Which Beehiiv newsletters are making money now?

Are Beehiiv newsletters actually making serious money now?

Yes. Beehiiv newsletters are making serious money today, with the best documented businesses ranging from $20,000-a-year niche publications to newsletters above $1 million in recurring revenue.

Beehiiv's latest platform data makes the broader shift clear. Paid subscriptions generated $19 million in 2025, up 138% from roughly $8 million the previous year. The Ad Network now distributes more than $1 million per month to publishers, and newsletters launched during 2025 needed a median of only 66 days to earn their first dollar.

But those platform numbers can make newsletter economics look easier than they are. Beehiiv's 2026 analysis of thousands of paid publications found a median free-to-paid conversion rate of just 0.62%. For every 1,000 subscribers, the typical publication has roughly six paying readers.

The gap between ordinary newsletters and the best ones is huge. Top-decile finance newsletters convert around 20% of their audience, while Status has crossed seven figures in annual recurring revenue and Extra Points makes more than $200,000 a year from a relatively narrow college-sports niche.

So there is clearly real money on Beehiiv now. Most of it is being captured by newsletters with a much stronger reason to exist than “interesting emails about a popular topic.”

Beehiiv monetization signal	Latest available figure	What it shows
Paid subscription revenue	$19M in 2025	Up 138% year over year
Ad Network payouts	$1M+ per month	Advertising has meaningful scale
Median time to first revenue	66 days for 2025 launches	Small newsletters can monetize fairly early
Median paid conversion	0.62%	A paywall alone usually produces little revenue
Top-decile finance conversion	20%	The best newsletters operate in a different league

Which Beehiiv newsletters have the clearest proof of making money?

Status, Open Source CEO, Extra Points, Catskill Crew and Out of Your League currently give us some of the clearest public evidence of Beehiiv newsletters making meaningful money.

Status has passed seven figures in annual recurring revenue according to Beehiiv's latest reporting on the publication. The newsletter now reaches more than 100,000 subscribers and charges $14.95 per month for its premium tier.

Open Source CEO reported roughly $375,000 in trailing 12-month revenue in a Beehiiv case study published this year. More strikingly, it generated $170,000 during its latest disclosed quarter. Founder Bill Kerr projects $1 million to $1.5 million for the year, although that remains a forecast rather than earned revenue.

Extra Points produces more than $200,000 annually from its college-sports business coverage. Beehiiv's latest paid-newsletter report puts the audience at roughly 69,000 subscribers, including around 2,000 paying readers.

At a much smaller scale, Out of Your League reached $21,773 in annual net revenue with fewer than 4,000 total subscribers. Catskill Crew provides another useful comparison: the local Catskills publication generated $57,000 in one reported month with fewer than 20,000 readers by selling events, products and other community offers.

There are also older Beehiiv success stories worth keeping in perspective. The Neuron generated more than $825,000 in revenue and roughly $500,000 in profit during its first 18 months before TechnologyAdvice acquired it. That is strong evidence that Beehiiv can support a highly profitable newsletter, although those figures describe the business before its acquisition rather than its economics today.

Newsletter	Latest useful revenue evidence	Audience	Main monetization
Status	$1M+ ARR	100K+	Paid subscriptions
Open Source CEO	~$375K trailing 12 months; $170K latest quarter	400K+	Sponsorships + partnerships
Extra Points	$200K+ per year	~69K	Subscriptions + licensing + products
Catskill Crew	$57K in one reported month	Under 20K	Events + products + local commerce
Out of Your League	~$21.8K annual net revenue	Under 4K	Paid subscriptions

Is Status the strongest paid Beehiiv newsletter right now?

Status is probably the strongest publicly documented paid-newsletter example on Beehiiv right now.

Oliver Darcy launched Status after leaving CNN and built an audience of more than 100,000 subscribers around media, technology, Hollywood and the people running those industries. The premium tier costs $14.95 per month, and Beehiiv now describes the publication as having seven-figure annual recurring revenue.

