How to Make Money With a Newsletter on beehiiv: Ad Network, Boosts (Paid Recommendations) and Paid Subscriptions With Real Numbers

A newsletter on beehiiv can earn money in five ways: ads from beehiiv's own Ad Network, paid recommendations (the feature everyone still calls Boosts), paid subscriptions, sponsorships you sell yourself and affiliate links. The catch is that almost all of them sit behind a paid plan, and the one most affiliate marketers reach for first, affiliate links, is the one beehiiv's rules squeeze hardest.

I've been making money online since 2010. I started as a freelance copywriter, moved on to my own websites and from there into affiliate marketing, and email lists have been part of the toolkit the whole way. Several of my projects send through AWeber (not all of them), and I don't have beehiiv results to show you, so you won't find "I made $X on beehiiv" here. What you will find is how each money lever works, what it costs, where the money actually lands, a 12-month example with every assumption on the table, and an honest comparison with AWeber and Kit for people whose income depends on affiliate offers.

How does a beehiiv newsletter make money?

A beehiiv newsletter makes money when someone pays for your readers' attention or for your content: advertisers through the Ad Network, other newsletters through paid recommendations, readers through paid subscriptions, brands through sponsorships, and merchants through affiliate commissions. Each lever has its own plan requirement, fee and payout route.

Look at the last column before you look at anything else. Everything beehiiv pays you goes through Stripe, and beehiiv's Ad Network help page says outright that PayPal, Wise and PriyoPay aren't supported. If Stripe doesn't serve your country, the platform-paid levers are off the table and you're left with affiliate links and deals you invoice yourself. Check that before you write issue number one, not after issue fifty.

beehiiv plans: what's free and what gets you paid

beehiiv's Free plan lets you send to up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, but it doesn't include ads or paid subscriptions. Those start on Lite, which costs from $49 a month on yearly billing; Pro, from $95 a month billed yearly, adds the direct sponsorship tool and removes beehiiv branding.

beehiiv says yearly billing saves up to 20% compared with paying month to month, and both Lite and Pro come with a free trial that needs no credit card. The plan names are fairly new, by the way: older guides use the previous plan names, such as Launch, Scale and Max, so if a tutorial mentions those, translate before you follow it.

My reading of this lineup: the Free plan is a list-building plan, not a money plan. That's fine. A newsletter with 300 readers has nothing worth selling to advertisers yet, so the smart move is to build on Free, use the free recommendation swaps to grow, and only start paying $49 a month once there's an audience that can cover it. If you want to see how a list grows when you have no budget at all, my guide to affiliate marketing with no money walks through that stage.

The beehiiv Ad Network: how it pays and what to expect

The beehiiv Ad Network is a marketplace of ready-made ads that you claim and drop into your newsletter; you earn either per 1,000 unique opens (CPM) or per payable click (CPC), at a rate the advertiser sets for each campaign. It's open to anyone on a paid plan who actively sends through beehiiv, and there's no published subscriber minimum.

The mechanics, from beehiiv's help center:

• You choose. You browse offers, claim the ones that fit and downvote the ones that don't. Nothing runs without your say.
• Limits. Up to 5 claimed ads at a time, 120 hours (5 days) to publish each one, and up to 3 ads per post, of which only one can carry a logo.
• Pricing model. The advertiser picks CPM or CPC. beehiiv's own examples: a $5 CPM pays $5 per 1,000 unique opens; a $2 CPC pays $200 for 100 payable clicks.
• Payout. Earnings land in your beehiiv Wallet on the 20th of each month for the previous month's ads. From there you withdraw to your bank through a Stripe Express account. Performance reports appear 96 hours after a send.

Now the reality check. beehiiv's pricing page advertises average ad earnings of about $39 a month. That's an average across a lot of publications, big and small, so treat it as a hint about scale rather than a forecast. Here's the arithmetic for a small list, as an example: 2,000 subscribers, 45% unique opens, one $5 CPM ad per issue gives 900 opens and $4.50 per send. Four issues a month, about $18. Nice coffee money; not rent.

Why do I still think the Ad Network is worth switching on? Because it costs you zero sales effort and gives you data. After a few months you'll know which advertiser categories your readers actually click, and that's exactly what you need when you start pitching sponsors directly at much better rates.

Boosts are now paid recommendations: earning and paying per subscriber

Boosts still work, they've just been renamed: in July 2026 beehiiv folded Boosts into its Recommendation Network, so "Monetize Boosts" are now outgoing paid recommendations (you earn by recommending other newsletters) and "Grow Boosts" are incoming paid recommendations (you pay other newsletters to recommend yours). Both need a paid plan; free recommendations stay available on every plan.

