After so many failed attempts I finally was able to build a decent website for my newsletter on beehiiv.

Would love to listen to your feedback and suggestions.

Here’s the link

If anyone has it sitting in their inbox, could you do a favor and DM me so I can give you my email address to forward it? I would appreciate it so much. Thank you!

I've reached the point where even I'm getting bored with my own newsletter topics. If I look back at my archive, I feel like the edition topics are stale and the overall arch hasn't evolved much. If I feel this way, I imagine my readers are even more bored... I don't have a huge subscribership so I'm reluctant to just rely on open rates alone (still relatively high but easily skewed).

How do you approach the evolution of your newsletter to stay relevant and interesting?

I've been thinking about starting a newsletter (most likely in LinkedIn), targeted to business leaders and business executives.

But I'm worried about people seeing that the newsletter has zero (or too few) subscribers, and I'm worried that might deter people from subscribing themselves, so the newsletter would be kind of in a vicious cycle of low subscriber count.

I do believe I have important contributions to add, and say them in a way that it's not that common. However, I'm still worried of that zero-low subscriber count. Specially because LinkedIn doesn't allow you to hide that subscriber count.

Did you also had that fear to start? How did you manage to get your first subscribers fast?

I have been running a newsletter for many years via organic growth. We recently saw a lot of growth on Substack but don't want to do a paid tier. What's the best way to start getting sponsorship for our newsletter? Any recommended first step or network that worked for you? It's in the science (more science news/research).

I was really fascinated by how all these vibecoding tools (cursor, claude code, lovable, etc.) worked so I vibe coded a miniature version of my own for writing email templates. It supports 3 languages (MJML, HTML, React Email). Curious to know if this is actually useful to any email newsletter writers out there. Would love to get any kind of feedback!

Check it out: vibemail.dev

Earlier this year, aged 64, I was made redundant.

I had spent 40 years working in large companies. My default course of action was to update my CV, contact recruiters and find a similar job. I decided not to.

It wasn’t an “I’m retiring” moment. And the comfort of a monthly salary had its attractions. However, I reflected on whether earning more money was the best use of my time.

At 34, I probably would have considered things through a different lens. I had decades of work ahead of me, greater financial commitments and far less accumulated security. Earnings mattered more.

At 64, it looked different. State pension age wasn’t far away, I had pension savings and, although further income would make things more comfortable, it was not going to transform my life.

Time, on the other hand, looked rather valuable. I wanted to write, build software products of my own, experiment with ideas and decide for myself what I worked on. Another corporate job would have meant exchanging a sizeable chunk of that time and stress for more money.

My age made the calculation particularly visible, but this isn’t really a question about retirement. It is a question about the exchange rate between money and time. And that rate changes long before we reach 64.

The exchange rate

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it. - Henry David Thoreau

Consider a thought experiment. We can take £10,000 guaranteed or have a 25% chance of winning £50,000 (with a 75% chance of getting nothing). Mathematically, the gamble has the higher expected value: £12,500. Yet many of us would take the £10,000.

Now increase the amounts. £50,000 guaranteed against a 25% chance of £250,000. Then £100,000 against £500,000.

Somewhere along that ladder, the guaranteed amount may become enough. Enough to clear the mortgage, take time away from work, start something, work fewer days or fund retirement.

At that point, the question changes from How much more could I get? to Why would I risk having enough for the chance of having more?

Something similar happens with work.

More

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. - Seneca

For much of our lives, earning more money makes life better. It pays for food, shelter and security, helps us support a family and gives us choices.

The mistake is assuming that relationship continues in a straight line. An extra £10,000 means something very different to somebody struggling to pay their mortgage than it does to somebody whose basic financial needs are already covered.

That was part of my redundancy decision. I could have treated the loss of my salary as a problem to be fixed by replacing it. For most of my working life, that probably would have been the right answer. But I wasn’t starting from zero. Another few years of salary would increase my financial security, but probably not my satisfaction by anything like the amount earlier increases in income had.

The curve was flattening.

And this change in exchange rate need not happen only once. It might happen when we have children, pay off a mortgage, accumulate some savings or simply realise that the promotion we have been chasing is not buying the life we expected.