The revenue has already changed the business. Status started as a founder-led publication and has since hired reporters, an executive editor and a chief revenue officer while expanding to seven-day publishing.

That gives us better evidence than a screenshot showing a temporary revenue spike. Subscribers are funding payroll and a larger newsroom.

The editorial model also explains why people pay. Status publishes abbreviated free editions while reserving its fuller reporting and scoops for subscribers. A media executive deciding whether to spend $15 per month is buying access to information that may matter professionally, rather than paying simply to remove a paywall from general-interest commentary.

Beehiiv's latest retention data supports that kind of business. News publications currently have median monthly paid churn of about 5.47%, among the lowest categories on the platform.

Status has reached a point few creator newsletters ever reach: reader revenue alone is large enough to support an expanding editorial operation.

How is Open Source CEO making hundreds of thousands without charging readers?

Open Source CEO is making substantial money because its 400,000-plus readers are unusually valuable to advertisers and to founder Bill Kerr's other business.

Beehiiv's recent case study put Open Source CEO at roughly $375,000 of trailing 12-month revenue. The publication then made about $170,000 during its latest disclosed quarter, which corresponds to roughly $680,000 a year if that quarterly pace simply held.

The newsletter sells regular ad placements, but its more interesting product is a deeper branded company story. Those content partnerships can cost roughly $12,000 to $15,000 each.

A founder and investor audience can support those prices because software companies, financial services businesses, recruiters and other B2B advertisers regularly spend large amounts to reach exactly those people.

Open Source CEO also feeds customers into Kerr's talent company, Athyna. According to the same case study, the newsletter has contributed as much as 17% of Athyna's pipeline.

That changes the economics considerably. Advertisers help pay for an audience that Athyna can also turn into customers.

Open Source CEO shows why some free newsletters can out-earn paid publications. When the readers themselves are commercially expensive to reach, charging those readers may be less lucrative than charging the businesses trying to reach them.

How does Extra Points make more than $200,000 a year with a niche sports newsletter?

Extra Points makes more than $200,000 a year because its college-sports readers include people who can use the information professionally.

Matt Brown covers athletic-department budgets, college sports regulation, NIL policy, administration and the business behind college athletics. Beehiiv's latest dataset puts Extra Points at roughly 69,000 subscribers and around 2,000 paying readers.

That audience is modest next to major sports publications, yet the newsletter generates more than $200,000 annually.

Part of the money comes from individual subscriptions. Extra Points has also licensed its content and teaching materials to universities, giving the business a customer that can be worth far more than one reader. Brown has previously described institutional arrangements costing around $3,000 per year.

He has extended the publication into products as well, including research resources and the Athletic Director Simulator 4000, a game built around running a college athletic department.

The broader Beehiiv numbers fit what Extra Points is doing. Sports newsletters have the highest median paid conversion rate in Beehiiv's current industry data at 1.93%, more than three times the 0.62% platform median.

Extra Points goes a step further because its topic sits where sports fandom, education and professional work overlap. One piece of research can be valuable to a fan, a sports-business student and an athletic department for completely different reasons.

Can a small Beehiiv newsletter really make good money?

Yes. A small Beehiiv newsletter can already make meaningful money, and the current examples show why subscriber quality can matter far more than raw audience size.

Out of Your League is one of the cleanest examples. After moving to Beehiiv, the queer-sports publication grew annual net revenue from $11,945 to $21,773 within eight months. Its paid subscriber count increased from 355 to 437.

The striking number is its conversion rate. Roughly 12% of subscribers pay, compared with Beehiiv's platform median of 0.62%.

That means Out of Your League converts readers at roughly 19 times the normal Beehiiv rate despite having fewer than 4,000 total subscribers.

Catskill Crew produces even more extreme economics through a different model. Founder Michael Kauffman built a local audience of fewer than 20,000 people and generated $57,000 in one reported month through events, products and community-driven offers.

