Marketing

Question 1

How to Turn Blog Posts Into Videos With Pictory (Full Walkthrough)

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

You already did the hard part. The research, the structure, the writing — it is all sitting in your blog archive. Turning those posts into videos is the cheapest content win available to bloggers in 2026, because you are repurposing work instead of creating from zero.

In this walkthrough I will take you through the exact process in Pictory, the tool built specifically for this: you paste a blog post URL, it drafts a script, matches stock visuals to each scene, and adds captions and a voiceover. What the ads will not tell you: the one-click result is mediocre. The 30 minutes of editing you do after the click is where the quality comes from — and that is what this tutorial focuses on.

What you need

A published blog post (a how-to or list works far better than a personal essay), a free Pictory trial account — the 14-day trial includes 15 video minutes and 50 AI credits, no perfect setup required — and half an hour per video. A microphone is optional; Pictory’s AI voices mean you never have to record or appear on camera.

Step-by-step: from blog post to video

Step 1: Pick the right post

Not every post wants to be a video. The best candidates are structured and visual: step-by-step tutorials, numbered lists, “X ways to” posts. Skip long personal stories and opinion pieces — automated scene-matching mangles those. If you are still building your archive, my ultimate guide to blogging covers writing the kind of structured posts that repurpose well.

Step 2: Start a blog-to-video project

Log in to Pictory, choose the blog-to-video option, and paste your post’s URL. The tool pulls in the text, suggests a summarized script, and assembles a first draft: one scene per key sentence, each with an automatically matched stock clip. This takes a couple of minutes. Resist the urge to export it as-is.

Step 3: Cut the script hard

A 1,500-word post is a ten-minute video; nobody wants that from a stock-footage explainer. Aim for 60 to 90 seconds for social, two to four minutes for YouTube. Keep the promise from your intro, the core steps or list items, and one concrete tip per point. Delete transitions, caveats, and anything that only works in writing. Short, spoken-style sentences read best on screen.

Step 4: Fix the visuals scene by scene

This is the step that separates decent videos from obviously automated ones. Walk through every scene and ask: does this clip actually match the sentence? Swap the misses using Pictory’s stock library, and replace at least a few scenes with your own material — screenshots, product photos, short phone clips. Even two or three personal visuals break the generic stock feel. Keep scenes between three and six seconds so the video stays alive.

Step 5: Add the voiceover and music

Choose an AI voice and listen to the full preview before committing — the current generation is impressively natural, but brand names, abbreviations, and non-English words still trip them up. Respell anything it mispronounces. Prefer your own voice? Record narration instead; it converts better for personal brands. Add background music a notch quieter than you think it should be.

Step 6: Turn on captions and brand it

Captions are non-negotiable: most social feeds autoplay muted. Pictory generates them automatically — proofread names and numbers. Then apply your branding: logo corner mark, brand colors on caption highlights, and a short outro with your site URL. Set it once as a template and every future video inherits it.

Step 7: Export and put it to work

Export in 16:9 for YouTube and embed that video back into the original blog post — it keeps readers on the page longer and gives Google a reason to show your post in video results. Then cut a vertical 9:16 version for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok, and a square one for feeds if you use them. One post, four assets.

Give the YouTube upload its own title and description rather than copying the blog headline word for word. Write for viewers deciding whether to click, mention the key steps in the description, and link back to the full post — that link quietly sends video viewers into your funnel for years.

Common mistakes (and how to dodge them)

Converting the entire post instead of the highlights — length kills watch time. Publishing without listening to the AI voice all the way through. Leaving every auto-matched stock clip in place, which is how you end up with the same smiling-office-people footage as everyone else. And expecting a faceless video empire from raw conversions: repurposed videos support your blog and social presence, but they rarely go viral on their own. Treat them as distribution, not as a lottery ticket.

One more honest note: Pictory is subscription software. Plans start at $25 per month billed annually ($29 month-to-month) for 200 video minutes a month, which only pays off if you actually publish weekly. If you will realistically convert one post a quarter, do it inside the free trial and see how it performs first. For a deeper look at the tool itself, including where it frustrates me, read my full Pictory review.

FAQ

How long does it take to turn a blog post into a video?

The automated draft takes minutes; a version worth publishing takes 20 to 45 minutes of script trimming, visual swaps, and caption checks. Budget less as your template and workflow settle in.

Do the videos hurt my SEO as duplicate content?

No — video and text are different formats, and embedding the video in the original post generally helps engagement signals. A viewer who watches two minutes of your embedded video is time-on-page you were not getting before.

Can I use Pictory videos on YouTube and monetize them?

Yes, though YouTube expects added value in repurposed content: your own script, narration choices, and edits rather than untouched automation. Channels built on unedited text-to-video conversions are the ones that struggle with monetization review.

Is there a free way to try blog-to-video?

Pictory’s 14-day trial includes 15 video minutes and 50 AI credits at the time of writing, no card details needed for the features I used. That is enough to convert two or three posts properly and judge the results with real data.

What blog posts make the best videos?

Tutorials, checklists, and numbered lists — anything with a clear structure and concrete visuals. Abstract essays and opinion pieces convert poorly because stock footage cannot illustrate nuance.

Your archive is full of videos you have not exported yet. Head over to Pictory and start the free trial, convert one strong tutorial post this week, and embed the result back where the traffic already is.

Question 2

Email Marketing, Marketing

GetResponse Review: Email, Funnels & Webinars Under One Roof

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

TL;DR: GetResponse is one of the few platforms where newsletters, automation, landing pages, sales funnels, and webinars genuinely live under one login, with plans from $15.58 a month billed annually and unlimited email sends on every tier. It is a smart pick if you want to replace three or four separate subscriptions with one bill — and overkill if all you send is a weekly newsletter. You can try GetResponse free without entering a card to see which camp you are in.

What is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an email marketing platform that has been around since the late nineties, which makes it a veteran in an industry where tools appear and vanish monthly. Over the years it has grown from a newsletter tool into a full marketing suite: email, automation workflows, landing pages, signup forms, sales funnels, webinars, and even a course builder.

That breadth is the whole pitch. Where most email tools do one thing and integrate with the rest, GetResponse tries to be the rest. Whether that is a strength or a liability depends entirely on how you work — and that is what this review digs into.

