32 Successful and unknown Newsletters Making Money In 2023
1)The Publish Press : Newsletter Subscriber 90,000+
Revenue : $100,000+ yearly
Hey we’re Colin and Samir and The Publish Press is our newsletter.
We’re creators passionate about the Creator Economy who’ve been working together since 2012. Ten years ago when we started out on YouTube with the goal of turning it into a viable career, there were no tools at our disposal and no community to turn to for guidance. Today we’re making content for our younger selves.
Our emails arrive to your inbox twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays) and consist of the top three news stories from the Creator Economy since the last issue.
For every story, our team will tell you what happened, and most importantly why it matters for the creator economy.
The Publish Press community consists of career creators, aspiring creators, and people who work within the creator industry.
Our goal is that by the end of the issue you’ll be more educated and empowered to press publish yourself.
2) alts.co : Newsletter Subscriber 90,000+
Revenue : $100,000+ yearly
Alts.co is a newsletter that provides deep analysis of various alternative investment opportunities to help members determine worthwhile investments. Co-founded by Stefan von Imhof, Alts.co is one of several newsletters owned by his team.
3)Recomendo : subscriber 69,000+
Revenue : $500,000+ yearly
Recomendo is a weekly newsletter that gives you 6 brief personal recommendations of cool stuff. Curated by Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder and Claudia Dawson, our goal is to give our readers a weekly list of 6 things we love — travel tips, books, TV shows, clothes, tools, websites, podcasts, and so on.If you sign up for a subscription service ($18 a month), every two weeks Ridwell will pick up your filled bags and replace them with empty ones.
4)The Smarter Brain: Subscribers 7,100+
Revenue : $50,000+ yearly
Bite-sized Ideas and Tools For Better Productivity and Habits.
Overview:
Average open rate: 60%
Average Click through rate: 4%
Frequency: Twice-Weekly
We have worked with several brands including Hubspot, Alts, Noom, Melio, and Wynter.
What we do:
The internet is noisy, overwhelming, and time consuming. Our mission is to help leaders discover useful ideas and tools to build better habits, improve productivity, and make better decisions.
Each week on Wednesdays and Sundays, we send thought-provoking ideas and tools from great thinkers to 5,500 busy leaders (read in 3 minutes or less).
Our offer:
We offer sponsorship and classified ads on a one-off or bulk discount basis.
The majority of our audience consists of corporate decision-makers and business consultants.
Over 70% based in the United States.
Around 51% are men and 49% are women
Most live in urban areas (i.e. NYC, London, Sydney).
Most earn more than $80k annually.
75% are under 44.
Most have a higher education degree.
Most work in finance, technology, or professional fields
5)Owler: Subscribers 1,500,000+
Revenue : $15,00,000+ yearly
With millions of active users, Owler is the world’s largest business insights platform. Owler helps business leaders gain a competitive edge in their industries by allowing them to follow, track, and research the companies that matter to them in real-time.
The Owler newsletter delivers timely updates and alerts to an eager audience of savvy business decision-makers. Readers include executives and business leaders across job functions, from sales and finance to marketing and product – as well as startup founders and CEOs.
Highlights:
- Represents 96% of the Fortune 500
- 58% of Owler users are Director level or above
- 75%+ of Owler users are US-Based
- Top Functions: Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Operations, Product/Engineering
- Top Industries: Technology, Consulting, Business Services
- Household Income Averages of $150K+
6)Workfrom: Subscribers 17,000+
Revenue : $45,000+ yearly
At Workfrom, we love remote work. With more than 17k+ active email subscribers, we deliver our newsletter, The Remote Tea 🍵, weekly on Fridays. We serve up curated remote work news, opportunities, jobs, insights, and more.
We also create human-centered software solutions, including personalized video rooms and the leading community-sourced search engine for recommended drop-in remote work-friendly workspaces. We also have a thriving Slack community of 3500+ members.
Our audience is mostly US-based technology professionals interested in remote work, freelancing, productivity, flexible work, travel, lifestyle, and gear. We have a lot of developers, designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, and support specialists in our audience.
7)Planet Compliance: Subscribers 25,000+
Revenue : $50,000+ yearly
Planet Compliance is a B2B media site and directory focused on showcasing the top compliance software applications. F500 brands and major consultancies rely on Planet Compliance’s content, reports and analysis when reviewing various solutions to ensure their company and clients are complying with various business regulations.
