Newsletter bundles don’t work

When we met a few years ago,

Evan Armstrong

was an early employee at Substack and even wrote his own Substack newsletter, until it was bought by Every and he went to work for the newsletter bundle.

Back then, readers like myself could subscribe for $200/year and access 5-10 writers, each writing independent newsletters for the bundle. The idea was that for one subscription fee, readers could subscribe to many writers.

But it didn’t work.

It was hard to share bundle revenue with writers since it was hard to decipher which writers brought the most value to the bundle. Some writers were adept at Twitter, and better at driving new subscribers, others were better at writing long-form content that got people to read, and still others knew how to write content that would convert readers to paying subscribers.

Splitting revenue between many writers also diluted how much each writer could feasibly earn. Over time, Every became less of a newsletter bundle and more of a traditional media company—something like The New York Times or The Economist—with readers paying to subscribe to a variety of writing, and newsletter writers being paid as staff writers.

Recently, Evan left the bundle to go independent, starting a new newsletter on Substack called

The Leverage

. I immediately wanted to know everything about being part of a bundle and going solo: What are the pros and cons of each model? What worked, what didn’t? What got readers to subscribe, to convert to paying subscribers, and to create a financially successful media organization? What should we do with profits??

That’s what we talked about on this call.

Guest lectures are usually for paying supporters of The Elysian, but I’m keeping this one open so Evan’s subscribers can listen in too. You can still support our guest lectures by joining us as a paid or free subscriber 👇🏻

Thanks for joining us,

Elle Griffin

Founder of

The Elysian