I will say upfront: this is not the tool I recommend to someone sending their first newsletter. It is the tool I point people to when they are juggling an email tool, a funnel builder, and a webinar platform, and the invoices are stacking up.

GetResponse pricing

Here is the lineup at the time of writing, using annual billing (18% cheaper than month-to-month). Prices are for entry-level contact tiers and rise as your list grows.

Plan	Price (annual billing)	What you get
Starter	$15.58/month ($19 month-to-month)	Unlimited sends, welcome series, 1 automation workflow, landing pages, forms and popups
Marketer	$48.38/month ($59 month-to-month)	Unlimited automation, advanced segmentation, sales funnels, abandoned cart, promo codes, web push
Creator	$56.58/month ($69 month-to-month)	Everything in Marketer plus webinars, course creator (up to 500 students), website builder, premium newsletters
Enterprise	Custom	Dedicated IP and sending domain, SMS, SSO, priority support

Two details worth noting. Every plan includes unlimited monthly email sends, which is rarer than it should be — plenty of competitors cap sends and charge overages. And there is a free trial on every plan with no payment details required, so testing it costs you nothing but an afternoon.

What GetResponse does well

The all-in-one promise mostly holds. I have watched creators run an entire launch — landing page, automated email sequence, sales funnel, live webinar — inside a single GetResponse account, without duct-taping five tools together. For a solo business, removing integration headaches is worth real money.

The automation builder is genuinely good. It is visual, flexible, and handles the if-this-then-that logic (tagging, scoring, branching) that beginners grow into rather than out of.

Webinars are the standout differentiator. Almost no email platform includes them, and dedicated webinar software is expensive on its own. If you run workshops or live trainings to sell a product, having registration, reminders, the webinar room, and the follow-up sequence in one system is the feature that justifies the Creator plan.

Unlimited sends deserve a second mention. If you mail your list often — daily newsletters, launch weeks — send-based pricing punishes you. GetResponse’s contact-based model does not.

Where GetResponse falls short

No honest review skips this part, so here is mine.

Depth versus breadth. A platform that does everything does few things best-in-class. The webinar tool is solid for standard workshops but lighter on production features than dedicated webinar software. The website and course builders are functional rather than beautiful. If any single feature is the heart of your business, a specialist tool will probably serve that feature better.

The good stuff sits on higher tiers. The “under one roof” promise really starts at Marketer, and webinars require Creator. Starter’s single automation workflow runs out fast the moment you want a welcome sequence plus anything else.

Contact-based pricing climbs. The prices above are for small lists. As you pass a few thousand subscribers, recalculate — the math can change which tool is cheapest for you.

The interface can feel busy. With this many features, menus get crowded. It is manageable, but expect a learning curve that simpler newsletter tools do not have.

Who should not buy it: if you only want to write and send a newsletter, this is too much tool — something minimal (Substack, or Mailchimp’s basic tier) will do. And if you already love your funnel or webinar software, switching everything for the sake of consolidation rarely pays off mid-year.

Who GetResponse is for — my verdict

GetResponse makes the most sense for creators and small businesses that actively sell: digital products, courses, services, workshops. If your marketing involves landing pages, an email sequence, and the occasional live webinar, consolidating on GetResponse replaces several subscriptions and keeps your data in one place.

If you are earlier in the journey — still building the list, still figuring out the offer — start simpler and cheaper, and read my ultimate guide to email marketing first. The fundamentals there apply to every platform, this one included. And if the blog itself is still young, my ultimate guide to blogging is the better starting point.

FAQ

Is GetResponse good for beginners?

It is beginner-friendly in setup, but its value shows once you use automation, funnels, or webinars. A complete beginner sending simple newsletters will pay for features they do not touch yet. Start on Starter, or start simpler elsewhere and switch when you need more.

Does GetResponse have a free plan?

At the time of writing, GetResponse advertises a free trial on every plan with no credit card required, rather than a prominent forever-free tier. Check their pricing page for current offers, and budget for at least the Starter plan if you stay.

Can you really run webinars inside GetResponse?

Yes — registration pages, reminder emails, the live webinar room, and follow-up sequences all run natively on the Creator plan. It covers standard workshops and trainings well, though heavy webinar producers may still prefer dedicated software.

What is the difference between the Marketer and Creator plans?

Marketer adds unlimited automation, segmentation, sales funnels, and e-commerce features like abandoned cart emails. Creator includes all of that plus webinars, the course builder, the website builder, and premium (paid) newsletters. Choose based on whether you teach live or sell content.

Is GetResponse cheaper than Mailchimp?

Often, especially if you send frequently, because GetResponse includes unlimited sends on every plan. But totals depend on your list size and the features you need, so run both pricing calculators with your actual contact count before deciding.

If you are consolidating your marketing stack this year, this is one of the few platforms that can genuinely hold all of it. Head over to GetResponse and start the free trial — no card needed — and rebuild one real campaign in it before you commit to anything.

Question 3

Email Marketing, Marketing

AI Meets Email: What an MCP Means for Your Newsletter

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

For years, “AI email marketing” mostly meant a subject-line generator bolted onto your dashboard. That changed quietly in May 2026, when Kit launched its MCP — a direct connection between your email platform and AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT. Suddenly the assistant is not guessing about your newsletter; it can look at your actual audience and help you act on it.

In this guide I will explain what an MCP is in plain language, what Kit’s version actually does, where it genuinely saves time, and where the hype outruns reality. If you want to follow along, a free Kit account is the starting point — the MCP itself lives on Kit’s paid plans.

No jargon panic required. If you can write an email, you can follow this.

What is an MCP, in plain English?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, an open standard introduced by Anthropic in late 2024. Think of it as a standardized plug: on one side sits an AI assistant, on the other sits a tool you use — your email platform, your calendar, your database. Once connected, the assistant can read from and act on that tool, with your permission, instead of only talking about it from memory.

Without an MCP, asking an AI about your newsletter is like asking a consultant who has never seen your account. You paste in stats, describe your segments, copy the reply back out. With an MCP, the assistant can check the real numbers itself and do part of the work inside the tool.

That is the whole concept. The interesting part is what it makes possible for a newsletter.

