Newsletters are an effective way to establish a direct contact with your audience, unmitigated by the whims of social media algorithms. Hence, publishers have invested in the medium and are planning to pour even more effort into newsletters, the Reuters Institute’s research shows. At the same time, it’s also a low-barrier point of entry for individual news creators.

*Source: Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2024*

Lucrative newsletters

Last year, four news-based newsletters featured in the top 7 ranks on Substack’s list of the most revenue-generating newsletters. This includes Bulwark+ ($1,000,000); The Fifth Column ($1,000,000) The Free Press ($800,000) and Slow Boring ($800,000). Press Gazette also found that politics and news happen to be the best performing and highest earning genre on Substack.

For individual journalists, newsletters are a profitable option to share their work with their readers. There are dozens of successful stories, like Matt Taibbi’s Racket News (with 421,000 subscribers), Glenn Greenwald’s newsletter (with 314,000 subscribers) and Alex Berenson’s Unreported Truths (with 242,000 subscribers).

*Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022*

Audiences are more likely to favour newsletters that have an individual at the helm of responsibility or be the face of the newsletters. This is why Bloomberg decided to use their individual journalists to be the face of their newsletters, banking on the success of personality-driven content. This is why they tasked Mark Gurman with Power On and Jason Schreier with Game On.

One such newsletter that has succeeded in turning untold stories into a profitable newsletter, is Sham Jaff’s what happened last week (whlw). Started in 2014, Jaff’s newsletter delivers interesting stories from Asia, Africa and the Americas to your inbox every Monday. It’s filled with unique yet underrepresented stories from the Global South in an easy-to-follow style.

Born in Iraq and moving to Germany at age 9, Jaff witnessed the differences between Kurdish and German news. “I saw two different ways to report on the world. If you were to watch Kurdish news you would get different stories and different perspectives than if you were watching German news,” says Jaff.

*Sham Jaff (photo by Holger Talinski, courtesy of Sham Jaff)*

“I wanted to highlight the stories and perspectives that I thought were missing from Asia, Africa and the Americas. I also noticed that I knew so little about those places even though I was studying Political Science. So I decided to create whlw as a way to curate voices and perspectives and to get acquainted with those countries.”

Operating weekly since the last decade, whlw has amassed 21,000 readers from the ages of 26 and 44. Most of its readers come from Western countries, with the bulk coming from Germany, the US and the UK. Of the total subscribers, whlw has 1000 vip readers. The paid version, whlw vip, costs €9 monthly and €79 yearly, except for students who get discounts.

The VIP version was introduced last year in October. Before that Jaff was against getting revenue via advertisements or by introducing a paywall. “I wanted to keep whlw accessible for everybody. News is not a product to be purchased.” As a freelance journalist, she was in a tight situation where she overworked and exhausted herself to pay bills.

Then on a friend’s suggestion, she decided to introduce paid membership to her newsletter. “In this way, I get to do what I like, but with the luxury to say no to some freelancing jobs.” whlw is now available in both free and paid versions. With the paid version comes more content, including in-depth stories, recommendations, funny news and more.

How to make newsletters profitable?

1. Find a niche

People are more likely to pay for newsletters that are original yet specific. Hence, finding a niche will help the audience recognise your newsletter’s worth and pay for it. Jaff’s newsletter specifically highlights stories that often go unreported — like major strides in Namibia for LGBTQ+ rights, glacier meltdowns in Venezuela, etc. Sticking to this thought, Berliner Morgenpost split their newsletters into sub-categories – Berlin’s Real Estate, Economy, Gastronomical innovations, etc. Westfalenpost on the other hand split their newsletters based on different cities and regions.

2. Gathering a dedicated audience

Jaff has been penning her newsletter since 2014. Since then she has amassed a dedicated audience for herself. A major reason behind this is Jaff’s willingness to incorporate the reader’s feedback. “With every issue, I get around 10 to 15 emails, just people responding to the newsletter, giving their opinion or sending me links that they thought were interesting.”

Jaff has over the decade figured out her audiences’ likes and dislikes. whlw’s format, easy yet accessible language, inclusion of images and recommendations have been her readers’ favourite features that have become the cornerstone of whlw.

3. Something free, something paid

With 17% of the audience currently paying for subscriptions, according to Reuters, only 2% are willing to pay the full price. This is why many publishers are likely to release a ‘lite’ version of their products. By doing so, they offer a cheaper version of their original product for the audience to experience. Publishers do so in the hope that this experience might get the audience hooked to it.

This strategy is more tantalising for younger audiences, who are the most unwilling to pay the full price. Hence, many publishers introduce ‘students or academic discounts’. Such academic discounts are common for newsletters by The Economist, WSJ, Foreign Affairs and more. Jaff does the same and offers discounts to students for her whlw vip newsletter.

With whlw, Jaff manages to gather a keen audience that is interested in news from countries often underrepresented in the Western media. But she does this by offering a newsletter that helps explain concepts in an accessible language, with relevant contextual information and in a format the audience can rely on.

Source of the cover photo: generated by ChatGPT, DALL·E

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