Our audience is made up primarily of professionals across compliance, risk, IT, cyber security & consulting. We mainly cater to mid-market/enterprise companies, but we have small businesses as well.
Titles include:
Head of Compliance, Risk Manager, Chief Security Officer, IT, Digital Compliance, Head of AML, Head of KYC, President, Head of Legal, Legal Counsel, Compliance Analyst, Director of Compliance. Head of Security, Head of RegTech Innovation, Cyber Security, Chief Risk Officer, and more.
We serve companies of all industries, with a concentration in financial services and other highly-regulated industries. We also have reach within large consultancies.
We have 40k+ pageviews/mo and over 25k subs from brands such as Bank of America, NASDAQ, KPMG, Experian, BMW and more, who follow us to stay up to date on various business regulations and technologies/brands that help companies stay compliant.
8)Fem Street : Subscribers 18,000+
Revenue : $50,000+ yearly
Where women in tech lead, shape and fund the future.
Femstreet sends out a weekly digest of timely, must-read posts by female investors and operators. Join thousands of other business professionals who get Femstreet’s weekly newsletter in their inbox, every Sunday.
18k+ SUBSCRIBERS
Women in Saas. Community of founders, CEOs, managers, and investors.
Readers from Stripe, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, Spotify, Forbes, Saastr, Google, Sequioa, Revolut, Goldman Sachs, Twitter.
79% 24-44 y/o.
85% female.
Predominantly the US.
Average HHI $100k-200k 32.6%, $200k-300k 26%, $300k+ 12%.
9)Scott D. Clary’s Newsletter : Subscribers 100,000+
Revenue : $100,000+ yearly
** What’s is Scott D. Clary’s Newsletter? **
Join 100,000+ entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, makers and side hustlers who subscribe to Scott’s newsletter to learn from the best, and level up.
The newsletter aims to help people level up in their personal and professional lives, regardless of whether they want to advance their career / implement strategy into a company they currently work for, or they want to start their own business.
Each newsletter contains insights on mental models, performance, business & entrepreneurship.
This newsletter is a bi-weekly newsletter written by Scott D. Clary (@scottdclary – scottdclary.com).
** Who is our Audience? **
Business leaders, sales people, entrepreneurs, marketers, side-hustlers. We are a community of growth focused operators, executives & entrepreneurs who share a love for growth, strategy, tech and business.
Our audience is 70% male, 30% female, age range is between 25-40.
Geographic breakdown is 70% USA, 20% CAD & 10% Other.
The average reader is a modern business professional who is either trying to level up their career and learn more about building the organization they’re currently in, or looking to start their own entrepreneurial venture.
Average income of our audience (based on job salary ranges), varies from $75,000 – $200,000+.
The audience was almost entirely built off of a LinkedIn network.
10)stacked marketer :Subscribers 60,000+
Revenue : $40,000+ yearly
Stacked Marketer is a newsletter with carefully curated digital marketing news, tech, and actionable advice. Delivered fresh every weekday. Consumed in 7 minutes or less.
We’ll go over everything you need to know about online marketing so you can be the brightest marketer in the room.
For all sponsored placements booked with us, our creative team will build the copy and graphics – you will just have to review and approve.
Stacked Marketer audience demographics:
– Digital agencies, e-commerce store owners and all kind of digital marketers
– 45% of companies generate over $10,000 monthly; 29% generate over $50,000 monthly
– 50% have over 3 years of experience; 35% have over 5 years of experience in the digital marketing space
– 30% digital marketing agency; 20% e-commerce store owner; 14% growth marketer
– 50% US, 10% UK, 5% Canada, 2% Australia
11) Fast Company: Subscribers 515,000+
Revenue : $250,000+ yearly
Compass is Fast Company’s daily email helping you smartly navigate the most important news in business, innovation, and creativity.
Fast Company is the only media brand dedicated to chronicling the future of business. The only title committed to covering companies and leaders who are defining where business is headed. And with technology and globalization having led to commoditization of products and services—innovation, creativity, impact and design are the only ways businesses can win in the speed economy.
Forward-thinking, affluent C-Suite individuals and business leaders.
C-Level: 40%.
Top Management: 41%.
Graduated College+: 90%.
Biz Decision Makers: 68%.
$194,017 median HHI.