What Kit’s MCP actually does

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) launched its MCP on May 19, 2026 — one of the first major email platforms to ship this properly. Connected to an AI assistant, it can, at the time of writing:

Analyze your audience. Ask questions about your subscribers, tags, and segments in normal language and get answers pulled from your real account.
Draft broadcasts. Have the assistant write or rework an email directly in Kit, ready for your review, instead of pasting text between windows.
Trigger workflows. Kick off automations from a chat conversation rather than clicking through the dashboard.

It is available on paid Kit plans. If you are still deciding on an email platform and this direction matters to you, that is a real differentiator right now — you can start on Kit free and upgrade into the MCP when the workflow earns it.

What this looks like in practice

Some concrete ways I would put an assistant with Kit access to work:

The Monday audience check. “Which segments have gone quiet in the last 90 days?” Then have it draft a re-engagement email for exactly those people — one conversation instead of an hour of exports and filters.
Blog post to broadcast. Paste your new post link, ask for a newsletter draft in your voice announcing it, edit the draft inside Kit, send. The drafting step shrinks from an evening to minutes.
Pre-launch recon. Before selling anything, ask which tags overlap with past buyers and how big the warm audience really is. Better decisions, fewer guesses.
Chat-triggered housekeeping. Finish a freebie, tell the assistant to start the associated workflow. Small, but these clicks add up across a year.

Notice what all four have in common: the AI handles lookups and first drafts, you keep judgment and the send button. That division of labor is the entire trick. Email income still comes from strategy — list building, trust, offers — which is why I keep pointing people to my ultimate guide to email marketing before any tool advice.

The honest limits

Now the part the launch posts skip.

AI drafts default to generic. An assistant with account access still does not have your stories, opinions, or the reason subscribers opened your emails in the first place. Treat every draft as scaffolding and rewrite the voice, or your open rates will tell you what your readers think of robot prose.

You remain responsible for every send. Review drafts, check segments before anything triggers, and keep a human between the AI and the send button. A wrong email to the wrong segment is a trust problem no protocol fixes.

It is new. The Kit MCP shipped in May 2026; expect rough edges, evolving features, and documentation that lags behind reality. Early adopters trade polish for advantage — know which trade you are making.

Small lists gain less. Under a few hundred subscribers, your bottleneck is growth and consistency, not analysis speed. Spend your energy on publishing and list building first — I wrote about how I use Kit to grow blog income, and none of that foundation requires AI.

How to try it yourself

The practical path: start a Kit account (free covers up to 10,000 subscribers), get your foundation running — one form, one welcome email, a regular send — and upgrade to a paid plan when you want the MCP. From there, Kit’s documentation walks you through connecting your assistant of choice.

Then start small. One audience question, one draft. Judge the output against your own standard, keep what saves time, and ignore the rest. That is how every good tool earns its place.

FAQ

What is an MCP in email marketing?

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect securely to your email platform. Instead of pasting data back and forth, the assistant can read your audience data, draft emails, and start workflows directly — with your permission and review.

What can AI actually do for my newsletter?

Today: audience analysis in plain language, first drafts of broadcasts, subject line variants, and workflow triggers. What it cannot do is replace your voice, your relationship with readers, or your judgment about what to send and when.

Does Kit have AI features?

Yes. Kit launched its MCP in May 2026, letting assistants like Claude and ChatGPT analyze your audience, draft broadcasts, and trigger automations. It is available on paid Kit plans; the free Newsletter plan covers the email basics.

Is it safe to connect an AI assistant to my email list?

Reasonably, if you stay deliberate: use the official MCP rather than workarounds, understand what access you grant, review everything before it sends, and never let automations run unsupervised on day one. Your list is an asset — treat access to it accordingly.

Will AI replace email marketers?

It replaces the tedious parts: lookups, first drafts, repetitive clicks. The parts that make a newsletter earn — positioning, trust, offers, taste — get more valuable, not less, because everyone’s generic email just got easier to send.

The newsletters that win with AI will be the ones where a human still clearly writes the last draft — the machine just clears the desk. If you want your email setup ready for that future, open a free Kit account today, build the basics, and grow into the MCP on a paid plan when your list justifies it.

Question 4

Email Marketing, Marketing

Kit Review: Why Creators Swear By It (Formerly ConvertKit)

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

TL;DR: Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the email platform I use for my own newsletter, and it remains my default recommendation for creators who treat email as a business channel. The free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, the automation and tagging tools are excellent, and the new Kit MCP connects your account to AI assistants. It is not for people who want elaborate, image-heavy email designs — but if you sell with words, Kit’s free plan is the strongest starting point in email right now.

What is Kit?

Kit is the email marketing platform formerly known as ConvertKit — same company, same product line, new name since the 2024 rebrand. It was built specifically for creators: bloggers, writers, podcasters, and course sellers, rather than retail brands blasting product grids.

That origin shows everywhere. Emails default to clean, personal-looking text. Subscribers are managed with tags and segments instead of clunky separate lists. Landing pages and sign-up forms are included even on the free plan, so you can start collecting subscribers before your website is finished.

For this kit review I am not working from a demo account: my own newsletter runs on it, so the praise and the complaints below both come from regular use.

Kit pricing in 2026

Kit prices by subscriber count. The numbers below are for up to 1,000 subscribers, verified on Kit’s pricing page at the time of writing — the paid tiers step up as your list grows, so check their site for your exact list size.

Plan	Price	What you get
Newsletter	Free up to 10,000 subscribers	Unlimited broadcasts, landing pages and forms, tagging, 1 basic automation
Creator	$33/month (or $390/year)	Unlimited automations and sequences, Kit MCP, A/B testing, 2 team users, 24/7 support
Pro	$66/month (or $790/year)	Everything in Creator plus Subscriber Signals, engagement analytics, deliverability reporting, unlimited users, a newsletter referral system

A free plan that stretches to 10,000 subscribers is genuinely unusual — most competitors cut you off at a few hundred or a couple thousand. The catch is what the free plan leaves out, which I will get to. Paid plans come with a 14-day free trial, no card required.

What Kit does well

Automations that normal people can build. The visual automation builder is the best I have used at this price: welcome sequences, tag-based funnels, and product follow-ups come together in minutes, and you can actually see the logic on screen instead of guessing.

