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Newsletters are extremely useful resources that serve many different purposes. From detailed analyses exploring a passion topic to updates about a new content channel or collaboration – newsletters are a great way to reach out to email lists and followers. But they can also be a sustainable source of revenue, rich with content people are willing to pay for and worth investing in – especially for content creators. Where free newsletters are great for boosting click-through rates, driving traffic to your site, and converting visitors, paid newsletters are also a great way to share your creativity and expertise – while making money. Thanks to tools like ConvertKit, doing so is easier than ever before.
Email marketing has traditionally always been a reliable option for many. While boasting open rates that often exceed 50% (compared to social media’s sub-1% average), email’s high degree of engagement and personalization means that newsletters have always performed pretty well.
And while overall, newsletters have dipped slightly in popularity among big business and mainstream marketing channels, they’re making a comeback among solo creators and those looking to build a content-specific business while presenting an opportunity to earn a little extra income.
In this article, we’ll walk you through how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit. From figuring out those tricky automation features to understanding how to set up your sequencing, ConvertKit has made creating, publishing, and sending out your subscription newsletter easy.
What is ConvertKit?
Before we dive into learning how to create a paid newsletter with ConvertKit, let’s take a quick peek at the ConvertKit platform and explore what it can do.
ConvertKit is an end-to-end automated email service provider and cloud-based lead generation solution that offers users a full spread of tools, integrations, and features capable of transforming even the shakiest email and digital marketing strategy into a conversion powerhouse.
Boasting a super easy-to-use interface and next-level automation features, ConvertKit has been designed for content-driven professionals, specifically bloggers, course creators, podcasters, and YouTubers. The platform allows users to grow their email lists, create drag-and-drop email sequences, use workflow automation tools, access landing page templates, and build customized opt-in forms.
The platform is priced affordably, with a decent free version, and paid-for features and benefits that users can take advantage of to level up their newsletter strategy:
Landing Pages and Forms
ConvertKit offers a reliable landing page toolset that includes access to a selection of customizable templates you can tweak and refine (via CSS if needed) to ensure that your landing pages look great and get the job done. You can also create an unlimited number of opt-in forms embedded directly on your site, which are very responsive, and highly customizable – not bad considering that ConvertKit’s forms feature is free-to-use.
Automation
ConvertKit’s automation features spread is impressive. Here, users can send richer, more engaging content to targeted audience segments by setting up automations based on selected audience behaviors. And while most ESPs offer similar capacity, it is ConvertKit’s automation simplicity that helps it to stand out. Multiple-automation chains will keep things chugging along, ensuring that old subscribers don’t get left out.
Subscribers
Here, ConvertKit differs from most ESPs in that the app only charges based on the number of unique subscribers you’re working with instead of the size of the email list itself. This means the same person who subscribed via a different route won’t be seen as another one altogether and charged accordingly. Here, you can access critical subscriber data information, manage your subscribers using helpful segments and tagging and keep your subscription database well-organized and manageable.
Broadcasts
In learning how to create a paid newsletter with ConvertKit, your primary distribution tool comes as two email sending options on ConvertKit: Broadcasts and sequences. Broadcast emails are nonautomated, once-off emails that you can send to your entire emailing list or only a chosen segment of it. Great for announcements or important updates for everyone to read, or perfect if you’re only reaching out to a subset of your audience – like a premium paid segment.
Sequences
An email sequence consists of a series of multiple automated emails which are set to go out to recipients at pre-determined times or after specific actions have been taken. Sequences require triggers to set them off, and these can be customized and added by the user depending on who you want to receive these emails. Sequences are perfect for feeding prospects through your funnel.
What Makes ConvertKit Worth Paying for?
Paid – or subscription – newsletters are premium content offerings where subscribers must pay a monthly or yearly fee in return for access to this exclusive email content.
They are generally published weekly and often focus on a specific topic or subject that appeals to a targeted audience, group, or industry. These newsletters differ from their free counterparts on several fronts and can include special content, curated links, original writings, and stories gathered from around the internet or created specifically for the newsletter.
From a creator perspective, knowing how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit means repeat-revenue gold. Once a subscriber signs up, you earn periodically and consistently until either the subscriber’s membership expires or they choose to cancel. While it may take some time to start accruing good income, creators with existing email lists and decent followership can quickly monetize their newsletter content by leveraging the features offered by tools like ConvertKit.
The app empowers creators to monetize highly personalized and uniquely customized newsletters to their audience. This, coupled with the landing page features and automation capabilities, means that you’ve got everything you need to get your newsletter earning you money.
How to Create a Paid Newsletter with ConvertKit
While ConvertKit’s user interface is simple to use and the raft of handy benefits will have you up and running in no time, you’ll still need to understand how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit that gets its job done and keeps people coming back for more.
1. Getting New Subscribers (with forms and landing pages)
To begin the process behind how to create a paid newsletter with ConvertKit, you’ll need to design the forms or landing pages that will gather subscribers for you. Use one of the templates and customize your form or landing page to attract potential subscribers. You can add additional creative components, such as summary lists or previous newsletter titles, testimonials, and more, drawing even more people to sign up.