Earning: recommending other newsletters

When someone subscribes to your newsletter, beehiiv can show them up to four recommended newsletters. If you've applied to an advertiser's paid offer and they approved you, you earn for every subscriber you send who passes beehiiv's verification. beehiiv keeps 20%: its own example is a $2.50 offer that pays the recommending publisher $2.00 per subscriber.

The quiet beauty of this lever is that it monetizes the moment of sign-up, when you have the reader's attention and haven't sent a single email yet. The quiet risk is the same thing: every reader who clicks away to someone else's newsletter in their first minute with you is a reader whose attention you've split. Recommend newsletters that complement yours, not ones that replace you.

Paying: buying subscribers from other newsletters

On the other side, you set a price per verified subscriber and other publishers apply to promote you. You fund a Wallet (the minimum deposit is $20), and you're charged only for subscribers who pass verification. Two details trip people up:

• The 10x rule. Your available balance has to stay at or above 10 times your offer's price per subscriber, or the offer may pause automatically. At $2.50 a subscriber, that's $25 sitting in the Wallet at all times.
• Auto-pause on bad partners. You can set an open-rate threshold (beehiiv's example is 20%), and once a partner has sent you at least 100 verified subscribers, beehiiv pauses that partner if their subscribers open less than your threshold. Use it. It's the cheapest quality filter you'll ever get.

Also note what's gone: Email Boosts (paying another publisher to mail their whole list about you) and Direct Links have been retired. Old tutorials still describe them, so don't waste an evening looking for the button. For the wider picture of buying list growth, including newsletter networks outside beehiiv, see my breakdown of solo ads and paid subscriber networks.

Paid subscriptions: 0% to beehiiv, but who actually pays?

Paid subscriptions on beehiiv cost you nothing in platform fees: beehiiv takes 0% of subscription and digital product revenue on its paid plans, and you pay only Stripe's processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. On a $6 monthly subscription that leaves about $5.53 per payment.

That 30-cent fixed fee matters more than the percentage at low prices. On a $3 monthly plan it eats 10% before the percentage even starts; at $6 it's 5%. One way to dodge it is to push an annual option: one payment of, say, $60 a year is charged the fixed fee once instead of twelve times, and annual payers churn far less because they only decide once a year.

What do people pay for? Not "the same newsletter, but paid". The paid tiers that work give something the free issue can't: a deeper weekly teardown, a template library, a database, early access, a private community. My usual rule is that the free newsletter proves you know your stuff, and the paid tier saves the reader time. More on the fear that stops people from launching one in a minute.

Sponsorships you sell yourself

Direct sponsorships usually pay far better than the Ad Network, because you set the price and talk to the brand yourself. On beehiiv you can sell them two ways: through the built-in direct sponsorship tool on Pro and Enterprise plans, or with your own deal and invoice.

The built-in tool does the boring parts: beehiiv acts as the merchant of record, the advertiser pays beehiiv, beehiiv handles VAT collection, and you receive the payout net of fees through your Wallet. The trade-off is that once a deal runs through the tool, the whole thing has to stay there: the help center says you can't invoice those advertisers outside the platform. Advertisers who book through your storefront can only pay by card, which carries Stripe fees; if you start the proposal yourself, they can pay by bank transfer instead. Refunds can cost you a processing fee too, so get the brief right before you publish.

How do you price a sponsorship? Most small newsletters start from a CPM: decide what 1,000 opens are worth to an advertiser in your niche, multiply by your average unique opens per issue, and round to a flat price per placement. Your Ad Network history helps here: if your readers reliably click software ads, you can show a brand that with real numbers, which beats any "engaged audience" claim. If you're looking for which brands might pay, the guide to other people's markets covers partner deals and swaps from the affiliate side.

Affiliate links in a beehiiv newsletter: the rule that catches affiliate marketers

beehiiv allows the occasional affiliate link, but its acceptable use policy says content "created primarily for affiliate marketing or lead generation purposes" is not permitted, and it also bans "get rich quick" schemes. So a newsletter where most issues exist to push offers is working against beehiiv's own rules, and that's a shaky place to keep the list your income depends on.

This is the single most important fact in this article for anyone who reads this site. The classic affiliate list, where every email reviews a product and ends with a link, is the business model beehiiv says it doesn't want. Kit has a similar line: it allows affiliate links that are clearly labelled and "sprinkled into your own content", with roughly 20–30% of what you send being affiliate material, and it bans affiliate links related to education, loans, online pharmacies and get-rich-quick software. AWeber, which is what I use for my own lists, doesn't have that kind of ban.

What does a beehiiv newsletter with affiliate income look like, then? A real publication first. A weekly issue with your own analysis, news or tutorials, and an affiliate link where a tool genuinely fits the topic. Think of affiliate income as one lever among five, not the engine. If your whole plan is "list plus offers", you'll be happier on a provider built for that, which is what the comparison below is about.

