Newsletters and email lists

The claim

“This made me quit my 9-5 job for GOOD. EMAIL MARKETING You can make thousands selling through email, and the best part is AI can do 90% of the work.” (truncated)

@Zephyr_hg, 7 December 2024, 17,688 views¹

“I have built two paid newsletters to 6 figures: • Write With AI ($400k/year) • Category Pirates ($200k/year) These are the 5 proven steps to build a 6-figure newsletter:” (truncated)

@Nicolascole77, 27 September 2025, 8,821 views¹

This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted. “Newsletter” covers three businesses: paid subscriptions, sponsors’ ads, or free emails that sell something else, such as a course or service. None of our six tweets states costs¹.

The sums

Among newsletters that charge on beehiiv, a newsletter platform, the median price (the middle one) is $10 a month and the median share of readers paying is 0.62%⁴. That is about $62 a month per 1,000 subscribers before fees, so $1,000 a month needs about 16,100 subscribers (our estimate)⁴.

Substack, another platform, says 5% to 10% pay, giving no sample, date or method⁵. We lean on beehiiv’s stated median. It may be too low for a writer who builds a list in order to charge: beehiiv says publishers who treat the paid plan “as an afterthought” are “stuck at 0.3% conversion”, while “Those who build it intentionally achieve 5%+ conversion rates”⁴.

These figures are for paid subscriptions. For the first tweet’s version, selling offers to a list, we found no outcome data, and no evidence for or against its claim that AI can do 90% of the work¹. Substack says it is for editorial content, “not conventional email marketing”³⁰. beehiiv bars newsletters that are purely marketing or rely entirely on AI-generated material³⁵.

What happens to most people who try

beehiiv says newsletters launched in 2025 reached a median of 8,314 subscribers after a year⁷. At 0.62%, that is about 52 payers, or about $515 a month at $10, before card fees and beehiiv’s plan fee (our estimate)⁴⁷. The report does not say whether stopped newsletters are counted, or how many launches brought an existing audience, so treat it as a ceiling for someone starting from nothing⁷.

Substack says nearly 100,000 publishers earn money on it, from 5 million paid subscriptions¹⁸⁷². That averages about 50 per earner, or about $3,000 to $6,000 a year before fees at $5 to $10 a month (our estimate; the two figures carry different dates)¹⁸⁷². The typical earner gets less: Press Gazette estimated in January 2025 that at least 52 Substack newsletters make at least $40.2 million a year between them²⁰.

The upside

Some newsletters pay well. Substack shows a public badge on each, such as “Thousands of paid subscribers”; with the public price, that gives a rough floor¹⁷.

• Lenny’s Newsletter. After a year: 500 payers from 15,000 free readers, “about $65K a year before fees”, by his own statement⁶⁵. Its badge now reads “Tens of thousands of paid subscribers” at $200 a year: at least $2 million a year before fees (our estimate)⁶⁶.
• The two newsletters in the tweet. A 2026 tweet from the same account gives lower figures, “$25K/month” and “$16K/month”¹⁴. Those are plausible against the public badges and prices (our estimate), but are the authors’ own statement¹⁵¹⁶. They rest on lists of over 115,000 and over 32,000 subscribers converting at 1% to 2.5%¹⁵¹⁶. Both have co-authors, so this is not one person’s income¹⁵¹⁶.

The largest tweet figures do not come from subscriptions. One tweet claims “$1M with only 920 subs”¹. That is the author’s own yearly rate (monthly income multiplied by twelve), not money shown as received, and it does not say what is sold; our reading is services sold to businesses by email¹³⁵³. The account behind the two paid newsletters also lists two free ones, which sell other products, at “$300K/month” and “$80,000/month”; we found nothing to check those against¹⁴.

At beehiiv’s medians, a good first year ends with about 50 paying readers (our estimate)⁴⁷. For someone with real expertise in a well-paying topic who converts roughly 3% to 7%, three self-reported cases suggest a few thousand dollars to low six figures a year, before fees and tax, within one to three years (our estimate)²⁵⁶⁵⁶⁷. The smallest had 137 payers and about $575 a month²⁵. Three cases are not a sample.

What it takes to compete

• A reputation first. Lenny’s year one followed seven years as a product manager at Airbnb⁶⁵. The account behind the tweet’s two newsletters has about 228,000 followers¹.
• A topic where readers get money back. Investing newsletters charge a median of $27 a month, travel $7⁴.

Software costs $0 to $95 a month on yearly billing³. The real costs are time and readers: an existing following, a professional network, or a few dollars per bought subscriber¹².

To tell early (our suggestions): after three to six months of weekly issues, is the free list growing without paid ads? Once you charge, do more than 2% of free readers pay? beehiiv’s top quarter begins there in the weaker topics; near 0.6% is the median⁴. If not, the list is unlikely to become a wage by itself.

Who else makes money from it

Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription². beehiiv charges a monthly fee before a writer can earn³. It pays referrers “up to 60% commission every month” for a year⁵⁶. None of the six tweets carried such a link¹.

Our collection records 5 of the 6 tweets as from accounts tied to a course, community or service about writing or email; we did not open the profiles¹.