The Smartest Way to Price Your Newsletter (with Insights from "The Queen of Subscriptions")
Learn from the world’s leading subscription expert Robbie Kellman Baxter
Based on yesterday’s workshop inside the Club with
and the replay with the post How To Price My Newsletter? Many Writers Leave Money on The Table! I received many questions from you about how to price your newsletter in category x and with a publishing cadence of x.I get it. Pricing is tricky!
First, there’s no single way to price your newsletter, and you don’t have to model what other newsletters are doing.
Based on analyzing 75,000 newsletters, Ciler shared how much daily, weekly, and bi-weekly newsletters are charging.
However, as you might know, I work as a marketing and brand manager, but my roots are in journalism. So, I think market research is nice, but as a writer, my goal always is to “rather be writing” than spending hours thinking of my subscription prices.
Because with the three tiers on Substack, you have to choose:
monthly subscription price
annual subscription price
founding member price
All you want it to be is simple and clear!
Can I get an amen?
That’s why I think it’s smart to zoom out of the Substack universe and zoom in on what the world’s leading subscription expert Robbie Kellman Baxter says to do BEFORE you’re thinking about pricing.
“The Queen of Subscriptions” has written two groundbreaking books about the subscription model, which I’m currently reading (or inhaling):
The Membership Economy
The Forever Transaction
In this post, I’ll focus on my takeaways from the forever transaction.
Membership Mindset
“If you want customers to be loyal, to trust you, and to allow you to charge them on a recurring basis, you need to give them something in return—something to earn that trust. A membership mindset is the way employees feel about the people they serve.”
I definitely have this “membership mindset” as I see my paid subscribers as members. That’s how I called them from the start when I turned on paid subscriptions in January 2024. And my subscription is a membership experience.
But that’s just how I’m labeling it. What’s inside the membership experience?
With my community on Circle, my Substack Chat, support in direct messages, and LIVE workshops, I prioritize long-term relationships. I focus on helping my members achieve their goals. They don’t buy a product from me (e.g., an on-demand course), and that’s it. As annual members, they’ll get 365 days of support inside the membership experience.
With this “membership mindset,” I always say: The Online Writing Club is a community, not a newsletter!
In my interview with Ciler and my #1 tip for new writers
I highlighted this as well.“Often, people sign up for other features, but stay for the community. Not every subscription needs to provide a place for members to interact, but in many cases, subscribers share challenges and objectives, so a moderated forum can become a source of better customer retention.”
Kellmann Baxter shared:
“Amazon has an empty chair at every meeting. That way when employees are making decisions, they are reminded to behave as they would if their customers were listening to the conversation.”
Forever Promise
“At the heart of any good subscription is a forever promise that justifies the forever transaction. The organization says, “as long as you need X, we will continue to evolve our combination of features and benefits to get you there in the best way possible.”
I think Substack is a great example of a forever promise. The buzzy platform continues to layer in more and more features (Notes, Chat, LIVE video, DMs) that go beyond “just newsletter” and add other benefits or rewards (e.g., fund for TikTokers or social media refugees) without raising its fee (10% cut).
I’d say their strong forever promise is "as long as you need a grow your email list and make mone with it, we will continue to evolve our combination of features and benefits to get you there in the best way possible. We’ll be free forever and only make money if you do.
To create a free forever promise, you need to answer the following questions:
Who am I serving?
Who am I not serving?
If you know who your ideal reader is, the ONE fictional person to whom your subscription would most appeal, who gets your email in their intimate inbox, opens and reads it, you can create a better pay-worthy offer and “achieve that holy grail of recurring revenue . . . a “forever transaction.”
My Newsletter (Scoring) Framework to Help You Price Your Newsletter
Within the last 16 months, I’ve coached more than 350 writers, authors, creatives, artists, mom and dads, part-time, based on my knowledge as a consultant for Edelman, the biggest CommsMarketing agency in the world.
If you upgrade to a 💎VIP member (tax-deductible!), we start with a newsletter audit to see what’s working and what needs fixing.
Here’s a peak behind the scenes and an excerpt from the Newsletter Pricing Framework (without scoring):