A few more link rules that cost people commissions:

• Check each program's email terms. Many CPA and smartlink networks ban email traffic unless you get written approval. I explain why in how to promote smartlinks: send readers to a page on your site and let the smartlink live there.
• Skip public link shorteners. Kit's help center lists many link shorteners among the links it doesn't allow in emails, and shorteners are a classic spam signal everywhere. Link straight to the merchant, or redirect through your own domain.
• Disclose in plain words. The FTC's endorsement guides FAQ says "affiliate link" on its own may not be understood by readers; a plain line such as "I get a commission if you buy through this link" near the recommendation is the safe version. Similar rules exist in the UK, the EU, Canada and Australia.

beehiiv vs Kit vs AWeber: which one should an affiliate marketer pick?

Pick beehiiv if you're building a content newsletter and want ads, paid recommendations and paid subscriptions in one place; Kit if you sell your own digital products and want a free plan that goes up to 10,000 subscribers; AWeber if affiliate offers are the core of your income and you want a provider whose rules allow that.

The money comparison isn't just the monthly price. On beehiiv, a $49 plan can be partly paid back by ads and recommendations that the other two don't offer in the same form. On AWeber, the plan is cheaper and the rules let you mail offers, but every dollar has to come from what you sell. And on Kit, the generous free plan is great until you start charging, when 3.5% + 30¢ per transaction starts to add up compared with beehiiv's 0%.

My honest take for readers of this site: if your newsletter is about making money online and most issues carry an offer, beehiiv's policy is a risk you don't need. If your newsletter is about something else (a hobby, an industry, a city, a tool) and you want several income streams from one list, beehiiv's monetization stack is the most complete of the three. I went deeper into how a list earns in Email Marketing Is Your Personal ATM, including the welcome sequence I'd set up first.

What could a beehiiv newsletter earn in 12 months? A worked example

A new newsletter that grows by about 200 subscribers a month could plausibly reach a few hundred dollars a month by the end of year one, with most of it coming from paid subscriptions rather than ads. The numbers below are an example built on stated assumptions, not a result, a benchmark or a promise.

The assumptions, all of them adjustable:

• 200 new subscribers a month from your site and social posts; 2% of the list unsubscribes each month.
• Months 1–3 on the Free plan; Lite from month 4, counted at $49 a month.
• Ad Network: 4 issues a month, 45% unique opens, a $5 CPM ad in three issues out of four.
• Outgoing paid recommendations: 8% of new subscribers take a recommended newsletter that pays you $2.00 after beehiiv's 20%.
• Paid tier at $6 a month from month 7; 1.5% of the list subscribes; Stripe takes 2.9% + $0.30 per payment.
• Affiliate: one relevant tool mention a month, 2% of subscribers click, 3% of clickers buy, $30 commission.
• Scenario B adds incoming paid recommendations from month 4: 60 extra subscribers a month at $2.50 each.

Over the full year, scenario A brings in about $1,501 in revenue and about $1,060 after the plan cost. Scenario B brings in about $1,839, but after $441 for the plan and $1,350 for bought subscribers, only about $48 is left. B ends the year with roughly 500 more subscribers, so it's buying an asset, not losing money outright, but the asset pays back slowly.

Three things jump out of this example, and they hold even if you change the inputs:

1. Paid subscriptions carry the year. By month 12 in scenario A, the paid tier brings in about $177 of the $262. Ads bring in about $15. If you only switch on ads, you've built the smallest lever.
2. Outgoing recommendations pay from day one of a reader's life. At 8% take-up and $2.00, every new subscriber is worth 16 cents before you send anything. That's why the first months on Lite aren't as painful as they look.
3. Buying subscribers is a long game. At about 12 cents per subscriber per month, a $2.50 subscriber needs around 20 months to pay for itself. Paid growth makes sense when your per-subscriber income is proven, not as a launch tactic.

Plug your own numbers into the earnings calculator for the affiliate part and the campaign ROI calculator before you spend on growth.

"Nobody will pay for my newsletter": the fear behind free-forever lists

The most common reason newsletter writers never launch a paid tier is the belief that people won't pay for content anymore. There's some truth in it: the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2026 found that only about 17% of people across 20 countries pay for online news, barely changed from the year before.

But read that number the other way around. You don't need most people to pay. In the example above, 1.5% of a 2,000-person list is 30 people, and those 30 people outearn the ads and the affiliate links combined. A niche newsletter isn't competing with the New York Times for a general news subscription; it's selling a specific person a specific shortcut. The 17% are the people who pay for general news. Your reader pays because your issue saves them three hours a week.

