What is a Single Operated Newsletter and how does it differ from a regular newsletter?
What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is a tool used to communicate regularly with your subscribers (the people reading it), delivering the information you want in your email boxes, these messages can contain simple text or a structure composed of images and formatted text.
What is the purpose of a newsletter?
Newsletters are often used by people who have websites, blogs, or e-commerce sites to advertise a product, content, article, communicate an event.
They are used to engage in re-marketing campaigns, such as the abandoned cart and the typical transactional communication (order confirmation, sending, etc.).
Speaking more globally, the newsletter can have the following purpose:
- Maintain regular contact
- That your website or blog does not fall into oblivion
- Increase Visitors, Encourage Visitors to Visit
- Send Different Types of Content to Relevant
- Create Visiting Habits
- Attract Traffic
What makes a newsletter so effective a marketing tool for businesses?
Email marketing, where newsletters are included, continues to be an inescapable topic. When it comes to digital marketing it may be the channel where we can further personalize our communication.
However, many established businesses do not know how to start a newsletter and are leaving an essential tool, and additional income, on the table.
Sending a newsletter requires access to a specific knowledge base because it requires the sender to:
design of the newsletter,
prepare the message,
define objectives,
send and to know how to analyze the results.
What is a Single Operated Newsletter?
For a long time, emails had two primary functions:
1) direct peer-to-peer messaging (your friend emails you a funny link or life update) or business transactions (a brand solicits your
2) patronage; a publisher sends you something to read.
But in recent years, the Single Operated Newsletter has gained momentum. This is where the individual publisher creates a mass-distributed email.
Usually, these are entrepreneurs going at it alone, independent of media organizations, social media platforms, and often without payroll or overhead.
This rise of the single-operator newsletter has occurred thanks to several components:
1) First and probably most importantly, there is now technology available that will allow anyone, no matter their technical background, to distribute their mass emails.
2) Sending an email blast is as simple as writing a blog post, and more importantly including a subscription component that allows publishers to collect fees directly through the same platform.
3) It’s not just about the new platforms, though. Success begets imitators: for every writer or influencer who strikes out on their own and makes a living at it, five more will follow, hoping to build something great themselves.
4) Another factor is the volatility of larger media properties. Laying off entire newsrooms at a moment’s notice has become commonplace as traditional revenue streams have dried up, and veteran journalists are increasingly looking for a self-sufficient system.
Controlling Their Destinies
With a Single Operated Newsletter, the publisher is no longer beholden to the whims of a sales department for revenue, or a social media platform for traffic. You can control your destiny and control the payment component.
Charging readers for subscriptions — rather than advertisers for pageviews — is also in line with a more general shift in digital content.
The greatest benefit of email to publishers may well be what made it great in the first place: direct contact.
Inbox placement doesn’t rely on upvotes or shares or some inscrutable third-party platform; all that matters is how recently a message arrived and whether the recipient trusts the sender.
What is the purpose of a paid newsletter?
A paid newsletter gathers data and urgent information for subscribers. This approach is sidestepping issues that social media influencers are having with sponsors. It is also spawning a cottage industry for one-person deep business owners looking for lifestyle freedom.
Why is a Single Operated Newsletter better?
1) Publishers have a sense of freedom since they are no longer tethered to the whims of the big single social media platform.
2) This increases the personal connection between writers and readers, which allows writers to create content that is uniquely suited for their audience, while still being fairly compensated.
3) Publishers are allowed the choice of charging for access to their writing, offering it for free, or some combination of both to their subscribers.
Delivering Your Content
You can use a content management system (CMS) built for publishing email newsletters, with integrated payments through a payment system like Stripe or Paypal, and a website that can host free and subscriber-only content.
Imagine you want to start a website dedicated to covering a niche topic.
Perhaps you are so passionate about a topic that you want to make a living writing about it.
You are not interested in running ads on your site and you don’t necessarily have a product to sell.
So you decide to monetize your content by selling subscriptions to loyal readers. To achieve this, you would need:
A) to build and maintain a website
B) to integrate a payment solution to manage subscriptions
C) to develop a funnel by offering limited free content and restrict access to the remaining content to get your audience to subscribe
All of this would need to be developed in addition to the stellar content that you would be responsible for as a publisher.
Why is a Single Operated Newsletter the new way to create financial freedom online?
1 - You can create a subscription base without becoming a social media influencer.
2 - You can control the platform something you can not do with YouTube, Facebook, and yes, even Instagram. This eliminates the possibility of getting knocked off the big platforms.
3 - You can get paid directly for the content provided to your readers.
Many people are still having trouble believing and accepting that a person of average intelligence can generate a salary on their own through a Single Operated Newsletter.
This is where PaidLetter comes in with the CENTS model.
What is the CENTS model?
The C.E.N.T.S. approach to entrepreneurship means:
C - Control - to create true financial freedom you must control the "product".