Subscriber count becomes a poor shortcut once audiences have different levels of intent. Extra Points produces close to $3 in annual revenue per subscriber. Out of Your League produces more than roughly $5.44 in annual net revenue per subscriber based on the “under 4,000” audience figure. Status sits around $10 per total subscriber per year only if we use the $1 million ARR threshold and an audience close to 100,000; with a larger audience or only slightly higher ARR, that ratio changes.

A large list still helps, of course. But 100,000 casual readers can be commercially weaker than 10,000 people who urgently care about the same narrow subject.

Newsletter	Approx. audience	Revenue evidence	Rough revenue density
Extra Points	~69K	$200K+/year	~$2.90+ per subscriber/year
Out of Your League	<4K	~$21.8K annual net	>~$5.44 per subscriber/year
Status	100K+	$1M+ ARR	~$10 at the 100K / $1M threshold
Catskill Crew	<20K	$57K in one month	>~$2.85 per subscriber in that month

Why can Catskill Crew make $57,000 in a month with fewer than 20,000 readers?

Catskill Crew can make unusually high revenue from a small audience because its readers are concentrated in one place and regularly spend money on things happening there.

The newsletter covers events and culture in New York's Catskills region. Founder Michael Kauffman has built the business around local ads, events, merchandise, art, discount products and other offers connected to that audience.

Beehiiv reported this year that Catskill Crew generated $57,000 in revenue during one month. Earlier material from the company described the publication as having fewer than 20,000 subscribers.

Kauffman has experimented with more than 11 revenue streams, so comparing Catskill Crew with a pure subscription newsletter would be misleading. Still, the example says something useful about local publishing.

A local reader opening an email about what to do this weekend may soon buy a ticket, visit a restaurant or attend an event. That reader is unusually close to a purchase.

The economics can work with surprisingly small lists because local advertisers care less about reaching millions of people than about reaching a few thousand relevant people nearby.

LA Raver has used a similar idea around Southern California's rave scene. The publication has monetized through sponsorships, affiliate codes, premium subscriptions and events, and previously reported close to $100,000 over a three-month period.

These newsletters are starting to look less like “email businesses” and more like small local commerce businesses built around email.

Are AI newsletters on Beehiiv still making money?

AI newsletters can still make good money on Beehiiv, but the latest data makes the category look much tougher than the early success stories suggested.

Cyber Corsairs demonstrated how powerful the model could be. The AI-productivity newsletter reached $16,600 in monthly revenue after growing beyond 50,000 subscribers, using direct sponsors, Beehiiv ads, Boosts, premium subscriptions and related services. Its website now advertises an audience above 215,000, a newer audience figure than the revenue disclosure.

The Neuron went much further. Before TechnologyAdvice acquired it, the publication grew beyond 500,000 subscribers and generated more than $825,000 in revenue and approximately $500,000 in profit during an 18-month period.

Those businesses benefited from enormous demand for understandable AI information.

The problem today is retention. Beehiiv's newest paid-newsletter data puts median monthly churn for AI publications at 13.33%. News sits at 5.47%, and Food & Drink at 5.06%.

The difference compounds quickly. Beehiiv calculates that roughly 54% of a subscription cohort survives one year at 5% monthly churn. At around 17%, barely 11% remains after a year.

AI publishers face an obvious content problem now: free alternatives multiply almost as quickly as the news itself. ChatGPT, YouTube, X, LinkedIn and hundreds of other newsletters can all explain the latest model release within hours.

A differentiated AI publication can still work, especially with advertising. Generic AI summaries have become much harder to defend as a paid product.

Which Beehiiv niches are people most willing to pay for?

Investing, finance, business and specialized sports currently show some of the strongest paid-newsletter economics on Beehiiv.

Beehiiv's latest analysis covers thousands of paid publications between 2021 and 2026. The standard paid newsletter still costs around $10 per month or $100 per year, a figure that has barely moved since 2024.

Investing newsletters sit far above that benchmark. Their median price is $27 per month and $292 per year. Finance is around $20 per month, while business sits near $15. Travel is closer to $7.