Tagging instead of lists. One subscriber, many tags. Readers who clicked your affiliate links, bought a product, or joined from a specific landing page can each get different emails without duplicate contacts inflating your bill.

Deliverability-first design. Kit nudges you toward simple, personal emails, and that is not a limitation — plain emails tend to land in inboxes and read like they came from a person. For creators who sell through trust, that is the whole game.

The Kit MCP. Since May 2026, Kit offers an MCP that connects AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to your account: you can analyze your audience, draft broadcasts, and trigger workflows from a chat conversation. It is available on paid Kit plans, and it points at where email tools are heading. Start free with Kit and you can grow into it when you upgrade.

A generous runway. Free to 10,000 subscribers means the tool costs nothing during the exact phase when your blog earns the least. That alignment matters more than any single feature.

Where Kit falls short (and who shouldn’t use it)

The free plan has one basic automation and no sequences. Serious funnels — welcome series, evergreen pitches — need the Creator plan. Free is a real start, not the full product.
Design flexibility is deliberately thin. If your brand depends on magazine-style, image-heavy emails, Kit will frustrate you; that crowd is usually happier with Mailchimp-style template builders. I compared the two in detail in my ConvertKit vs Mailchimp breakdown.
Costs scale with your list. $33/month covers 1,000 subscribers; a growing list means a growing bill, so clean your list regularly and expect the price to rise with success.
Deeper analytics live on Pro. Engagement scoring and deliverability reporting are locked behind the $66 tier, which stings if you are data-curious but budget-conscious.
Pure writers may not need it. If you only want to publish a paid newsletter and never build funnels or sell products, a simpler publishing platform might do — I weighed that trade-off in Substack vs Kit.

Who Kit is for — my verdict

Kit is for creators who want email to do commercial work: selling digital products, recommending tools, launching courses, nurturing readers into customers. For that job, the combination of tagging, automations, and clean deliverability is hard to beat, and the free plan removes every excuse to postpone list-building.

It is the wrong tool if you want ornate email design, and overkill if you will never automate anything. Everyone in between — which is most bloggers I talk to — will be well served.

My advice is boringly practical: open a free Kit account, set up one landing page and one form today, and upgrade only when your first automation idea shows up on its own.

FAQ

Is Kit the same as ConvertKit?

Yes. ConvertKit rebranded to Kit in 2024. The product, team, and platform are the same — existing ConvertKit accounts simply became Kit accounts, and the tool has kept evolving under the new name.

Is Kit really free?

The Newsletter plan is free for up to 10,000 subscribers, including unlimited broadcasts, landing pages, and forms. The main limits: one basic automation and no email sequences. Paid plans add those, with a 14-day trial.

How much does Kit cost?

At the time of writing, Creator starts at $33/month and Pro at $66/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, with discounts for annual billing. Prices increase with list size, so check Kit’s pricing page for your subscriber count.

What is the Kit MCP?

Launched in May 2026, the Kit MCP lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT connect securely to your Kit account. You can ask an assistant to analyze your audience, draft broadcasts, or trigger workflows. It is available on paid Kit plans.

Is Kit good for beginners?

Yes — with a caveat. The interface is clean and the free plan is generous, but Kit rewards people who will eventually use tags and automations. If you only ever want to send one newsletter to one list, simpler tools exist.

If you take one thing from this review, make it this: the best day to start your list was before today, and the second-best day involves zero cost. Head over to Kit and set up your free account — future you, with 10,000 subscribers still on the free plan, will be glad you did.

Question 5

Blogging, Blogging + Influencers, Business, blogging & Money, Marketing

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing Review: Is Michelle’s Course Worth It?

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

TL;DR: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing is the course I took when I was starting out with affiliate marketing, and it is still the one I recommend to beginner and early-stage bloggers: structured, honest, and focused on strategy instead of hacks. At $197 with a 30-day refund window, it is fairly priced — but skip it if you already earn steady affiliate income or if what you really need is traffic. Check out Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing here.

There are a lot of affiliate marketing courses, and most of them are sold harder than they teach. So when I review one, I hold it to a simple standard: did it change what I actually do? This one did — it is where I learned to treat affiliate marketing as recommending things honestly to people who trust you, rather than scattering links and hoping.

Here is my full review: what is inside, what it costs, where it shines, and who genuinely should not buy it.

What is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing?

It is a self-paced online course by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner, the blogger behind Making Sense of Cents. Michelle grew her affiliate income to over $50,000 per month, and the course teaches the exact strategy behind that — with the obvious caveat that her results are hers, not a template for yours.

The course itself is 6 modules with 30+ lessons, covering the fundamentals: how affiliate marketing works, finding and getting accepted into programs, staying on the right side of disclosure rules, building trust with your audience, and turning existing content into content that converts. You get lifetime access, including future updates.

If you are brand new to the concept, my primer on affiliate marketing for beginners explains the model itself — this review assumes you know roughly what affiliate marketing is and are deciding whether to invest in learning it properly.

Pricing

Option	Price
One-time payment	$197
Payment plan	2 payments of $105

Both options include lifetime access, all future updates, and the bonuses. There is a 30-day full refund policy if the course is not what you hoped — which takes most of the risk out of trying it. Note that the payment plan costs $13 more in total, so pay once if you can. Current pricing and bonuses are listed on the course page.

What the course does well

It teaches strategy that does not expire. Algorithms and platforms have changed a lot since this course launched; the core of it — pick products your audience genuinely needs, build trust first, promote deliberately — has not. That is why I still recommend it in 2026 while plenty of trendier courses have come and gone.

It takes the legal side seriously. Disclosure rules and FTC compliance get proper attention, including a bonus from an attorney on protecting your blog legally. Most courses skip this entirely; it matters more every year.

The community is quietly the best bonus. Buying the course gets you into the private Facebook mastermind, plus bi-weekly “Ask Michelle Saturday” group coaching. Getting your specific questions answered is worth a lot when you are stuck at the messy beginning.

Practical bonuses over filler. The Pinterest traffic training by Lauren McManus, the affiliate-approval guidance from an affiliate manager, and the worksheets are the kind of extras you actually open twice.

One-time price. $197 once, with updates included, compares well against the subscription-model course platforms that quietly cost more every year you stay subscribed.