64% male, 36% female.
43.7 median age.
12) Inside : Subscribers 250,000+
Revenue : $500,000+ yearly
Real news, curated by real humans. Over 250,000 high-level business professionals read Inside to get smarter and stay informed with the latest insights into business, tech, and venture capital.
- 80% of Inside’s readers are Director level or above.
- 75% of Inside’s readers work at mid-cap and enterprise companies (typically over 200+ employees).
- Solid SMB audience as well (lots of entrepreneurs and startup founders/execs).
- 90% of the audience is based in the US (55% live in SF, NY, and LA). Founders/Execs is our top audience segment (70k+ subscribers).
- Our main audience segments include Developers (60k+), Marketers (50k+), Sales (30k+), and Finance (25k+) job roles.
- Majority of our audience works in tech (SaaS, B2B, B2C, and D2C).
- 84% HHI $150k+/year
13)Pocket Newsletter: Subscribers 3.5M+
Revenue : $10,00,000+ yearly
Pocket is an award-winning app from Mozilla, the creators of the Firefox browser. Pocket is the place to save, read and get fueled by the best content on the web.
Our Pocket Hits newsletter (a companion to our app) is a daily round-up of must-read content from across the internet. This daily news digest with 3.5 million subscribers is a fantastic way to reach a curious audience of readers, shoppers, etc.
14)Dribbble : Subscribers 2.7M+
Revenue : $10,00,000+ yearly
We’re on a mission to build the world’s best community for creatives to share, grow, and get hired. Tens of millions of people look for design inspiration and feedback on Dribbble.
An audience of designers and creative professionals.
Global audience: 20% North America; 25% Europe; 35% Asia
Primary age range 25-34.
65% male.
63% have HHI $75k+.
15)Entrepreneur: Subscribers 400k+
Revenue : $10,00,000+ yearly
Entrepreneurs are business owners, creators and thought leaders everywhere building exciting ventures, reshaping entire industries for the better, and rewriting the rules of success. Entrepreneur helps them grow their businesses and realize their best selves and lives through inspiring stories of real people, valuable resources, how-to content, books, podcasts, videos, coaching and more.
Entrepreneurs are the independent leaders designing the future with their groundbreaking innovations, ventures, and missions. They are brilliant minds with a distinctive spirit and approach to life that only one media brand serves and supports—Entrepreneur.
Men/Women: 64.8% / 35.2%
Average Age: 40
Average HHI: $429K
Business Owner/Partner or C-Level Executive 57.8%
Business Purchase Decision-Maker 66.4%
Take the Lead in Decision-Making 84.8%
Influencers, Like to Stand Out From Others 67.5%
Opinion Leader 77.6%
Identify as Entrepreneur 53.0%
First to Try New Products or Services 74.5%
Business Purchases Influence Personal Choices 56.6%
16)SMASHING MAGAZINE : Subscribers 190,000+
Revenue : $250,000+ yearly
For almost 14 years now, Smashing Magazine has been helping product and interface designers, web/app developers, product managers, and CTOs improve their skills and deliver better products. The magazine covers everything around front-end, design and user experience, with thoroughly curated articles published every week.
With our articles, podcasts, ebooks, and printed books, Smashing Magazine has become a well-respected, trustworthy resource for everyone who works on digital products, interfaces, and apps.
About 70% male web designers and web developers in their 20s and 30s, primarily based in:
1. United States
2. India
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. United Kingdom
6. Philippines
7. Pakistan
8. Brazil
9. Indonesia
10. Germany
17)Tech Crunch : Subscribers 295K+
Revenue : $500,000+ yearly
TechCrunch reports on the business of technology, startups, venture capital funding, and Silicon Valley. The Daily Crunch newsletter from TechCrunch offers advertisers a premium platform to reach passionate and sophisticated tech audiences.
Run a sponsorship with TechCrunch’s Daily Crunch newsletter to reach their 200k+ engaged subscribers. You will get featured in 2 sends with each sponsorship.
The Daily Crunch – Audience Insights:
– Startup owners and business decision-makers from the tech industry
– Majority US-based
– 76% Male
– Average Age: 31
– 70% have HHI over $100K
– 19% have HHI over $250K
– Top Job Titles: CEO, CTO, COO, VP of Sales, Product Manager, Software Engineer
18)Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson
Subscribers 1.1M+,
Revenue : $500,000+ yearly
- Topic: History and U.S. politics
- Author: Heather Cox Richardson is an American history professor at Boston College.