Readers will apparently pay much more when the information can affect an investment, a business decision or their job.

Conversion rates reveal an even larger difference between average and exceptional publications. The median investing newsletter converts 0.84% of free readers, while the top 10% reach 18.69%. Finance moves from 0.78% at the median to 20% among the top decile.

Sports has the highest median conversion rate at 1.93%, although Beehiiv notes that the sports sample contains only 158 paid publications, considerably fewer than larger categories such as business.

The useful takeaway is how enormous the spread is inside the same niche. A top finance newsletter converts roughly 26 times as many readers as the median finance publication.

Picking finance instead of travel can improve the economics. It still cannot rescue a newsletter people do not particularly want.

Are paid Beehiiv newsletters really easy to build?

No. Beehiiv has made paid subscriptions easy to launch, but getting enough people to keep paying remains difficult.

The median conversion rate tells the story. At 0.62%, a free newsletter with 10,000 subscribers would have about 62 paying readers. At the common $10 monthly price, that produces roughly $620 per month before churn and payment-processing costs.

The better publications quickly move away from that baseline. Beehiiv says top-quartile publishers in many categories convert roughly 2% to 5% over time. Exceptional finance and investing newsletters can approach 20%.

Retention can matter just as much. Current median monthly churn ranges from 5.06% for Food & Drink to 16.67% for Money. Beehiiv estimates paid-subscriber lifetimes ranging from about six months in Money to almost 20 months in Food & Drink.

A newsletter can win plenty of new paying customers and still build a weak business if those readers cancel quickly.

The successful paid publications we found usually give subscribers something clearly different from the free product. Status has proprietary reporting. Extra Points provides specialist information and tools. Out of Your League combines distinctive coverage with a community built around the publication.

Simply taking ordinary newsletter content and putting part of it behind a paywall is a much harder sell.

Are Beehiiv newsletters making more money from subscriptions or advertising now?

Paid subscriptions are growing much faster on Beehiiv, while advertising still produces substantial revenue for publishers with commercially valuable audiences.

Beehiiv recorded $19 million in paid-subscription revenue in 2025, up 138% year over year. Its latest State of Newsletters report describes subscriptions as the platform's strongest-growing monetization channel.

Advertising remains large enough that we should not dismiss it. Beehiiv's Ad Network currently distributes more than $1 million each month to publishers and supports publications ranging from around 1,000 subscribers to audiences above one million.

The individual winners explain why both models survive.

Status can charge readers directly because exclusive media reporting has professional value. Open Source CEO gives its content away and charges advertisers because founders and operators are expensive customers for B2B businesses to reach. Extra Points takes money from subscribers, advertisers and institutions.

The question for a publisher is simple: who values this audience the most?

For some newsletters, the answer is the reader. For others, an advertiser can comfortably pay much more.

Can Beehiiv's Ad Network turn a newsletter into a serious business?

Beehiiv's Ad Network can now produce real recurring income, but the biggest newsletter businesses we found usually add higher-value revenue streams on top of it.

The network currently pays publishers more than $1 million every month. Beehiiv matches newsletters with advertisers and offers campaigns priced around opens or clicks, which removes much of the sales work normally involved in sponsorships.

That makes advertising accessible much earlier in a newsletter's life. Publishers with relatively small lists can begin accepting campaigns rather than waiting until they have the scale to employ a salesperson.

But look at the larger businesses and the economics change.

Open Source CEO sells direct content partnerships for roughly $12,000 to $15,000 each. Extra Points sells institutional licenses. Status earns recurring subscriptions directly from readers. Catskill Crew sells events and products.

Standardized ads are useful because they monetize inventory that might otherwise earn nothing. Direct relationships and proprietary products can command much higher prices once a publication has something particularly valuable to sell.

The Ad Network has made the first few dollars much easier to earn. Building a six- or seven-figure newsletter still requires more than filling available ad slots.

Is the biggest Beehiiv opportunity now selling something beyond the newsletter?