Where it falls short (and who should not buy it)

It will not solve your traffic problem. This is the big one. Affiliate income is a percentage of the attention you already have. The Pinterest bonus helps, but this is a conversion and strategy course, not a traffic course — if your blog has close to zero visitors, buy this later and spend the next six months publishing instead.

Experienced affiliates will know a chunk of it. If you already earn consistent affiliate income, understand disclosure rules, and have a promotion system, you are past the target audience. This course is for beginners and early-intermediate bloggers.

It leans blog-and-email. The strategies translate to other platforms, but the worked examples live mostly in blogging and Pinterest land. If you are a video-first creator with no blog, expect to do some translating yourself.

The community lives on Facebook. If you have deleted Facebook on principle, you lose a real slice of the value.

And the obvious one: Michelle’s $50,000-per-month results made this course famous, and they are also the least repeatable thing about it. Buy it for the system, not as a lottery ticket.

Who it is for — my verdict

Buy Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing if you have a blog (or are seriously building one), some early traffic, and affiliate links that earn little to nothing. That is exactly the gap this course closes: it turns “I put some links in my posts” into an actual strategy. It is the course I credit with making affiliate marketing for bloggers click for me, and the approach it teaches works well beyond your own blog too — the same thinking applies on newer platforms, like I describe in my post on sharing recommendations with Benable.

Skip it if you have no content and no traffic yet, or if you are already past the beginner stage. Courses are only worth it when they meet you where you are. If you want to test the waters first, my free affiliate marketing tips ebook for bloggers costs you an email address and nothing else.

FAQ

How much does Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing cost?

$197 as a one-time payment, or two payments of $105. Both include lifetime access, future updates, the bonuses, and the private mastermind community. There are no upsells hiding behind the checkout, which I appreciate.

Is Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing worth it for beginners?

Yes — beginners are exactly who it is built for. It assumes no prior affiliate knowledge and walks through the full system step by step. The honest condition: you need content and at least some traffic for the strategies to have raw material to work with.

Can I get a refund if I do not like it?

Yes, there is a 30-day full refund policy. That makes the practical risk of trying it low: go through the first modules seriously, and if it is not for you, ask for your money back within the window.

Do I need a blog to take the course?

The strategies are taught primarily through a blogging-and-email lens, so you will get the most out of it with a blog. It can work for other platforms, but if you have nothing yet, start the blog first and take the course once you are publishing.

How fast will I make money with it?

Slower than the sales page testimonials suggest, for most people. Realistically you are looking at months of applying the system while your traffic grows. The course shortens the learning curve; it does not remove the work.

The bottom line

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing remains my standard recommendation for bloggers who want to earn from recommendations without turning into a walking advertisement. It is honest, thorough, fairly priced at $197, and protected by a 30-day refund policy. Head over to the course page to see everything that is included — and if you are not ready yet, bookmark it and go build the traffic it will eventually multiply.

Question 6

Email Marketing, Marketing

Kit MCP Tutorial: Connect Claude & ChatGPT to Your Email List

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase via my links, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.

On May 19, 2026, Kit quietly shipped one of the more interesting email features I have seen in a while: Kit MCP. In plain language, it connects AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT directly to your Kit account, so you can analyze your audience, draft broadcasts, and trigger automations from a chat window instead of clicking through dashboards.

I run my own newsletter on Kit, and this is the first AI integration from an email platform that feels genuinely useful rather than bolted on. It is also brand new, only available on paid plans, and easy to misuse if you let an assistant loose on a real subscriber list without guardrails.

This tutorial walks you through the setup, the first prompts worth trying, and the mistakes to skip.

What you need

A Kit account on a paid plan. Kit MCP is available on paid Kit plans — the free Newsletter plan (up to 10,000 subscribers) does not include it. Creator is $33 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers at the time of writing, with a discount on annual billing.
A Claude or ChatGPT account. Connector-style integrations generally sit on the paid tiers of those tools as well.
About 15 minutes, plus a healthy respect for the fact that the AI will be touching your real email list.

New to email marketing entirely? Skim my ultimate guide to email marketing first. MCP makes an existing workflow faster; it does not replace knowing the basics.

How to set up Kit MCP, step by step

Step 1: Set up your Kit account (or upgrade it)

If you do not have a list yet, start with Kit’s free Newsletter plan — it covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, forms, and landing pages, which is unusually generous. To use MCP you will need a paid plan like Creator, so factor that in. If you are just starting out, my honest advice is to build the list first and add the AI layer once there is actually data worth analyzing.

Step 2: Enable MCP in your Kit account

Log into Kit and look for the MCP or AI assistants option in your account settings. Kit is actively building here, so the exact menu placement can shift — searching “MCP” in Kit’s help center gets you the current path fastest. Enabling it gives you the connection details that AI assistants use to talk to your account.

Step 3: Connect Claude

In Claude, add Kit as a connector: open the settings area, choose to add a connector or integration, and use the Kit option or the connection URL from step 2. You will be sent through an authorization screen on Kit’s side where you explicitly approve access to your account. That approval step matters — you are granting a tool permission to read and act on your list, and you can revoke it from Kit whenever you want.

Step 4: Connect ChatGPT (same idea)

ChatGPT handles this under its connectors and apps settings as well: add a new connection, point it at Kit, and approve access. You only need one assistant connected to get the value here — I would pick whichever one you already pay for rather than subscribing to both for this feature.

Step 5: Start with read-only questions

Before you let the AI change anything, ask questions that only read data:

“Which of my last ten broadcasts had the highest click-through rate, and what do they have in common?”
“Which tags or segments grew fastest in the past month?”
“Which subscribers have not opened anything in 90 days?”

This is where Kit MCP shines first. The audience analysis that used to mean exporting CSVs and squinting at spreadsheets now takes one question in plain English.

Step 6: Draft a broadcast — but send it from Kit

Next, ask the assistant to draft your newsletter: “Based on the tone of my recent broadcasts, draft a 400-word email for my list about [topic], with one clear call to action.” Then review it inside Kit and send it from there. AI drafts are a strong starting point and a mediocre finished product — your subscribers signed up for you, not for default chatbot prose.

