If you’re an expert in a particular area, or have a newsletter that provides valuable information people are eager to learn, you could make money from it!
Lots of people already do this in a variety of ways. For example, they might write articles, provide curated content, or simply offer daily price updates for investors.
It depends on your specific situation, but don’t limit yourself! Be creative when thinking about your niche and the content you can provide.
If you worked through the details of the previous lesson on the WordPress.com Newsletter, then you’ve already done the heaving lifting. If you skipped that lesson, you’ll want to go back and work through it, as that’s the meat and potatoes of setting up your site with the WordPress.com Newsletter feature.
In this lesson we’ll dig into how you can now use that feature to offer a paid newsletter subscription and what to include in it.
The main goal is to offer content that highlights your perspective or experience, which is valuable precisely because it’s unique to you. Unless you’re freely sharing this content elsewhere, your paid newsletter becomes the exclusive platform for your subscribers to access your insights and offers.
Regarding content types to include, explore all possible options. Our Intro to Blogging course might be helpful, as it covers content types and brainstorming techniques. For now, below is a list of ideas that might be different from what you’d expect.
Take the time to carefully assess each idea, avoiding hasty dismissals. Think about whether you’d enjoy creating a specific type of content and if it genuinely suits your topic and audience.
- Downloadable templates or printables
- Tutorials or mini-courses
- Poems, short stories, or a novel with one chapter per post
- Artwork
- Q&A advice
- Case studies or research papers
- Reviews
- Infographics
- Interviews
- Podcasts
- Video demonstrations
Many of these content types can also be offered for free, but there’s no reason you can’t enhance them into more substantial or exclusive pieces that your followers will pay for.
Pro tip
It’s often wise to provide some high-quality or exclusive content for free, giving your site visitors a preview of what they can expect from your paid content.
Don’t forget that you can also include any of the monetization options from the previous lesson as well.
The WordPress.com Newsletter feature allows you to designate an entire post specifically for paid newsletter subscribers. There are two key components:
- Setup your payment plan(s)
- Assign the Access level
Our Paid Newsletter guide shows how to set this up step by step.
As seen in the guide under Step 3, with a simple setting change, you can choose whether a post is accessible to everyone who visits your site, only to subscribers (free and paid) of your site, or only to paid subscribers.
It’s also possible to set up more than one subscription for your visitors. For example, you could offer a one-time payment (perhaps as a life-time access option), another option for an annual subscription, and one for a monthly subscription. Your subscribers can then choose which option they’d prefer.
Once you have your payment plan(s) set up, you simply need to select the appropriate Access option for each post before you publish it. Since this Access option is available per post, you can pick and choose which content to make available to the public, to anyone who subscribes, or to paid subscribers only. Your list of posts in your main dashboard will then be labeled with the access you’ve provided:
If you want your visitors to be able to see who the content is available for, you could create post categories for the subscription levels and display them on the live site:
Let’s take a closer look at the Access options:
Everyone: With this setting every single visitor will be able to see your post – even anonymous visitors. It’s fully public on your site.
Anyone subscribed: With this option, users will need to subscribe to read the content (either as a free or paid subscriber).
Paid subscribers only: Only paying subscribers will be able to see the post content.
Anyone who visits a post that they don’t have access to will see a subscribe or purchase option depending on the access level.
The Paid Newsletter feature above works great for an all or nothing situation – a post assigned to paid newsletter subscribers is only visible to paid subscribers and not to the general public. But what if you want to publish some posts that the public has access to with the exception of a few sections of premium content that you want them to pay for? Or what if you want to offer a special upsell to your paid subscribers? We’ve got you covered for this too!
WordPress.com allows you to reserve special sections in your content exclusively for people who pay to access them. This can include all kinds of content types, such as the examples provided earlier in this lesson. You can do this by including the Paid Content block in your posts. Once your newsletter posts are published, only those who pay for the extra content will be able to access these sections.
While this feature ventures a bit more into Membership territory, and isn’t strictly speaking a paid newsletter specific feature, we’ve included the information in this lesson as it can be used to enhance free newsletters or to add additional upsell opportunities to paid newsletter subscribers.
You can add a Paid Content block to any post, regardless of the Access level (covered above) you’ve assigned to the post.
Let’s take a look at some examples of how to utilize the Paid Content block while keeping the Access level in mind:
Everyone
Since these posts are fully public on your site, including a Paid Content block would allow you to designate sections of your post that visitors must pay to view. It’s best to include content that isn’t already provided under another paid option on your site, to avoid having your followers pay twice for content they already have access to in another post.
Anyone subscribed
Since this option includes free and paid subscribers, it’s best to include Paid Content blocks with content that adds additional value. In other words, don’t use the Paid Content block to add content that you’ve included in a separate paid subscribers only post. Add content that both free and paid subscribers would be interested in paying extra for.
Paid subscribers only
It is also possible to create upsell opportunities for paying subscribers by including additional paid content within these posts using a Paid Content block. Since these subscribers are already paying for access to your post content, you’ll want to be mindful about including extra cost materials that truly adds additional value to their existing paid newsletter subscription. After all, you’re asking them to spend more money.
Be strategic about what content you’re offering through different paywall features. For example, if you’re going to openly include a downloadable template within a ‘Paid subscribers only’ post, don’t add that template to a public post using the Paid Content block. You could end up with paid newsletter subscribers purchasing it, thinking it’s something extra, only to learn that they already have it. That type of scenario could break the goodwill of your followers.
The Paid Content block is versatile as it lets you combine free and paid content in one post. This way, you can offer valuable content to the public or free subscribers while encouraging them to purchase your paid content.
Remember that the purchase options offered through the Paid Content block are different to your Paid Newsletter subscriptions. The Paid Content purchase options provide an additional layer of potential revenue for your site and your newsletters.
When planning out your Paid Newsletter subscriptions and your Paid Content offers it’s important to stay organized, especially if you’re offering multiple different subscriptions and purchase offers. Be sure to clearly name your payment plans and plan out your content so that you’re applying the correct settings to the correct posts, and you’re adding the correct payment plans to the correct Paid Content sections.
What are the different Access options for your newsletter posts in WordPress.com?
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Create a Payment Plan: Connect (or create) a Stripe account and set up at least one payment plan for your paid newsletter. Consider offering both a monthly and annual subscription. Set the Newsletter visibility on one of your posts to: Paid subscriber only.
Access your site through an incognito or private browser, visit the paid subscriber post and test subscribing to your newsletter using a different email address that is not connected to your WordPress.com account.
Cancel your test subscription and refund the charge following the instructions in our Payments Management support guide.
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