2. Welcoming Your Latest Signups (with a free newsletter)
Next, you’ll want to send your new subscribers a free newsletter to welcome them to your content and make them feel right at home. ConvertKit’s Landing Page and Forms tab shows you how many people have signed up and, once you’ve got enough people on board, you can send your first free newsletter to them in one go using the Broadcast feature.
First, set up a rule that tags new subscribers to receive a free newsletter whenever you send it. Then add another rule to activate the automation triggers, such as ‘subscribes to a new form’ for example, which will save your automation response to new subscriber actions. You can select your form from the dropdown menu. Fill in your responding action and save the rule. Easy.
Now, whenever someone completes a form, they will be added to your list to receive your free newsletter.
3. Write Your Newsletter
Drafting your newsletter with ConvertKit is easy. If you’re trying to figure out how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit by curating a newsletter from other online sources, you can copy and paste the curated content into the editor field, or you can simply get straight to typing. You can pick a template from the library and customize it using ConvertKit’s visual template editor. Tweak colors, fonts, sizes, and more to get your newsletter design looking great!
Then move on to the Broadcast Editor tool and write your newsletter. The interface is easy to use, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you get your newsletter done!
4. Converting Your New Signups to Paid Subscribers (with sequences)
By this point, you’re no doubt growing your subscriber lists. As more and more newsletters go out, the numbers keep going up. It’s time to begin monetizing your efforts, and, great news, you’ve already got a reader base to start converting into paid subscribers!
For this, you’ll need to set up a ConvertKit automation sequence that executes continuously and guides people from free readers to paid subscribers. These sequences use visual custom pathways, which allow you to quickly build a funnel of paying subscribers without getting bogged down by complex triggers and actions. You can create multiple points of entry to your sequence beyond forms and landing pages – like eBook or course downloads.
Here’s a roundup of the main elements of automation sequences:
- Actions – are the bread and butter of your paid newsletter sequences and are used to connect specific forms to these sequences and to automatically tag a subscriber when they opt-in (or out) of something.
- Events – are what move subscribers down the sequence line. They are mostly used to shift subscribers from free to paid (or vice versa) on a pre-determined date or when they make a purchase.
- Conditions and split paths – are the splits where a choice must be made. They ask “yes or no” questions and send subscribers down the path based on that response.
Once you’ve got your automations locked and loaded, you’ll set up your rules to tag anyone who opts into your paid newsletter and then let the sequences do the rest.
5. Create Your CTAs (& add them to emails within the automation sequence)
Next, add CTA buttons or links to your emails or free newsletters into your automation sequence that encourage people to sign up for your paid newsletter. These CTAs will direct them to your product page.
6. Create Your Paid Newsletter (with ConvertKit Commerce)
Here’s where ConvertKit’s paid email features really come to the party. Where people looking to create a paid newsletter in the past found the marketing, payment management, subscription control, and publishing very difficult to bring together, ConvertKit Commerce allows you to sell your paid newsletter subscription right next to your digital products. There are two things you’ll need to do before listing it. Here’s how:
- Navigate to ConvertKit Commerce portal.
- Subscription – On the product details page, name your newsletter and ensure that you select the ‘subscription’ pricing method.
- Price – Choose how much you want to charge your subscribers.
- Frequency – Still on the product details page, select how often you want them to be billed (monthly is the most popular choice).
- I’m selling – Select ‘A Newsletter’ (obviously)
Set up your Stripe-integrated payments, verify the checkout method, confirmation, and draft the receipt email, and you’re done! Your paid newsletter is ready to make you some money. Understanding how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit is easy!
7. Send (by using the broadcast feature)
OK, so you’ve got your subscribers waiting on the edge of their seats; your newsletter is ready to go. What’s next? It’s time to send it.
Ensure that your paying subscribers tab is selected (so your free members don’t get a copy of the premium stuff) and that you’ve set up a rule to send your paid newsletter to those who convert from free to paid (so you don’t have to). This way, if someone signs up for your paid newsletter, they’ll get the next one, and if someone cancels their paid subscription, they won’t get a copy anymore. Pretty cool, right?
Navigate to Broadcast, prime your newsletter, and send (or schedule to send later).
8. Don’t Forget to Promote
Since your newsletter is paid-for and thus unlikely to be shared far and wide, you’ll need to do a little promotional work to keep people in the loop. Sharing snippets of the paid newsletter is a great way to give people a taste of what your newsletter has to offer while connecting to your other non-signup contacts and community with a link to your paid newsletter is also a great way to spread the love.
Conclusion
Understanding how to create a paid newsletter with ConvertKit is easy. The ESPs comprehensive feature offerings, coupled with top-shelf automation, sequencing, and broadcast capacities, means that creators looking to monetize this ever-reliable corner of email marketing is easier than it has ever been.
ConvertKit’s leaning towards a robust conversational marketing strategy means that email newsletters from the site don’t feel like the hordes of spam littering everyone’s inbox and are warmer and more relatable than the corporate propaganda on the other end of the spectrum.
From vibrant templates to the smooth visual sequencing architecture, ConvertKit makes monetizing your newsletter content simple and clean.
Learning how to create a subscription newsletter with ConvertKit is one of the quickest ways to monetize your skills and expertise without having to build a content empire first. They are easy to start, flexible around pricing, and maintaining them is simple, especially when you’re armed with a tool like ConvertKit.