Step 7: Automate the boring, not the important

You can also trigger Kit workflows from chat. My rule: automate housekeeping — tagging, moving subscribers between sequences, cleaning up segments — and keep anything subscriber-facing, like actual sends, as a manual and reviewed step. One careless instruction against a live list is very hard to undo.

Pro tips (and the mistakes to skip)

Teach it your voice. Paste two or three of your best past emails into the chat and ask for drafts that match that tone.
Prompt specifically. “Draft a broadcast” produces generic filler; a topic, a length, a segment, and one CTA produce something usable.
Never auto-send. Every draft gets human eyes in Kit before it reaches an inbox.
Mind the data. You are connecting subscriber data to a third-party AI tool. If you serve EU readers, think GDPR: read how both sides handle data before connecting.
Skip it if you only want drafting help. You can copy-paste stats and drafts into any AI tool without granting account access at all — MCP earns its place when you use the analysis and workflow side too.

FAQ

What is Kit MCP?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect securely to other software. Kit MCP, launched on May 19, 2026, applies that to your email list: Claude or ChatGPT can analyze your Kit audience, draft broadcasts, and trigger workflows on your behalf.

Does Kit MCP work on the free plan?

No. Kit MCP is available on paid Kit plans. The free Newsletter plan still covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, so starting free and upgrading once the AI features would genuinely save you time is a sensible path.

Is it safe to connect an AI assistant to my email list?

Reasonably, if you treat it like any integration: you approve access explicitly, you can revoke it in Kit at any time, and you keep sends manual. In practice the bigger risk is a careless instruction, not the connection itself — which is why I recommend starting with read-only questions.

What should I try first with Kit MCP?

Audience analysis. Ask which broadcasts performed best and why, and which segments are growing or going quiet. Those answers immediately improve what you write next, and they carry zero risk to your list.

Do I still need to log into Kit?

Yes. Final reviews, sends, forms, landing pages, and deliverability settings still live in the Kit dashboard. MCP removes busywork; it does not replace the platform. And if the newsletter is part of a bigger content plan, my ultimate guide to blogging covers where email fits into the whole picture.

Give your list an assistant

Kit MCP will not write a beloved newsletter for you, but it genuinely shrinks the gap between “I should look at my stats” and actually doing it. Head over to Kit to set up your account for free, build the list, and let the AI handle the busywork once there is something worth analyzing.

Question 7

Blogging, Business, blogging & Money, Marketing

Best AI Tools for Creators in 2026 (Tested, With Pricing)

TL;DR: You don’t need twenty AI subscriptions — you need one writer, one video-repurposing tool, and one system to turn it all into email. In 2026 my go-to stack is Jasper or Notion AI for drafting, Opus Clip for turning long video into short clips, and Kit (formerly ConvertKit) to turn that content into a newsletter that actually sells. Below is what each costs and who it’s for.

This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I’d genuinely use myself.

The AI tools worth paying for in 2026

There are hundreds of AI tools now, and most creators waste money subscribing to five that do the same thing. The trick is to think in jobs, not tools: drafting, repurposing to video, and turning it into email and sales. Here’s the short list I actually recommend, with real 2026 pricing.

Tool	What it’s for	Free plan?	Paid from
Jasper	Long-form & brand-voice writing	Trial only	$39/seat/mo (Creator)
Opus Clip	Turning long video into short clips	Yes (60 min/mo, watermark)	$15/mo (Starter)
Pictory	Blog / script / URL to video	Trial	$25/mo (Starter)
Kapwing	Browser video editing & subtitles	Yes (limited)	$16/user/mo (Pro)
Kit	Turning content into emails & sales	Yes (to 10k subs)	Paid tiers add automation

Pricing verified July 2026. Free tiers and prices change often — check each tool before buying.

Best AI writing tools

Jasper is the most mature option for long-form and on-brand writing — its Creator plan starts at $39/seat/month and it’s genuinely good at keeping a consistent brand voice across blog posts, emails, and ad copy. If you already live in Notion, Notion AI is the cheaper entry point: it brainstorms, summarizes, and drafts right inside your workspace with a usable free allowance. Start with Notion AI if you’re testing the water; upgrade to Jasper once writing is a daily job.

Best AI video repurposing tools

Short video is still where the reach is, and repurposing beats filming from scratch. Opus Clip is the one most creators use — it turns a long video or livestream into ready-to-post clips and scores each for “virality.” The free plan gives you 60 minutes a month (watermarked); Starter is $15/month for watermark-free 720p, and Pro at $29/month adds every aspect ratio, a scheduler, and AI B-roll. If you’d rather go from a blog post or script straight to video, Pictory does that from $25/month, and Kapwing is a solid browser editor for subtitles and quick edits from $16/user/month.

The tool that ties it together

AI content only pays off if it feeds an audience you own. That’s where Kit (formerly ConvertKit) comes in: it turns your posts and clips into a newsletter, automates your welcome and sales sequences, and tags subscribers so you can actually sell courses or products to them. Kit’s free plan runs up to 10,000 subscribers, so you can build the system before you pay for it. If you’re not sure a newsletter is worth it yet, read how to monetize a newsletter first, then come back and automate it.

My honest recommendation

Don’t buy the whole list. Pick one writer (Notion AI to start, Jasper when you scale), one video tool (Opus Clip for most people), and one home for your audience (Kit). That’s three subscriptions doing the work of ten, and it’s the exact stack I’d rebuild if I started over today. Want the email side specifically? I compare the platforms in Substack vs Kit.

What are the best AI tools for content creators in 2026?

For most creators the core stack is a writing tool (Jasper or Notion AI), a video-repurposing tool (Opus Clip), and an email platform to turn content into sales (Kit). That covers drafting, short-form video, and monetization without over-subscribing.

What is the best free AI tool for creators?

Notion AI has a usable free allowance for drafting and summarizing, Opus Clip offers 60 free video minutes a month, and Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers. You can build a full workflow on free tiers before paying.

How much do AI creator tools cost?

Expect roughly $15 to $40 per tool per month. Opus Clip Starter is $15/month, Kapwing Pro is $16/user/month, Pictory is $25/month, and Jasper’s Creator plan is $39/seat/month. Picking one tool per job keeps the total reasonable.

Do I need to pay for Jasper if I have ChatGPT?

