Can you run a creative business with just a newsletter?

Being a newsletter-only business requires forward thinking and an open mind. You will share your creative work, but possibly not in the same way you do now. This is the One Box strategy, where everything you make and care about fits into a single platform (box). 

I didn't know the One Box strategy would be a thing, but after being burned out with the one-to-one transactions of selling art and other physical products, I decided to see if I could go 100% digital as a business. I cut all ties to old revenue models and started developing a plan where I could work as concisely as possible. 

How Does One Box Work?

The strategy requires modification depending on the individual platforms, but the concept is that I produce content and generate revenue in multiple ways within a single online space. 

This strategy could work for some social media platforms like YouTube or Facebook. Still, those are more limiting, and the business comes from a rented audience, meaning you do not have control over who, when, and how often you can communicate with your audience. 

Newsletter platforms allow you to control when and how you communicate with the audience, and each service has specialized ways to generate revenue.

Which Platforms Work?

I can't speak to all the apps, but the shortlist is Substack, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, and Kajabi. All of these have the basic functionality of an email service provider, but the difference can be vast when it comes to making money. 

Substack is free to use, and the only internal way to make money is by offering a single membership gateway. 

ConvertKit, where The Hungry is hosted, allows me to create digital content for a fee. This could be digital assets like graphic templates, textures, ebooks, music, or any range of electronic goods. They also allow for paid newsletters and virtual tip jars similar to Ko-fi.

Kajabi is the most costly platform at the basic level, and the main functionality is online courses, paid podcasts, and coaching. 

Beehiiv sits somewhere in the middle, but while ConvertKit and Kajabi focus more on products and training as a revenue generator, Beehiiv is all about the newsletter and how to earn directly from it without selling individualized assets, which makes it the perfect choice for this experiment.

Why Beehiiv?

I want to return to sharing the digital assets I collect so others can use them in their work. Last year, before I moved The Hungry from Substack to ConvertKit, I offered monthly downloads to paid members. I decided that the assets were a disconnect from what The Hungry had become, and I stopped offering a paid membership to that newsletter.

I also stopped sharing my personal journey as much, and I missed that part, so I decided to start a second newsletter strictly to share my personal journey as I build and grow both newsletters. 

I chose Beehiiv for the personal newsletter because I wanted to test the platform since so many had asked questions I couldn't answer. Now that I've had some time to poke around the machine, I believe Beehiiv has the tools I need to implement a One Box strategy because of all the ways they give you to generate revenue with any tier.

At the Launch level, you get access to one of the most generous affiliate programs around. If you promote the service and someone buys in, you can earn 50% of the commission for the first year, which could be as much as $500.

The Grow level gives you access to subscriptions (memberships) and integrated advertising. This also gets you access to polls, surveys, and subscriber referrals.

The Scale level is a commitment at $99 a month, and it allows for Boosts, the referral network within Beehiiv that works two ways. 

You can use it to help grow your newsletter by paying other newsletter operators for any referrals they send your way. You can also earn by referring other newsletters in the Boost referral network. 

Also, if you join the Scale tier, Beehiiv will guarantee that your posts will get advertisers, allowing for instant revenue, but with a small newsletter, the revenue will be small at first.

The only thing you cannot do on Beehiiv (for now) is sell individual products like you can on ConvertKit or Kajabi, and this is the one aspect that had me questioning whether I needed an additional e-commerce solution like Squarespace or Shopify. That would negate the One Box strategy, but I have an answer.

My One Box Strategy

I decided to start with the Grow tier ($49), which gives me access to subscriptions. There's also the potential for ads, but I have a weird feeling about that, which I explain later. 

The Grow tier also gives me access to email automations, which I've found valuable at The Hungry.

I've already been writing regularly on Beehiiv. I will continue to do so with the added aspect of sharing more about the inner workings of my creative exploration and growing these newsletters.

Growth will come by sharing posts like this within The Hungry, which hopefully brings some of those readers over. 

> Affiliates

I'll promote Beehiiv with my affiliate link to offset some of my costs. I don't share affiliate links carelessly, only linking to products I actively use or have used in the past and still believe in.

Some other services (Printify, Shopify, Creative Market) will also find their way into my articles. 

> Paid Subscriptions

Bringing this one back, I'll offer memberships for people who want access to my digital asset library. For a low monthly fee, I'll send out a small collection of digital assets, perhaps with a short video of how I used them in my designs. 

> Sponsors

This being a more personal take, I'm unsure if I'll offer sponsor slots or advertising in this newsletter like I would on The Hungry. Having random sponsors like I'm an MMA fighter with random patches all over my shorts feels weird.

I may have collaboration opportunities with brands I appreciate, and the partnership makes sense, but I'm not sure what that looks like yet. 

> Digital Products

Some people may want the digital assets I'll share without the obligation of a monthly subscription. Still, as I mentioned above, Beehiiv doesn't have that capability yet (and it may never happen). 

Instead, I've opened a Gumroad account and will start uploading my assets to that platform. Gumroad is free to use and only charges a nominal fee with each purchase. For it to be fair and equitable to paid subscribers, I'll price the assets accordingly. 

Although this takes me slightly out of the One Box strategy, I can easily incorporate a purchase link within these posts, like this:

Secondary Options

By operating within Beehiiv first, I've already created the content, which can be shared in other places like Medium.com or LinkedIn. That's an excellent way to get to this newsletter without too much extra work. 

Alternatively, I could take some of this content and repackage it in a way that would sell on Amazon as an ebook. I don't know if I will do this, but that strategy is how I started this business over a decade ago, and those books helped me earn good money for a long time. 

The best part was that once the content was loaded, I didn't need to do anything except occasionally share the links when appropriate.

The same can be said for the digital designs and assets I create if I want to sell them on marketplaces like Society6, Teepublic, Threadless, Envato Elements, or Creative Market*.

If you've been a reader of The Hungry for some time, you know how I feel about marketplaces like that, and I don't anticipate it being part of my plan, but the option is available. 

Ultimately, my goal is to be 100% digital, and though there may not be a perfect One Box solution that covers all my bases, Beehiiv is a good start. 

Let me know if you appreciated this article and want to know how I would do this with other platforms.