SEO
11 Newsletter Platforms & How They Work
Traditional media companies have struggled in the digital age.
As more people opt out of physical formats like newspapers and magazines, some employment numbers in the industry have steadily declined.
But out of this, new opportunities have arisen, including the birth of email newsletter subscriptions.
Substack, a foremost name in this field, was founded in 2017 and quickly became a game changer for online content creators.
With a user-friendly interface and robust functionality, it allows writers and creators to publish and monetize branded web content via monthly subscriptions.
A minimal amount of moderation and publishing guidelines provide creators with a somewhat unprecedented level of freedom, while also giving them total ownership over content, mailing lists, and intellectual properties.
An all-in-one publishing platform, it offers everything from community-building advice to legal support.
As for its pricing structure, Substack charges publishers 10% of gross revenue, plus a processing fee.
While it’s easy to start, some creators have found Substack’s features limiting.
With that in mind, we’ve created a list of Substack alternatives to consider if that platform isn’t serving your needs how you had hoped.
1. Write.as
With a clean design and interface, Write.as offers content creators and publishers a custom domain, a wide range of support, and built-in RSS in an ad-free platform that focuses heavily on privacy and security.
Pricing:
- Pro – $72/year or $9/month.
- Small publisher support – $400/year or $45/month.
- Submission management – $144/year + base subscription.
Small publisher support provides priority support, live chat, and consulting services.
Users can also add submission management to either plan to simplify submission gathering and publishing.
If you want to be extremely creative, this may not be your best platform, as features are limited.
For one thing, it only offers three different fonts: Serif, sans-serif, and monospace.
However, because it is an open-source platform, tech-savvy users can customize it to suit their own needs.
2. Ghost
Ghost is another open-source platform from which you can run your media business, send newsletters, manage subscribers, and publish gated content.
Cleanly designed, it has built-in SEO tools and plugins that simplify content optimization and integrate with numerous apps.
Pricing:
- Basic – $348/year or $36/month.
- Standard – $948/year or $99/month.
- Business – $2,388/year or $249/month.
As for Ghost’s drawbacks: It offers limited opportunities for monetization outside of monthly subscription plans.
3. Patreon
Providing a variety of ways for you to provide exclusive content to paid subscribers, Patreon allows you to build direct connections with your audience.
Used by musicians, podcasters, video creators, and writers, it provides more options for revenue.
Creators can make their own subscription tiers with different content available at each level.
For Patreon’s pricing, it’s free to use, but charges creators 5%–12% of gross revenue, plus a payment processing fee.
4. Letterdrop
Newsletter and blog publishing platform Letterdrop integrates into your marketing CMS and was designed to help grow traffic.
Newsletter creators can earn money through subscriptions, sponsorships, or paid content for other publications.
Letterdrop stands out from other platforms due to its content workflow, content calendar, and approval process.
It allows you to rank content ideas based on your objectives and their SEO potential, making it easiest to decide what to write about.
Content can be published via blog or SEO-optimized newsletters. Creators are provided with analytics to help track performance.
Pricing:
- Small business – $1,188/year or $119/month.
- Growth – $3,588/year or $349/month.
5. Steemit
Steemit combines blogging with social media and cryptocurrency.
A voting system similar to Reddit’s allows users to earn a share of revenues from its own cryptocurrency.
The first social media and blogging site built on blockchain, content earns money by increasing engagement.
Content creators, curators, and commenters can all get paid.
It currently has over 1.2 million users and is part of the Tron network.
Steemit is not the easiest platform to get started on.
Building a reputation and increasing engagement can be a slow process if your content does not go viral.
Also, it pays out in STEEM cryptocurrency, which is $.25 to the dollar at the time of writing.
6. Medium
Medium is a popular blogging and digital publishing platform.
It has nearly 100 million monthly readers and is free to use.
Used by both fledging writers with no experience and media publications, its Partner Program pays writers with more than 100 followers based on article read time.
It has a curated newsletter feature that allows creators to content to subscribers. And both the publishing and newsletter features are free to use.
7. Revue
Part of the Twitter network, Revue makes it easy for newsletter creators to distribute content and get paid.
With a business model built on curation, it includes a high-quality newsletter editor with useful features like a browser extension that makes it easy to add articles from the web to your newsletter.
