WordPress.com has announced the launch of new premium material available inside its newsletters in an effort to help small businesses, creators, and entrepreneurs to draw in more revenue.
The blogging platform and website builder launched its Newsletters feature in December 2022, and has seen it become an increasingly popular vehicle for those looking to share special and personalized content, or simply links to existing blog posts, directly with customers and followers.
In its product announcement, WordPress.com explains the typical use case for premium content in newsletters: “Paid subscriptions let your fans support your art, writing, or project directly.”
Paid and premium newsletters in WordPress.com
While free newsletters will continue to be a staple for many businesses (WordPress.com says they’re going nowhere), many will choose to target more dedicated and loyal customers with chargeable content.
Enabling paid subscriptions and newsletter content gating is handled from the post, where a tick box allows publishers to select from everyone, subscribers only, or paying subscribers.
Despite the potential to earn big with premium newsletters, WordPress.com is offering them across all plans including free plans, through transaction fees sit at 10% on this end of the scale. Climb higher through the tiers (and pay for the privilege), and transaction fees will drop to the point where they are negated on the Commerce plan, which costs $45 per month.
Payment processing is handled by Stripe, thus paid WordPress.com newsletters are only available in countries where Stripe operates.
With WordPress.com sites accounting for a significant proportion of all sites globally, the company’s Newsletters feature is expected to prove beneficial to many thousands of users, and while what comes next is unclear, WordPress.com says that it’s “always on the case refining the design, experience, and offerings for writers, creators, and publishers.”
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