Selling Online Courses vs Paid Newsletter: Which Builds a Better Recurring Income

A paid newsletter generally creates more natural recurring revenue because subscribers pay monthly or annually for continuing content. Online courses usually generate higher revenue per customer, but a conventional one-time course sale is not recurring unless you add subscriptions, memberships, updates or additional products.

The simplest comparison is:

Paid newsletter = Lower price × More recurring payments

Online course = Higher price × Fewer, larger transactions

For creators seeking predictable monthly recurring revenue (MRR), newsletters have an advantage. For experts who can solve an expensive problem and charge substantially more for the solution, courses can generate greater revenue from a smaller customer base.

The market supports both approaches. Substack announced in March 2025 that it had reached 5 million paid subscriptions, demonstrating significant consumer willingness to pay repeatedly for creator content.

Meanwhile, Kajabi says creators on its platform have generated more than $11.7 billion across 101 million transactions since 2010, although earnings are highly concentrated and results vary dramatically between creators.

Online Courses vs Paid Newsletters

How Do Online Courses Make Money?

Online courses package expertise into structured education.

A course might teach:

• Digital marketing.
• Coding.
• Photography.
• Personal finance.
• Excel.
• Graphic design.
• Fitness.
• Business management.
• Artificial intelligence.
• Professional skills.

The basic model is:

Expertise → Course → Audience → Purchase → Revenue

Suppose you sell a course for $300.

Selling 20 copies per month produces:

$300 × 20 = $6,000 monthly gross revenue

At 100 sales:

$300 × 100 = $30,000

The attraction is obvious: courses can monetize expertise at much higher prices than most newsletter subscriptions. But sales aren’t guaranteed, and gross revenue isn’t profit.

Creators may incur expenses for advertising, payment processing, course platforms, software, affiliates, refunds and content production.

How Do Paid Newsletters Make Money?

Paid newsletters use a subscription model. Readers typically receive premium analysis, research, commentary, tutorials or other specialized information in exchange for monthly or annual payments.

The model is:

Expertise → Regular content → Subscribers → Recurring payments

Substack currently allows creators to establish monthly and annual subscription plans. For U.S.-dollar Stripe accounts, its minimum prices are $5 per month and $30 per year.

Suppose your newsletter costs $10 per month.

With:

• 100 subscribers = $1,000/month gross
• 500 subscribers = $5,000/month gross
• 1,000 subscribers = $10,000/month gross

That equals $120,000 in annualized gross subscription revenue at 1,000 continuously paying subscribers before platform, payment-processing and other costs. Subscriber churn means actual results can differ considerably.

1. Paid Newsletters Win on Natural Recurring Revenue

Recurring income is built directly into a newsletter subscription. A customer paying $10 this month can potentially pay another $10 next month without another individual purchase decision.

This produces:

Subscribers × Subscription price = Monthly recurring revenue

If 500 subscribers each pay $10:

500 × $10 = $5,000 MRR

That predictability can make financial planning easier.

Substack’s growth illustrates the scale of this model. The company reported 5 million paid subscriptions in March 2025, up from 4 million less than four months earlier.

Substack currently says:

“Writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees.”

Its support documentation specifies a 10% Substack fee on paid subscription transactions, in addition to applicable Stripe payment and billing fees.

2. Courses Can Generate More Revenue Per Customer

Newsletters may win on frequency, but courses can win on transaction size. Compare:

Newsletter: $10/month

versus:

Course: $500 purchase

One $500 course sale is equivalent to 50 individual $10 monthly subscription payments before considering costs.

That means a creator with a small but highly targeted professional audience may not need thousands of customers.

For example:

20 course sales × $500 = $10,000

Generating the same monthly gross revenue from a $10 newsletter would require:

1,000 paying subscribers

This makes courses particularly attractive when the creator teaches a skill connected to a valuable outcome such as career advancement, business growth or specialized professional expertise.

Read Also: How to Monetize a Newsletter Without Losing Subscribers

3. Course Income Isn’t Automatically Recurring

This is the most important distinction. If someone buys your $500 course today, you don’t automatically receive another $500 next month. To turn courses into recurring income, creators can introduce:

1. Membership communities
2. Monthly coaching
3. Course libraries
4. Subscription-based training
5. Advanced courses
6. Certification renewals
7. Paid updates
8. Group mentoring

Instead of:

Course → One sale

the business becomes:

Course → Customer → Membership → Additional training → Repeat purchase

Kajabi’s 2026 transaction analysis provides interesting evidence for this approach. It reports that 53.8% of creator earnings on its platform came after the customer’s first purchase.

That doesn’t prove additional products cause success, but it highlights the importance of repeat customers.