Not necessarily. General chat tools are great for ideas, but Jasper adds brand-voice controls and templates built for marketing output. Pay for Jasper when consistent on-brand writing becomes a daily task; otherwise a general tool plus good prompts is fine.

Which AI tool is best for turning long videos into short clips?

Opus Clip is the most widely used in 2026. It automatically finds the best moments, adds captions, and scores each clip for viral potential, with a free tier to test before upgrading.

Question 8

Beehiiv Review Pricing, Features & Is It Worth It

Blogging, Business, blogging & Money, Email Marketing, Marketing

Beehiiv Review 2026: Pricing, Features & Is It Worth It?

TL;DR: beehiiv is one of the best newsletter platforms in 2026 if growth and monetization are your priority — built-in referral programs, an ad network, and a genuinely useful free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers. It’s less of an all-in-one “email + funnels” tool than Kit (formerly ConvertKit), so your pick comes down to whether you’re building a media brand (beehiiv) or a creator business with products to sell (Kit).

This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I’d genuinely use myself.

What is beehiiv?

beehiiv was built by former Morning Brew operators, and it shows: everything is designed around growing and monetizing a newsletter rather than running a whole business off it. You get a clean editor, a website for your posts (great for SEO and AI search visibility), a built-in referral program, audience polls, and access to beehiiv’s own ad network so brands can sponsor your sends. If your goal is “grow the list and get paid for the audience,” this is the tool the big newsletters actually use.

beehiiv pricing in 2026

Here’s what each plan actually costs right now. The important thing to understand: beehiiv’s paid plans scale with your subscriber count, so the headline price is the starting price for a small list, not what you’ll pay at 50,000 subscribers.

Plan	Price (monthly)	Subscribers	Best for
Launch (free)	$0	Up to 2,500	Testing the platform, small lists
Scale	From $49 (from $43 annual)	Scales with list size (to ~$329 at 100k)	Monetization, referrals, AI, up to 3 publications
Max	From $109	Scales with list size (to ~$419)	No beehiiv branding, priority support, up to 10 publications

beehiiv pricing verified July 2026. Paid tiers scale with your subscriber count.

Two details worth knowing. First, beehiiv takes 0% of your paid subscription revenue — you keep everything minus Stripe’s standard 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. Second, the free Launch plan is genuinely usable (unlimited sends up to 2,500 subscribers), which is rare. Most “free” newsletter plans cap your sends hard; beehiiv doesn’t.

What beehiiv does really well

The referral program is the headline feature — it’s the same mechanic that grew Morning Brew, and on beehiiv it’s a few clicks to set up instead of a custom build. The ad network is the other big one: once you hit a certain size, beehiiv matches you with sponsors and handles the logistics, which turns your newsletter into income without you cold-emailing brands. Add the SEO-friendly web version of every post and the built-in analytics, and it’s a strong package for anyone treating their newsletter as a media property.

Where beehiiv falls short (and when to pick Kit instead)

beehiiv is a newsletter platform, not a full creator-business platform. If you sell digital products, run automated welcome-and-sales sequences, tag subscribers by behavior, and want your email tool to double as a lightweight CRM, Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the better fit — it’s built around selling to your list, not just publishing to it. My honest rule of thumb: pick beehiiv if the newsletter is the product and you want ad + referral growth; pick Kit if the newsletter is how you sell courses, coaching, or products. I break the whole comparison down in Substack vs Kit and in how to monetize a newsletter.

Is beehiiv worth it in 2026?

Yes — if your priority is growing an audience and earning from it directly. The free plan makes it a no-risk test, and the referral + ad tools genuinely move the needle at scale. If you’re earlier in the journey and still figuring out the newsletter itself, start with my guide on how to start a newsletter first, then choose your platform once you know what you’re building.

👉 Reader offer: sign up through my beehiiv link and you get a 14-day free trial + 20% off for 3 months. Same platform either way — this just gets you a better deal while you test it.

Is beehiiv really free?

Yes. The Launch plan is free for up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited email sends. You only pay once you outgrow it or want monetization and AI features.

How much does beehiiv cost after the free plan?

The Scale plan starts at $49/month (or about $43/month billed annually) for a small list and rises with your subscriber count up to roughly $329/month at 100,000 subscribers. The Max plan starts at $109/month and removes beehiiv branding.

Does beehiiv take a cut of my subscription revenue?

No. beehiiv takes 0% of your paid newsletter subscriptions. You only pay Stripe’s standard processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

beehiiv vs Kit — which should I choose?

Choose beehiiv if the newsletter itself is your product and you want built-in referral and ad-network growth. Choose Kit if you sell courses, coaching, or digital products and need automations and tagging to sell to your list.

Can I move my existing newsletter to beehiiv?

Yes. beehiiv supports importing your subscriber list and offers migration help from most major platforms, so switching doesn’t mean starting your audience from zero.

Question 9

Blogging, Business, blogging & Money, Email Marketing

How Do You Start (and Actually Grow) a Newsletter in 2026?

TL;DR: Starting a newsletter in 2026 takes an afternoon: pick a platform (Substack for network growth, Kit or Beehiiv for a business), define one clear promise for one clear reader, and publish weekly. Growing it is the real work — a lead magnet, recommendations/cross-promotion, and repurposing every issue into social content are the three channels that reliably compound. Monetization comes from four stacks: paid subscriptions, affiliate links, sponsorships and your own products.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Why start a newsletter in 2026 (still)?

Email is the only audience channel you own. Algorithms throttle reach on every social platform, and AI search is reshaping blog traffic — but a subscriber list lands in inboxes regardless. A blog is your SEO house; your newsletter is the front door key readers take home. The two feed each other: search brings strangers, email turns them into regulars.

Step 1 — Choose your platform

The decision comes down to what your bottleneck will be: growth, monetization or automation.

You want…	Best pick	Why
Free start + built-in discovery	Substack	Notes & Recommendations drive real growth; 10% fee only on paid subs
Newsletter as a business asset	Kit	Automations, tagging, funnels; free up to 10,000 subscribers
Sponsorship-driven newsletter	Beehiiv	Ad network, referral program, boosts
Cheapest serious tooling	MailerLite	Full automation on a small budget

I break all of these down (with 2026 pricing) in my best newsletter platforms of 2026 roundup, and go deeper in Substack vs Kit and Kit vs Mailchimp. If you want my one-line answer: growth-first, pick Substack; business-first, start free on Kit.