For some of the strongest Beehiiv businesses, yes. The newsletter has become the audience engine for a product worth much more than an email subscription.

Ajenda is the clearest example we found. Dr. Jen Ashton first built a free wellness newsletter reaching more than 181,000 subscribers. The team spent about six months publishing before launching The Wellness Experiment, a fitness, nutrition and community program.

More than 5,000 people joined the first cohort. According to Beehiiv's latest paid-newsletter report, the launch generated $750,000 in 90 days without paid advertising.

The business has since evolved into an ongoing membership priced at $29 per month with more than 13,000 members.

Thirteen thousand members at the headline price would represent $377,000 in monthly gross membership value if everyone paid the full rate. Actual recognized revenue will differ because of churn, promotions and billing arrangements, so we should avoid treating $377,000 as reported monthly revenue. The order of magnitude is still revealing.

Catskill Crew reaches the same idea through local events and products. Extra Points sells licenses and specialist tools. Open Source CEO helps generate pipeline for Athyna.

These models make the phrase “newsletter revenue” increasingly misleading. Email gets the audience's attention repeatedly at very low marginal cost, while most of the money can be made somewhere else.

What are the Beehiiv newsletters making money doing differently?

The Beehiiv newsletters making meaningful money now usually have a narrow audience with a clear reason to spend, and they give themselves several ways to capture that spending.

Status sells reporting that media professionals cannot easily replace. Extra Points covers a small corner of sports deeply enough that readers and universities pay for it. Out of Your League converts around 12% of readers because its audience has an unusually strong relationship with the publication.

The advertiser-led publications show the same pattern from another angle. Open Source CEO gathers hundreds of thousands of founders and operators in one place, making its readership valuable to B2B advertisers. Catskill Crew concentrates people who spend money in one geographical area.

Then comes the revenue mix. Cyber Corsairs has used sponsorships, ads, Boosts, subscriptions and services. Extra Points combines subscribers with licensing and products. Catskill Crew has tried more than 11 different revenue streams. Ajenda turned free email readers into buyers of a much larger wellness program.

What keeps appearing across these examples is reader intent. The strongest newsletters know exactly why the subscriber opened the email and who might pay to serve that need.

Model	Beehiiv examples	Why people spend
Professional information	Status, Extra Points	The content can affect work or decisions
Valuable B2B audience	Open Source CEO	Advertisers will pay heavily to reach the readers
Strong community	Out of Your League	Readers identify closely with the publication
Local commerce	Catskill Crew, LA Raver	Subscribers are close to buying tickets, experiences or local products
Newsletter-led product	Ajenda	Email builds trust before a higher-value purchase
High-volume niche media	Cyber Corsairs, The Neuron	Large specialist audiences attract advertisers

So which Beehiiv newsletters are making money now?

The clearest Beehiiv money-makers today are specialized publications such as Status, Open Source CEO, Extra Points, Catskill Crew and Out of Your League, while businesses such as Ajenda show how much larger the economics can become when a newsletter sells a separate product.

Status has crossed $1 million in recurring revenue with a paid-first media model. Open Source CEO has reported roughly $375,000 over 12 months and $170,000 in its latest disclosed quarter. Extra Points earns more than $200,000 annually from a relatively small professional sports niche. Catskill Crew produced a $57,000 month with fewer than 20,000 readers. Out of Your League reached almost $22,000 in annual net revenue with fewer than 4,000 subscribers.

The broader Beehiiv numbers are encouraging too. Paid-subscription revenue jumped 138% in one year, and the Ad Network now distributes more than $1 million a month.

Yet the median paid conversion rate remains just 0.62%. That number is probably the best reality check in the entire dataset.

Today, building an audience on Beehiiv and earning some money from it is increasingly realistic. Building a large newsletter business is still rare.

The publications breaking through tend to have one thing in common: their readers have a specific reason to care deeply, pay directly, buy something else or attract advertisers willing to pay heavily for access to them. Subscriber count helps after that. It rarely creates the business by itself.