4. Newsletters Have a Churn Problem

Recurring revenue isn’t permanent revenue. Subscribers cancel. This is known as churn.

Suppose you have:

1,000 paying subscribers, and lose:

5% each month

That’s:

50 cancellations

You need 50 new paying subscribers simply to return to 1,000.

A newsletter business therefore requires two systems:

Acquisition + Retention

Creators must continuously provide enough value for subscribers to remain. This makes newsletters deceptively demanding. Starting one can be easy; producing content people willingly pay for every month is harder.

5. Courses Require More Work Upfront

Newsletters spread content production across time. Courses concentrate much of it at the beginning. A professional course may require:

• Curriculum development.
• Scripts.
• Recording.
• Video editing.
• Worksheets.
• Templates.
• Assessments.
• Landing pages.
• Payment infrastructure.
• Student support.

That creates a larger initial workload.

However, once created, a course can potentially be sold repeatedly with relatively little incremental production cost. The creator’s challenge shifts from:

Creating the product

to:

Generating qualified customers.

Which Model Is More Profitable?

There is no universal winner because profitability depends on audience size, pricing, acquisition costs, retention and the value of the creator’s expertise.

Consider this hypothetical comparison:

*Assumes the subscriber base remains continuously at 1,000 throughout the year and excludes fees, churn and taxes.

The course creates substantially more money immediately in this example. The newsletter creates potentially more predictable future revenue. That’s the fundamental trade-off:

Courses concentrate revenue. Newsletters compound customer relationships.

The Strongest Strategy May Be Combining Them

Creators don’t necessarily need to choose. A hybrid business can use a free newsletter to attract an audience, a paid newsletter to monetize recurring information and courses to monetize deeper education.

For example:

Free newsletter → Paid newsletter → Course → Membership

Each level solves a different problem.

This creates multiple revenue streams from the same expertise without requiring every customer to purchase everything.

Statistics Worth Considering

Kajabi’s 2026 platform analysis shows why expectations should remain realistic. Among creators on Kajabi who made at least one sale, the median lifetime earnings were $3,653. However, 14% had exceeded $100,000, and 2.4% had surpassed $1 million.

Kajabi also found a very unequal earnings distribution:

The top 1% accounted for 44.3% of total creator earnings on the platform.

This is an important reminder. The existence of million-dollar course businesses doesn’t mean the typical creator earns millions.

Likewise, Substack having millions of paid subscriptions doesn’t mean every newsletter has thousands of paying readers. Successful recurring-income businesses still require:

Useful expertise + Audience + Trust + Distribution + Retention

Bottomline

For pure recurring income, the paid newsletter has the structural advantage. Subscriptions are recurring by design. Someone who stays subscribed continues paying without buying a new standalone product every month.

But online courses have another advantage:

Higher revenue per customer.

The strongest creator businesses can therefore combine the two instead of treating them as competitors:

• Newsletter → Relationship
• Course → Transformation
• Subscription/membership → Recurring revenue

Substack reaching 5 million paid subscriptions demonstrates significant demand for recurring creator content. Meanwhile, Kajabi’s reported $11.7 billion in creator earnings across 101 million transactions demonstrates the substantial commercial market for selling knowledge products, while its median earnings figures show that success is far from automatic.

For creators starting from scratch, the most sustainable progression may be:

Build an audience → Publish free content → Identify what people value → Introduce paid recurring content → Create a premium course around the biggest problem → Add membership or additional products

The question therefore isn’t only:

“Course or newsletter?”

It’s:

“Do I want to monetize a transformation once, or deliver enough ongoing value to earn the customer’s payment repeatedly?”

For recurring income, newsletters naturally solve the second problem. For higher-value education, courses solve the first. A business combining both can potentially capture the advantages of each.

FAQ

Which makes more money: courses or newsletters?

Courses can generate substantially more revenue per customer, while newsletters can produce more predictable recurring payments. Actual earnings depend on pricing, audience, conversion rates and costs.

Which is easier for beginners?

A newsletter can be quicker to launch because you don’t need to create an entire curriculum before publishing. However, building enough trust and audience to convert readers into paying subscribers can take considerable time.

Can an online course generate recurring income?

Yes, but usually not automatically. Recurring revenue can be added through memberships, subscriptions, ongoing coaching, course libraries or additional products.

How many paid newsletter subscribers do you need to make $5,000 monthly?

At $10 per month:

$5,000 ÷ $10 = 500 paying subscribers

This is gross revenue before platform fees, payment processing, refunds, taxes and other expenses.

Can I sell courses and a paid newsletter together?

Yes. The two models can complement each other because newsletters provide ongoing engagement while courses offer deeper structured education.

Source: substack.com