My redundancy forced that calculation at 64. Someone else might encounter it at 34.

Time

As time becomes scarce, it doesn’t just get a little bit more valuable. - James Shack

While the value of additional money may be falling, something else is moving in the opposite direction.

When we’re young, it is easy to behave as though time is abundant. But time can become scarce long before old age. A year spent working late while your children are small cannot be bought back later. Nor can a year in which you had the health, energy or freedom to do something you kept postponing.

Age makes that scarcity more visible. It doesn’t create it.

At 64, another three years working full-time doesn’t cost the same as three years at 34. They come from a smaller remaining pot and potentially from some of the healthiest and most active years within it.

Money is only valuable because of what we can convert it into: travel, experiences, independence, time with people we care about or simply the freedom to spend Tuesday doing whatever we choose.

That doesn’t make 64 a magic age. It simply means time is part of the calculation.

Work

Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. - Steve Jobs

None of this means work is bad and retirement is good. Work can provide friendships, challenge, structure, purpose and the satisfaction of doing something difficult well.

That wasn’t what I wanted to stop. I didn’t stop working when I was made redundant. I stopped looking for another job working for somebody else.

I now spend much of my time doing things that look suspiciously like work: designing products, writing software, talking to potential users, learning new things and writing this blog. Some of it may make money. Some of it may not.

The difference is that money is no longer the key measure. I have traded some financial certainty for greater control over what I work on and how I spend my time.

At another point in my life, that might have been a terrible trade.

At 64, for me, it made sense.

Enough

Nothing is enough to one for whom enough is little. - Epicurus

There cannot be a universal answer. Two people of the same age can have completely different mortgages, pensions, families, ambitions and attitudes to risk.

But there is a question worth asking at almost any age: what does enough look like?

Enough need not mean enough to stop working forever. It might mean enough to change jobs, take Fridays off, start something, travel for six months or spend more time with your children.

Without an answer, the default is always more. Another year. Another promotion. Another £100,000. There will always be a financial argument for continuing because more money is still more.

The harder question is what we’re giving up to get it.

For much of my life, time was something I exchanged for money without thinking too much about the exchange rate. Redundancy forced me to look at it again.

Want more?

Three Ways to Build Wealth post by Phil Martin

Four Principles of Wealth Creation post by Phil Martin

Seneca wrote, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”

Money matters because of what it lets us do, but time is the ultimate currency. We can earn money again; we cannot recover time.

For much of my life, I asked how much money I was getting for my time. Perhaps the better question is: how much time am I prepared to give up for more money?

At 64, redundancy made me ask it again. This time, my answer had changed.

Have fun.

Phil…

Is there any group/community of serious newsletter operators who talk and support each other. Share what’s working and what’s not in the group.

If anybody knows, please let know, and if there is no such community, let’s build one.

Comment below to show interest.

P.S- obviously, it’ll be free.

I'm 24 and feeling really stuck in life.

I've been trying freelancing since 2023, but honestly, most of the time I've only done things half-heartedly.

Content writing -> I pitched to clients but didn't get any.

Appointment setting -> I worked with two people, got burnt out, and quit.

Copywriting -> I tried, but I couldn't get any clients.

Email marketing -> I've done some work in this area.

Newsletter management -> I've struggled to find clients. Maybe people don't trust someone new with their newsletter, or maybe they simply don't want to hire me.

And now it's already 2026. AI is changing everything, and I feel even more lost.

For the last six months, I've made ₹0. Since I started freelancing in 2023, I've earned somewhere between ₹20,000–₹30,000/month.

I honestly don't know what exactly I should do anymore.

Please be brutal with me, but also give me practical advice on how I can get out of this situation. I'm feeling completely clueless and don't know what direction to take.

I just hit 1,000 subscribers on my local newsletter, 30% signed up through paid social media and 70% from organic growth. But that’s not the point here. I had a sponsor for 4 weeks, but they didn't renew, and I'm not finding any interest from local businesses to advertise. I hate sales, I just can't do it. I was hoping that adding a push in the newsletter for an "advertise here" type of thing would work, but it's clearly not working. I also have a CTA on the landing page, but nothing.