E - Entry - or more properly put: "create a barrier to entry". This is sometimes called a moat! Your private subscriber database becomes your moat.
N - Need - You must create the content that your readers will eagerly pay to access.
T - Time - Your paid newsletter allows you to separate your time from labor once it is up and running.
S - Scale - There are too many challenges trying to scale offline or with physical products. A digital product gives you more advantages without the high cost.
Single Operated Newsletter DIY platforms
The current list of Single Operated Newsletter delivery platforms is small but growing each year. Although they give you a mechanism for sending the emails they don't give you the insight and Proprietary System that PaidLetter.Com does.
Sendfox
SendFox allows you to create, schedule, and automate unlimited customized emails to your list of contacts. You can personalize the emails and test them before you send them.
Substack
Substack makes it simple for a writer to start an email newsletter that makes money from subscriptions.
Medium
Medium offers users subscriptions to become a member for a $5 monthly or $50 yearly fee. With a Medium membership, access to "exclusive content, audio narrations of popular stories, and an improved bookmark section" is enabled.
Ghost
Ghost uses memberships and subscriptions to develop a direct relationship with your audience and generate predictable, recurring revenue to support your work.
Samples of Single Operated Newsletters:
Brainpickings
A weekly set of musings from intellectual Maria Popova about everything she has read over the past week. She is a newsletter OG, having run Brainpickings for over a decade.
Office Hours
A newsletter from content strategist Ernest Wilkins is meant to keep business folks updated on culture and culture folks updated on business. A great blending of two industries that are often divided, each newsletter features some combination of information on culture, music, and marketing.
Flow State
A daily newsletter that sends you two hours' worth of music that is great for working. Each day features selections from one — sometimes two — obscure artists from all over the world. A great way to discover new musicians outside of the algorithms, care of a “semi-anonymous guy based in New York named Marcus.”
Lorem Ipsum
A short, quippy newsletter from Margot Boyer-Dry featuring bright colors and snarky commentary on all the important pop-culture developments of the day. It also features a great new song each week.
The Ankler
Longtime Hollywood insider Richard Rushfield writes a newsletter about and for the entertainment industry. Expect both analysis and gossip for anyone looking for more than what the tabloids offer.
The Daily Respite
An important newsletter for the times: each morning, Clara Parkes sends out a single great thing. The contents of the newsletter might be a tweet, a video, an article, a recipe or anything else she finds online that will make you smile.
Drawing Links
Very entertaining autobiographical comics from writer and illustrator Edith Zimmerman. They often deal with the banalities of daily life but in a quirky and insightful manner. Plus she includes links to related topics at the bottom of the email.
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
A weekly newsletter from Eric Barker that leverages science-backed research to formulate strategies and advice for “how to be awesome at life,” as he puts it. Expect advice on everything from how to be more persuasive to how to overcome imposter syndrome.
The Single Supplement
A newsletter for single women from Nicola Slawson, who was fed up with the way that most publications were talking to single women — i.e., as if their only goal should be to no longer be single.
Chips + Dips
Emily Singer provides quick news hits (the chips) and one-in depth exploration of a certain topic (the dip), all as they relate to e-commerce, tech, and branding. Plus: each edition comes with an actual dip recipe, all of which are tasty as hell.
Not Boring
Packy McCormick investigates what’s going on in the world of business and technology through humorous essays and pop-culture references, like using Hey Arnold to illustrate modern supply-and-demand problems.
Nick’s List
A New York-based food newsletter from Nick Greenberg about the best things to eat in and around the city, all categorized and broken up with fake superlatives and fun contests. The best ongoing one is “Worth the schlep?”, which determines whether a place at the far reaches of the city is … worth the schlep.
Cooking in Quarantine
Writer and author Sam Koppelman talks to some of the world’s best chefs on what to cook at home with limited ingredients … as well as how to maintain hope and sanity in these trying times through the practice of cooking.
Why you can benefit from PaidLetter.com. The top Single Operated Newsletter gives you a platform to write a digital newsletter. But they do not break down the psychological aspects of target markets. This allows you to gain insights into scaling and profitability. The challenge is to know what topics will demand the highest return on your time investment.
Understanding the Power of Transformation!
One of the biggest leverage points is learning how to offer your reader a transformation. This is how you attract a large list of subscribers willing to pay significant amounts of money.
Remember, the other newsletter platforms mentioned above give you the mechanics for sending out a paid newsletter. But only PaidLetter.Com specializes in the psychology of converting readers into subscribers and will let you access our Proprietary System that makes getting your first 200 subscribers easy.
And 200 subscribers paying only $47 a month is a part-time six-figure income.
This is money that flows in monthly (on the side).
You can get a Free Week of our paid newsletter (S.O.N.) which is searched for by a million readers daily here. (Without needing a credit card).