- Description: “This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 80,000 per month on Semrush (1.05 million on SimilarWeb)
19)TK News by Matt Taibbi: Subscribers 377k+
Revenue : $500,000+ yearly
- Topic: Investigative Journalism
- Author: Matt Taibbi is an American journalist, author, and podcaster long-term writer for Rolling Stone.
- Description: “[I] report on complex topics like finance, congressional procedure and military contracting in clear, accessible language. I will also continue the Rolling Stone tradition of presidential campaign reporting (I’ve covered five presidential campaigns), and will also work on various creative projects, including true crime reporting, serialized books, and video explainers.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 68,000 per month on Semrush (1.42 million on SimilarWeb)
20)Common Sense by Bari Weiss : Subscribers 100k+
Revenue : $100,000+ yearly
- Topic: Investigative Journalism
- Author: Bari Weiss is a journalist and author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
- Description: “There are tens of millions of Americans who aren’t on the hard left or the hard right who feel that the world has gone mad. Science is at the mercy of politics. Identity trumps ideas. In the name of progress, art is erased and history is rewritten. Obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. This newsletter is for those people.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 28,500 per month on Semrush (721,000 on SimilarWeb)
21) Noahpinion by Noah Smith : Subscribers 142,000+
Revenue : $100,000+ yearly
- Topic: Economics and Culture
- Author: Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist and was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University.
- Description: “There are tens of millions of Americans who aren’t on the hard left or the hard right who feel that the world has gone mad. Science is at the mercy of politics. Identity trumps ideas. In the name of progress, art is erased and history is rewritten. Obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. This newsletter is for those people.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 26,000 per month on Semrush (565,000 on SimilarWeb )
22)Outside Voices by Glenn Greenwald : Subscribers 293,000+
Revenue : $350,000+ yearly
- Topic: Investigative Journalism
- Author: Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist focusing on governmental injustices around the world.
- Description: “Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, “No Place to Hide,” is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 21,000 per month on Semrush (390,000 on SimilarWeb)
23)Huddle Up by Joseph Pompliano: Subscribers 100,000+
Revenue : $350,000+ yearly
- Topic: Sports and Business
- Author: Joseph Pompliano is a writer and worked at a sports agency and JP Morgan.
- Description: “A free daily newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. Read daily by industry executives, professional athletes, investors, and fans, Huddle Up has become a go-to resource for more than 30,000 people. I’m biased, but I truly believe it’s content and perspective you can’t find anywhere else.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 11,000 per month on Semrush (390,000 on SimilarWeb)
24)Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander : Subscribers 10,000+
Revenue : $10,000+ yearly
- Topic: Reasoning and Science
- Author: Scott Alexander is a doctor in the US working on new models for mental health care at Lorien Psychiatry.
- Description: “Astral Codex Ten is a blog about ṛta. Ṛta is a Sanskrit word, so ancient that it brushes up against the origin of Indo-European languages. It’s related to English “rationality” and “arithmetic”, but also “art” and “harmony”. And “right”, both in the senses of “natural rights” and “the right answer”. And “order”. And “arete” and “aristos” and all those other Greek words about morality. And “artificial”, as in eg artificial intelligence. More speculatively “reign” and related words about rulership, and “rich” and related words about money.”
- Estimated Organic Traffic: 10,000 per month on Semrush (1,900,000 on SimilarWeb)
25)The Bitcoin Forecast by Willy Woo — Cryptocurrency : Subscribers 104,000+
Revenue : $250,000+ yearly
The Bitcoin Forecast by Willy Woo is a paid newsletter. It’s the most popular paid market intelligence letter for Bitcoin. The letter and has been running since October 2020.
26)The Audacity : Subscribers 82,000+
Revenue : $150,000+ yearly
The Audacity is a newsletter from Roxane Gay, debuting on January 11, 2021.
I’ve been thinking about blogs lately because I miss them. I am very attached to things that fade into obsolescence. For years, I wrote an obscure little blog few people read and that was mostly fine because I could share my thoughts with myself and three or four other people. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was also growing as a writer, thinking more about how to tell a story, how to get readers to care about the story. But I was also an avid blog reader. Every day I looked forward to opening my Google Reader (RIP) and reading about the lives of complete strangers who seemed so compelling. A mother in Utah, a designer in the Bay Area, a foster parent in NYC, a baker in St. Louis, a budding filmmaker in Los Angeles. It didn’t matter how different the bloggers were. What mattered is how they made me want to understand the world from their perspective.