You stay in control of your audience and can grow your following using Twitter.
Analytics give you insights into engagement, click rates, and opens.
A free option is available, but you must have a premium plan for monetization. Revue charges 5% of revenue, plus a processing fee.
8. HubPages
Using a revenue-sharing model, HubPages monetizes user-generated content.
While it’s not as popular as Medium, it has built-in monetization, in which creators earn money based on article views.
These are then factored into a formula to determine a piece’s contribution to paid advertisement success.
HubPages is very intuitive and free to use.
It also includes options for free or premium professional editing services.
9. Buttondown
Billing itself as the easiest way to build, launch and grow a newsletter, Buttondown has a clean design and interface.
It includes built-in tools for editing and proofreading content to prevent embarrassing typos.
It has ample third-party integrations and makes setting up paid newsletter subscriptions easy, even for the technologically challenged.
You can set tags on emails and subscribers to segment and specialize your audience as needed.
Pricing is dependent on subscribers:
- Free (0-100 subscribers) – $0/month.
- Basic (101-1000 subscribers) – $9/month.
- Standard (1001-5000 subscribers) – $29/month.
- Professional (5001-10,000 subscribers) – $79/month.
Newsletters with more than 10,000 subscribers or those run by non-profits are eligible for discounts.
10. TinyLetter
TinyLetter lets creators quickly make and share newsletters.
With a generated URL, they can be shared across social networks to help expand subscriber lists.
Part of the MailChimp network, it was designed to help individuals send personalized newsletters.
A throwback to the earliest days of blogging, it doesn’t have the flashiest functionality.
That said, if you’re just looking for a simple way to send out simple email newsletters, it’s a good choice.
A free version is available for creators, but with a limit, as users can only add “up to 5,000 subscribers into [their] TinyLetter account.”
11. MailerLite
MailerLite gives creators a software framework that allows you to add automation, analytics, and pop-ups with drag-and-drop functionality.
You can also edit or add your own HTML and rich text.
It has good template selection, a landing page editor, detailed analytics, and marketing tools like A/B testing, surveys, and segmentation.
MailerLite allows you to earn income via newsletter subscriptions or direct digital product sales in your emails and landing pages.
Pricing:
- Free (12,000 monthly emails, 1 user) – $0/month.
- Growing business (unlimited monthly emails, 3 users) – $120/year or $9/month.
- Advanced (unlimited monthly emails, unlimited users) – $252/year or $19/month.
More resources:
Featured Image: Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock
SEO
HARO Has Been Dead for a While
I know nothing about the new tool. I haven’t tried it. But after trying to use HARO recently, I can’t say I’m surprised or saddened by its death. It’s been a walking corpse for a while.
I used HARO way back in the day to build links. It worked. But a couple of months ago, I experienced the platform from the other side when I decided to try to source some “expert” insights for our posts.
After just a few minutes of work, I got hundreds of pitches:
So, I grabbed a cup of coffee and began to work through them. It didn’t take long before I lost the will to live. Every other pitch seemed like nothing more than lazy AI-generated nonsense from someone who definitely wasn’t an expert.
Here’s one of them:
Seriously. Who writes like that? I’m a self-confessed dullard (any fellow Dull Men’s Club members here?), and even I’m not that dull…
I don’t think I looked through more than 30-40 of the responses. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like having a conversation with ChatGPT… and not a very good one!
Despite only reviewing a few dozen of the many pitches I received, one stood out to me:
Believe it or not, this response came from a past client of mine who runs an SEO agency in the UK. Given how knowledgeable and experienced he is (he actually taught me a lot about SEO back in the day when I used to hassle him with questions on Skype), this pitch rang alarm bells for two reasons:
- I truly doubt he spends his time replying to HARO queries
- I know for a fact he’s no fan of Neil Patel (sorry, Neil, but I’m sure you’re aware of your reputation at this point!)
So… I decided to confront him 😉
Here’s what he said:
Shocker.
I pressed him for more details:
I’m getting a really good deal and paying per link rather than the typical £xxxx per month for X number of pitches. […] The responses as you’ve seen are not ideal but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take as realistically I dont have the time to do it myself. He’s not native english, but I have had to have a word with him a few times about clearly using AI. On the low cost ones I don’t care but on authority sites it needs to be more refined.