The fear has a second, sneakier form: "I'll launch paid when I'm bigger." The trap is that every month you wait, you train readers that everything is free. A low-risk way out is a founding-member offer: a lower price for the first readers who join, a clear list of what they get, and a promise you can keep even if only ten people sign up. If nobody does, you've learned something cheap about your offer. If ten do, you've got proof that's worth more than any survey.

The same logic applies to sponsors. Plenty of writers wait for a magic subscriber count before pitching. Brands buying newsletter ads in a narrow niche often care more about who reads than how many, and a small list with strong click data is an easier sell than a big list of strangers.

Tricks most beehiiv guides skip

These are the small moves that give a new newsletter an edge, all inside beehiiv's rules.

• Get the partner discount before you upgrade. People who sign up through a beehiiv partner link get a 14-day free trial and 20% off their first three months on a paid plan. beehiiv doesn't say whether that stacks with the standard no-card trial, but the discount alone is reason enough not to sign up for Lite cold.
• Pay yearly only when the math works. Yearly billing saves up to 20%, but it's also a year of commitment. Stay monthly or on Free until your newsletter covers its own bill for two or three months in a row.
• Recommend others to get recommended. beehiiv says newsletters that recommend others are 32 times more likely to be recommended back. Free recommendations work on the Free plan, so this is your cheapest growth channel while you're small. I covered more free swap tactics in successful blog marketing tips.
• Train the Ad Network. Downvoting ads that don't fit isn't just tidying up; offers are matched to your content and history, so honest votes should give you better-matched, better-paid offers over time. Write a detailed publication description and pick your three tags carefully for the same reason.
• Watch the 120-hour clock. A claimed ad must be published within five days. Claim ads when you have issues scheduled, not on a quiet week, or you'll lose the slot.
• Ask your affiliate manager for a subscriber-only coupon. Affiliate managers see full statistics across all their affiliates: which offers convert right now and which are tired. Ask before you write an issue, and once you send steady sales, ask for an exclusive code. A code with your newsletter's name on it is the kind of thing readers can't get anywhere else.
• Set the auto-pause filter before you buy a single subscriber. An open-rate threshold on incoming recommendations turns off weak partners automatically after 100 verified subscribers. Without it, you can pay for readers who never open.

Deliverability and the legal basics

Your newsletter only earns if it reaches the inbox, and that depends on consent, clean lists and honest sending. beehiiv sends from its own infrastructure on most plans (dedicated IPs are an Enterprise feature), so your job is to keep your list's behaviour healthy: real opt-ins, regular sending and fast unsubscribes.

• No bought lists, ever. beehiiv's policy says consent "is not transferable": addresses obtained from data brokers or vendors don't count as opted in. Every serious email provider has the same rule.
• Paid traffic to a sign-up page is different. Buying clicks to your own opt-in page, for example through solo ads on Udimi, means each reader subscribes themselves. It's allowed, but quality varies a lot, especially in the make-money niche, and readers who never open drag your engagement down. Test small and watch opens per source.
• Follow the anti-spam law. In the US, the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide requires a valid postal address in every commercial email (a registered PO box or private mailbox is fine), honest headers and subject lines, and opt-outs honoured within 10 business days. Penalties can reach $53,088 per email. The guide also says both the sender and the advertised company can be held responsible, which matters when you run other brands' ads. The UK, the EU, Canada and Australia have their own consent rules, usually stricter on opt-in.
• Mind big mailbox rules. Gmail requires bulk senders to authenticate their mail and offer one-click unsubscribe. beehiiv handles the sending side, but set up your custom domain properly and send from an address on it.

Mistakes that kill newsletter income

• Building an offer list on a content platform. If every issue is a pitch, beehiiv's policy is against you. Choose the provider that matches your business model on day one; moving a list later is painful.
• Paying for Lite with 200 readers. Ads and recommendations scale with audience. Grow on Free first.
• Treating the Ad Network as the main income. In most small-list math it's the smallest lever. Use it for data and pocket money.
• Buying subscribers before you know their value. Work out revenue per subscriber first; otherwise you're guessing with real money.
• Ignoring payout logistics. No Stripe in your country means no platform payouts. Check before you invest months.
• Forgetting the fixed fee. Cheap monthly plans lose a big share to the $0.30 per payment; offer annual billing. My breakdown of hidden business costs shows how these small fees stack up.

Start with the Free plan, one issue a week and a clear topic you can write about for a year. Swap free recommendations with a few complementary newsletters, switch on paid levers once a few hundred readers open regularly, and launch a paid tier with something genuinely extra. If your income is going to come mostly from affiliate offers, compare the options in this guide before you commit, and read affiliate networks for creators for programs that suit newsletter writers.