People curate what they put from their lives into the public sphere but a good writer makes what they curate one hell of a story. That’s what I hope to do with this newsletter—tell one hell of a story about the world we’re living in, the culture we consume, the things that bring me joy, the things that infuriate me, the things I think we should talk about.
I am also going to use this space to feature the work of others. Every two weeks, I will publish an essay from an emerging writer, someone with three or fewer publications) and share a brief interview with them about their work, who they are, who they hope to become. Yes, they will be paid a good and fair wage for their work.
And I’m going to host a book club, where we read books by underrepresented American writers, talk about those books, and, when we’re lucky, talk to the writers of those books. Everything starts January 11th.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. You’ll also have exclusive access to weekly discussions, exclusive book club features, and subscriber-only content like the recipes for the food I’m always posting on Instagram. All content will be free for the first month and most of the essays I share here will be in front of the paywall for the duration. Let’s see how this goes.
27)Puck Media channeled the charm of magazines :
Subscribers 200,000+
Revenue : $10,00,000+ yearly
Another premium publisher that brings the heart and soul of magazines to the inbox has been valued at a whopping $75 million. Read more about the small team behind Puck Media, and how they earned nearly 200K paid subscribers in their first year of business.
28)Pragmatic Engineer got over 220K subscribers this year
Revenue : $250,000+ yearly
Engineers can be a tough crowd, but not for Gergely Orosz. Bloomberg Tech explores how Orosz (AKA the Pragmatic Engineer) left a big-name tech job to create the #1 technology newsletter on Substack.
29)A fictional vampire got 70% open rates
Revenue : $250,000+ yearly
Yep, you read that correctly. Dracula Daily is a free newsletter that emails snippets of the classic horror novel, which takes place over 6 months, in real-time, in the form of the book’s journal entries and letters. In 2022, the newsletter rapidly surpassed 200K subscribers.
30)Further is a Newsletter That Aims to Help You Live Your Best Life
While Further is only reaching 15,000 people per month, that’s 15,000 people going straight to an email opt-in form.
Even though I’ve had recent issues with email deliverability, I would still rather have an earned email subscriber than any other form of ‘follower’.
Founded by Brian Clark of Copyblogger fame, Further promises to send you something new each week that can help improve your current life situation.
Recent articles that Brian has linked out to include:
- 11 Foods That Are Good for Your Liver
- This 8-Hour Movie *Wants* To Put You to Sleep
- Nature Calls: 4 Meditative Hikes You Need to Take
Though the overall aim for the newsletter is clear, the individual updates do appear to be on fairly random topics.
Brian considers himself to be the ‘curator’ of the website, regularly linking to the best content he can find.
While their monetisation end-game isn’t clear, their latest update features an Amazon affiliate link.
Brian also has a number of online properties that he may want to steer subscribers to in the future.
31)The Daily Email from Former Harvard Students
Launched at the end of 2015, the Daily Pnut (Peanut) is a newsletter that “will help you discover the world and make you sound marginally more intelligent in a four-minute read.”
Founders Tewfik Cassis, Alex Schuster, and Fred Spring knew they were on to something when Spring was sitting on a train one day and heard someone repeat a joke from that day’s email
The idea behind the site appears to be largely influenced by theSkimm. When asked about this, the founders said,
We love what theSkimm is doing, and we think they’re doing a good job, but we wanted to delve deeper into global topics.
theSkimm clone or not, the Daiily Pnut has attracted a large (and growing) audience interested in their unique take on the news.
32)Business Insider Intelligence Now Has 7,500 Subscribers
According to Digiday, Business Insider’s research arm consists of 40 staff and 7,500 subscribers.
Subscriptions previously currently cost $2,500 per year, but will soon rise to $3,000. However, the business has since merged with eMarketer to become Insider Intelligence.
This has brought a change in pricing model which now sees niche-specific newsletters costing $1,000 per year, and enterprise subscriptions priced at anything up to $100,000.
Some simple maths tells us Business Insider Intelligence is currently generating over $18.7m per year.
