Dutch startup Revue, which is now positioning itself as an “editorial newsletter platform,” is adding the option to charge subscribers. This means that newsletters can be monetized directly, rather than relying on sponsorship or ads.
The new feature requires signing up for a Stripe account, which you connect to Revue. You then write a description of why people should become a paying member and set a monthly fee.
Initially, Revue is encouraging its newsletter publishers to run both a free and paid version simultaneously so that subscribers can choose to become a paying member or stay at just the free version of the newsletter.
“Over the last three years we’ve been building Revue to help people create their editorial newsletters and reach their audience in a meaningful way,” explains co-founder and CEO Martijn de Kuijper.
“In those three years we’ve seen writers and publishers moving away from purely ad-based business models, so we wanted to help them monetize their newsletters. Since there’s no all-in-one solution out there, we believed it was the right time to introduce this”.
Kuijper gave me a heads-up on the paid subscriptions feature a few months before it was released, since I run my own newsletter called ‘Steve’s ITK’ on the Revue platform, but for the time being I’ve declined to begin charging for access. That’s partly because my subscriber count is still quite modest but also my publishing schedule is a little erratic to warrant monetization, even if writing a decent newsletter takes quite a lot of time.
However, the ability to charge subscribers is definitely an option that will appeal to other journalists and editorial publishers more generally who are increasingly being targeted by the startup.
“We see more and more journalists on our platform, and their publishers are increasingly interested in getting on our new Publisher plan,” adds de Kuijper. “[It] allows publishers to manage multiple newsletters, team members, and roles. It also has a built-in approval workflow that lets editorial teams work together on those newsletters”.
