WordPress.com introduces sponsored newsletters

WordPress.com has announced the release of additional premium content that will be available inside its newsletters in an effort to assist small businesses, creators, and entrepreneurs in generating more income.

WordPress.com Newsletter, which was first introduced in December, enables authors to use WordPress.com’s other features while automatically emailing posts to readers, enabling them to establish a direct connection with them. Writers have the choice of using the function only for newsletters or including a feature that allows readers to subscribe to new blog articles by email on their site.

Users can now launch their newsletters for free, grow their audience, and later add paid subscriptions at any time thanks to this new ability. To send paid newsletters, Substack was one of the most widely used systems up until recently. In contrast, WordPress is challenging Substack with this most recent release.

WordPress.com’s choice to actively enter this market was a reflection of how people today prefer to consume news and information, even though plug-ins and third-party services have long allowed blog owners to distribute their postings by email. Many people have started using email as a more convenient way to remain in touch with writers, journalists, essayists, and other publications they want to follow as the situation of websites has gotten worse — dominated by clutter, advertisements, overlays, pop-ups, and cookie acceptance banners.

However, the initial iteration of the WordPress.com Newsletter product was not a tool that would compete with people attempting to run a newsletter business that generates profits. The option to import subscribers from other platforms, pre-made newsletter themes or configurable designs, scheduling tools, the capacity to link custom domains, support for posting through email, and other capabilities are among the many features it offers for general newsletter administration.

With today’s upgrade, WordPress.com publishers will be able to add premium content and paid subscriptions, enabling them to monetize their newsletter operations. All WordPress.com blogs, including those on the free plan, have the opportunity to employ these functionalities, the firm claims. However, when their newsletter business grows, publishers may decide to upgrade to paying WordPress.com plans, which will also result in decreased transaction fees for their newsletter subscription emails.

Even though free newsletters are still a common practice for many organizations, many will opt to target more devoted and devoted clients with fee-based material. The post’s tick box gives publishers the option to select among everyone, subscribers only, or paying subscribers when it comes to enabling paid subscriptions and content gating for newsletters.

WordPress.com offers premium newsletters across all plans, even the free ones, despite the substantial potential for profit. On the free plans, transaction fees are 10%. Transaction fees will decrease as you advance through the tiers until they are completely eliminated on the $45/month Commerce plan. As Stripe handles payment processing, paid WordPress.com newsletters are only accessible in nations where Stripe has operations.