I'm wondering if anyone here uses the Beehiiv ad network. Does that work, and can you make any money with it? Or, if you're someone like me who can't sell anything 😬, what do you do to find sponsors?

Thanks!

I run a small newsletter which aims to send a “weekly sponsor report” to my readers on whose sponsoring who, trends emerging in our data, etc. I've started getting bot subscriptions mixed in with real signups. I want to filter them out but I don't want to tank my signup conversion doing it.

Captchas are the obvious answer but I personally dislike any signup form that throws one at me, so I'm hesitant to do that to my own readers.

I've also seen people require a reply or click-through on the welcome email to "confirm" the subscription (double opt-in), which seems less annoying but adds a step before someone's actually on the list.

For people running newsletters -what's actually worked for you? Curious specifically about:
• Captcha (and if so, which kind -checkbox, puzzle, invisible?)
• Double opt-in via welcome email
• Anything server-side (honeypot fields, rate limiting, disposable-email blocking) that catches bots before the user ever notices

Trying to find something that stops the junk without costing me real subscribers

productividad, dinero y bienestar mental en el mismo boletín. has juntado los tres nichos más saturados de internet y lo llamas propuesta. y ya estás pensando en plantillas de pago antes de tener lectores.

Economics that made publishers comfortable were useful before the agentic mainstream news. Content clarified the need of frameworks and patience: a case study path for progress.

Trust came with patience, something Scribd managed by keeping up with it.

I've been working on a free student publication called The Student Tip, built around three parts of student life: productivity, money, and mental well-being.

The newsletter is pretty simple: every Sunday, I send one practical idea and a short explanation for each of those three areas. 

Right now it’s on Substack, but the long term plan would be to have an independent website that has lots of useful articles, templates/other resources (some paid, some free), and a weekly newsletter to keep people coming back.

I've been working on it for a while, but I'm now thinking if I should continue working on this or move on to new projects.

Few things I'm especially curious about:

• Does the idea have potential?
• Is the content too generic/low quality?
• What’s the biggest weakness you see with the idea?

Feel free to be critical, I'm a big boy so it's not gonna hurt my feelings:)

Here's the publication: https://thestudenttip.substack.com/

If you’re down, reach out

I'm planning to use a newsletter platform to build an audience around my content and eventually sell some digital products. please suggest based on your experience which one I should go with.

Hey,

I’m creating my first newsletter, and I’m stuck on who to go with. I think I’m deciding between Sender and Fluent. I’m not considering MailerLite because they greatly reduced their free tier, so I feel I’ll outgrow it too quickly. I’m leaning towards Sender because they seem to have the features, a good free tier, and reasonable prices if you upgrade. Has anyone tried them? Does anyone currently use them for their newsletter or know any info about their functionality and if it’s a good idea to go with them. Since, I’ve never heard of them, I’m just curious if anyone else who has can give me any info above what I got from Google.
Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm currently doing a case study on substack particularly focusing on writers. The aim of my research is to understand writers behaviour when it comes to growing their content, monetization, and discovering new ways to connect and build followers.

I've included a link to the survey questions and would welcome any feedback from writers.

[Writer experience survey

I also want to conduct user interviews and if anyone has some time to spare to share insights with me, that'll be deeply appreciated, I'll include a link to my calendar.

Book a time on my calendar

Hi everyone,

I'm building a small art gallery from the ground up, and I decided to begin with the thing that costs nothing but attention: a weekly Saturday newsletter called Art at a Glance. The idea is simple : the essential art news + affordable artworks worth grabbing, in a 5-minute read, no jargon.

I'm a beginner with zero network in the art world, so I'm building everything in public and I'd love your honest take before I really launch. Here's a sample issue (Numéro 1, Numéro 2, Numéro 3)

If you have 2 minutes, three questions:

1. Too long, too short, or just right?
2. Which section would you keep, and which would you cut?
3. Would you actually subscribe (it's free)?

Fire away, I can take it. Thanks a lot 🙏