Content Paradox (SNCP), is to simply produce more high quality content. In fact, why not make every newsletter article of extremely high quality?
The answer is simple.
Without outsourcing your newsletter writing to other authors, most writers are already constrained by their own maximum level of contnet production. This may be because they simply cannot generate ideas fast enough or because they cannot allocate enough time to their newsletter (many successful subscription newsletter writers dedicate the equivalent of 20+ hours per week). Some even do this full time and still struggle to produce one free article per week, followed by four paid articles (or whatever thier posting schedule is).
So if you are one of the lucky few that has more time to spend on their newsletter, you can potentially address this issue by simply writing more (high quality) content. But for the vast majority of writers, this leads to them picking a content posting schedule that is shaped by their own personal level of maximum content production.
Types of Post Frequency & Consistency
As mentioned above, how often you should send out your subscription newsletter depends on your personal priorities, allocation of time, and maximum content production capacity.
That said, despite the wide range of individual circumstances, most writers stick to one of five main schedules.
1. High Frequency Posting Schedule (4 Paid + 1 Free / Week)
In this scenario, a writer posts four paid subscriber only posts (usually Monday through Thursday) and then posts a fifth post on Friday that is also available for free sign ups. This is a very rigorous, and high frequency newsletter posting schedule. Not only will this level of content production require most people’s full time efforts, but the content must be truly high value, to justify the frequency it is being sent to its audience. This is basically on par with a traditional news media company, which you rely upon during the work week to keep you informed.
An example of this would be Sinocism by Bill Bishop. Sinocism is one of Substack’s most successful newsletters, in terms of paid subscribers. Its audience is extraordinarily engaged, as Bill Bishop is considered by many to be an expert on China.
Some of the other newsletters that follow this structure include Casey Newton’s Platformer, The Defiant, Big by Matt Stroller, and The Pomp Letter.
Unless you are a similar subject matter expert, I would not recommend this schedule.
2. Medium Frequency Posting Schedule (2 Paid + 3 Free per Week)
In this schedule, the writer posts 4-5 times per week. This is similar to the first posting schedule but it involves a larger amount of free and promotional posts.
Examples of this type of newsletter include The Sequence, The Bulwark, and The Fintech Blueprint.
3. Low Frequency Posting Schedule (1 Paid + 1-2 Free)
In this scenario, the newsletter creator posts 1-3 times per week. These are typically shorter posts. This schedule is fairly easy to maintain and is probably one of the most common among regular Substack writers.
Examples of this type of newsletter include The North Star with Shaun King, Jonah’s Growth Stocks, and Blogging Guide.
4. Sporadic, Low Frequency Posting Schedule (~1 Paid per Month + 2-3 Free)
In this scenario, the newsletter creator publishes roughly one post per week.
Examples of this type of newsletter include Newcomer, Sermons From the Free Market, and Hummingbot Newsletter.
5. Sporadic, High Frequency Posting Schedule (1-5 Paid per Month + 2-9 Free)
Under this posting schedule, the newsletter creator publishes roughly two posts per month.
Examples of this type of newsletter include Field Notes by Sarah Bessey, Hung Up by Hunter Harris, and FORMA Journal.
Alternative Posting Strategies
Retroactively Paywalling Your Newsletter Posts
In this scenario, the newsletter creator publishes all their posts for free, initially. However, after a predetermined period of time, the newsletter creator places a paywall over their older posts. This allows you to offer new content to existing subscribers, for free, while effectively charging new subscribers for access to your paywalled back catalogue of content.
All Free (with Monetization Enabled)
In this scenario, the newsletter creator publishes all their posts for free. Unlike the previous strategy, all of the newsletter posts remain free, but you enable monetization. This allows you to keep all your content free, while still offering your readers the opportunity to support you financially.
An examples of a subscription newsletters operating under this model includes Astral Codex Ten,
Free Articles / Paid Discussions
This article posting schedule is similar to the one above (all articles are free and monetization is enabled). They key difference is that you restrict the comments section so that only paying subscribers can respond to the “premium discussion thread.”
Examples of subscription newsletters operating under this model include Book Club by Numlock, The Signorile Report, The Held Report, and Heated.
Free Articles / Paid Subscriber Podcasts
In this scenario, the newsletter creator publishes all their posts for free. Unlike the previous strategy, all of the newsletter posts remain free, but you enable monetization. This allows you to keep all your content free, while still offering your readers the opportunity to support you financially.
Examples of this type of newsletter include From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the frequency with which you send out a subscription newsletter depends on the topic covered by a particular newsletter. How often you choose to send out a subscription newsletter is also impacted by your specific strategy for monetizing your newsletter.
There is no one-size-fits-all posting schedule for a subscription newsletter. And even once you find a strategy that works for growing your newsletter subscribers, you may have to adjust your content calendar to better meet the needs of your readers.