I think this pretty much sums up the state of HARO before its death. Most “pitches” were just AI answers from SEOs trying to build links for their clients.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not throwing shade here. I know that good links are hard to come by, so you have to do what works. And the reality is that HARO did work. Just look at the example below. You can tell from the anchor and surrounding text in Ahrefs that these links were almost certainly built with HARO:
But this was the problem. HARO worked so well back in the day that it was only a matter of time before spammers and the #scale crew ruined it for everyone. That’s what happened, and now HARO is no more. So…
If you’re a link builder, I think it’s time to admit that HARO link building is dead and move on.
No tactic works well forever. It’s the law of sh**ty clickthroughs. This is why you don’t see SEOs having huge success with tactics like broken link building anymore. They’ve moved on to more innovative tactics or, dare I say it, are just buying links.
Sidenote.
Talking of buying links, here’s something to ponder: if Connectively charges for pitches, are links built through those pitches technically paid? If so, do they violate Google’s spam policies? It’s a murky old world this SEO lark, eh?
If you’re a journalist, Connectively might be worth a shot. But with experts being charged for pitches, you probably won’t get as many responses. That might be a good thing. You might get less spam. Or you might just get spammed by SEOs with deep pockets. The jury’s out for now.
My advice? Look for alternative methods like finding and reaching out to experts directly. You can easily use tools like Content Explorer to find folks who’ve written lots of content about the topic and are likely to be experts.
For example, if you look for content with “backlinks” in the title and go to the Authors tab, you might see a familiar name. 😉
I don’t know if I’d call myself an expert, but I’d be happy to give you a quote if you reached out on social media or emailed me (here’s how to find my email address).
Alternatively, you can bait your audience into giving you their insights on social media. I did this recently with a poll on X and included many of the responses in my guide to toxic backlinks.
Either of these options is quicker than using HARO because you don’t have to sift through hundreds of responses looking for a needle in a haystack. If you disagree with me and still love HARO, feel free to tell me why on X 😉
SEO
Google Clarifies Vacation Rental Structured Data
Google’s structured data documentation for vacation rentals was recently updated to require more specific data in a change that is more of a clarification than it is a change in requirements. This change was made without any formal announcement or notation in the developer pages changelog.
Vacation Rentals Structured Data
These specific structured data types makes vacation rental information eligible for rich results that are specific to these kinds of rentals. However it’s not available to all websites. Vacation rental owners are required to be connected to a Google Technical Account Manager and have access to the Google Hotel Center platform.
VacationRental Structured Data Type Definitions
The primary changes were made to the structured data property type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
The primary changes were made to the structured data type definitions where Google defines what the required and recommended property types are.
The changes to the documentation is in the section governing the Recommended properties and represents a clarification of the recommendations rather than a change in what Google requires.
Address Schema.org property
This is a subtle change but it’s important because it now represents a recommendation that requires more precise data.
This is what was recommended before:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.”
This is what it now recommends:
“streetAddress”: “1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Unit 6E”
Address Property Change Description
The most substantial change is to the description of what the “address” property is, becoming more descriptive and precise about what is recommended.
The description before the change:
PostalAddress
Information about the street address of the listing. Include all properties that apply to your country.
The description after the change:
PostalAddress
The full, physical location of the vacation rental.
Provide the street address, city, state or region, and postal code for the vacation rental. If applicable, provide the unit or apartment number.
Note that P.O. boxes or other mailing-only addresses are not considered full, physical addresses.
This is repeated in the section for address.streetAddress property
This is what it recommended before:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing.
And this is what it recommends now:
address.streetAddress Text
The full street address of your vacation listing, including the unit or apartment number if applicable.
Clarification And Not A Change
Although these updates don’t represent a change in Google’s guidance they are nonetheless important because they offer clearer guidance with less ambiguity as to what is recommended.
Read the updated structured data guidance:
Vacation rental (VacationRental) structured data
Featured Image by Shutterstock/New Africa
SEO
Google On Hyphens In Domain Names
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.
Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO
I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.
Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.
A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?
Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit
This is the question asked on Reddit:
“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”
And this is Mueller’s response:
“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.
My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”
Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.
That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.
Read the post on Reddit:
Read Mueller’s response here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty
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