New to Newsletter — Earn With Paid Subscriptions

Since its debut last December, we’ve been improving WordPress.com Newsletter to meet the needs of writers and creators everywhere. Now we’re introducing a big update — the ability to add paid subscriptions and premium content, whatever plan you’re on. Including the Free plan.

Here’s the deal — you can now kickstart your newsletter without spending a penny, build your audience, and then add paid subscriptions into the mix at any point. It’s a great way to explore the shape of your newsletter without paying upfront while giving your readers a way to support your work at any point along the way. If you want to keep on growing, our paid plans provide lower transaction fees and all the features you need to manage and scale your newsletter and website. 

Paid subscriptions let your fans support your art, writing, or project directly. Once your creativity has captivated your audience, there’s a good chance some of them will gladly give something back by supporting your work financially.

And it’s not an all-or-nothing game. You can still put out free posts to grow your readership, enable one-time tips and donations, or keep some of your content exclusive to subscribers.

We’re all about giving writers and creators the power and flexibility to do things their own way.

From selecting beautiful visual themes, customizing them to make everything feel more like you, or turning your newsletter into a full-fledged website or store, you’ll save time, cut costs, and have a bunch fewer logins and browser tabs to navigate by keeping everything under one roof.

Then, as your newsletter flourishes, you can tap into a universe of plugins, themes, and design patterns with affordable upgrades, whenever the time’s right. That means you can scale smoothly from a free newsletter to one that starts helping you earn, without feeling penned in by a rigid plan or restricted features.

Whether you’re thinking of starting up a paid newsletter from scratch or ready to take your existing one up a notch, there’s no better time than now.

Signing up for Newsletter is the quickest route to writing, publishing, and expanding your audience from scratch. And if you’re switching from another platform? No worries, you can bring existing subscribers along for the ride during the setup process.

But you don’t need to start from zero. At WordPress.com, any site can add or become a newsletter. If you’ve been thinking about growing your audience, you’ve got the Subscribe Block and Newsletter Patterns at your disposal to get up and running quickly. They’re the perfect duo to transform a fleeting visit into a lasting bond.

Once you’re all set up, introducing paid subscriptions or content gating to your newsletter is simple stuff. Whenever you publish a post, just tick a box to make any post available to everyone, subscribers-only, or just the paying ones.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Log in to your WordPress.com dashboard.
2. Click on “Earn” in the Tools section.
3. Set up a Stripe account to start receiving payments (or connect your existing account).
4. Configure your payment plan to establish your subscription fee and cadence.

Your readers will be able to pay for subscriptions directly from your site, with transaction fees as low as 10% of revenue on the Free plan, decreasing as you level up to our paid plans, down to a 0% fee on the Commerce plan. Payments are processed through Stripe and are available in the countries where Stripe is currently supported.

With over 20 million emails sent out every day by WordPress.com to pretty much every country in the world, rest assured that your newsletter will land in your audience’s inbox reliably and securely. And as your audience grows, you can sit back comfortably knowing that WordPress.com is finely tuned to scale with your ambitions. However far you want to take things.

Newsletter is ever-evolving, and we’re always on the case refining the design, experience, and offerings for writers, creators, and publishers like you. We’re all ears for your ideas for our next steps in making it easier for more people to publish and earn from their work, without barriers to getting started.