Step 2 — Nail the promise before the name

A newsletter grows when a stranger can predict what they’ll get. “My thoughts on marketing” doesn’t grow; “one pricing teardown of a real creator business, every Thursday” does. Write your promise as: [specific reader] gets [specific outcome] every [frequency]. Your name, design and welcome email all follow from that sentence.

Step 3 — Set up the boring essentials (30 minutes)

A double opt-in form, a welcome email that delivers your lead magnet and asks one question (“what are you struggling with?”), a custom sending domain if your platform supports it, and an archive page so search engines and AI assistants can find your issues. That last one matters more in 2026 than ever: public, crawlable archives are how newsletters surface in AI search results.

Step 4 — Your first 1,000 subscribers

The channels that work, in order of effort-to-result:

A lead magnet that solves one urgent problem — a checklist, template or mini-course beats an ebook. (I cover opt-ins and lead magnets in my ultimate guide to email marketing.)
Recommendations & cross-promotion. On Substack this is built in; on Kit use the Creator Network; elsewhere, swap mentions with newsletters your size.
Repurpose every issue into 3–5 social posts (threads, carousels, Notes). One issue = a week of content.
Your existing surfaces: email signature, blog posts (every post gets an opt-in — see my blogging guide), podcast outro, social bios.

Paid ads and viral giveaways can work, but they fill lists with cold subscribers — deliverability pays the bill later.

Step 5 — Growing past the plateau

Every newsletter stalls somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000. The fixes are unglamorous: prune subscribers who haven’t opened in 90+ days (deliverability beats vanity metrics), double down on the single acquisition channel that brought your best readers, and survey your list twice a year. On Substack, consistency on Notes compounds; on Kit, an evergreen welcome sequence keeps converting while you sleep.

Step 6 — Turning readers into revenue

Four monetization stacks, roughly in order of list size required:

Affiliate links (works from ~500 engaged subscribers): recommend tools you use, disclose clearly.
Paid subscriptions (from ~1,000): Substack makes this one click; Kit charges just 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction. I compare the fee math in Substack vs Kit.
Sponsorships (from ~2,500 engaged): price per open, not per subscriber.
Your own products (any size): the highest margin — courses, templates, services.

FAQ

How much does it cost to start a newsletter in 2026?

$0. Substack is free until you monetize (then 10% of paid revenue); Kit and Beehiiv have free plans up to 10,000 and 2,500 subscribers respectively. Your only early cost is optionally a custom domain (~$10/year).

How often should I send?

Weekly is the sweet spot for growth and sanity. Consistency beats frequency: a reliable biweekly beats an erratic daily.

How long until a newsletter makes money?

With affiliate links, some creators earn from a few hundred subscribers. Meaningful income (€500+/month) typically takes 1,000–5,000 engaged subscribers and 6–18 months of consistent publishing.

Do I need a blog AND a newsletter?

They compound each other: the blog captures search (and AI-search) traffic, the newsletter owns the relationship. If you must pick one in 2026, pick the newsletter — then add the blog for discovery.

What’s the biggest beginner mistake?

Optimizing tools before promise. Platform-switching costs you weeks; an unclear promise costs you every subscriber you almost got.

Question 10

Email Marketing, Marketing

Substack vs Kit (ConvertKit): Which Should You Choose in 2026?

TL;DR: Substack is free to start and has the best built-in growth network (Notes, Recommendations), but takes 10% of your paid-subscription revenue — closer to 13–16% after Stripe fees. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) costs $0–$79+/month but charges only 3.5% + $0.30 on paid newsletters and gives you real automation, tagging and a list you fully own. Rule of thumb: start on Substack if audience growth is your bottleneck; switch to (or start on) Kit once you monetize seriously — the 10% fee overtakes Kit’s subscription cost fast.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend tools I use or have tested myself.

What’s the real difference between Substack and Kit?

Substack is a publishing platform: newsletter, website, podcast hosting, community and a discovery network in one, with zero monthly cost. Kit is a creator-focused email marketing platform: automations, visual funnel builder, tagging, segmenting, landing pages and 100+ integrations.

The mental model that matters: Substack rents you an audience engine; Kit gives you infrastructure you own. On Substack, growth features like Notes and Recommendations can genuinely compound. On Kit, nothing grows on its own — but every subscriber, tag and automation is portable and yours.

Pricing compared (2026)

	Substack	Kit
Monthly cost	$0	Free up to 10,000 subs; Creator from $39/mo (1k), $59 (3k), $89 (5k); Creator Pro from $79/mo
Fee on paid subscriptions	10% + Stripe (~2.9% + $0.30 + 0.7% billing) ≈ 13–16% all-in	3.5% + $0.30 all-in (includes Stripe), every plan
Free tier limits	Unlimited, full features	10k subscribers, Kit branding, 1 user, no A/B testing
Automation & sequences	Basic (welcome email)	Full visual automations, sequences, tagging, segments
Growth network	Notes, Recommendations, leaderboards	Creator Network, paid recommendations
Website & archive	Included	Landing pages included, no full site
Podcast/video	Built-in	Via integrations
Ownership/export	List exportable; paid subs on your own Stripe	Everything exportable, own Stripe

Note: Kit raised prices roughly 35% in September 2025, so ignore older posts quoting $25–29 entry pricing.

The math: when does Substack’s 10% become expensive?

Say you charge $10/month:

100 paid subscribers ($1,000/mo): Substack keeps ~$130–160 in fees. Kit: $39–59 subscription + ~$65 in transaction fees ≈ $104–124. Roughly break-even.
300 paid subscribers ($3,000/mo): Substack ~$390–480/mo. Kit ≈ $59–89 + ~$195 ≈ $254–284. Kit is now clearly cheaper — and the gap keeps widening.
1,000 paid subscribers ($10,000/mo): Substack ~$1,300–1,600/mo. Kit ≈ $89–119 + ~$650 ≈ $740–770. You’re paying Substack $6,000–10,000+ per year for the network.

That’s the whole trade: Substack’s network has to earn its 10%. Early on it usually does. At scale it usually doesn’t.

Where Substack wins

Zero risk to start, real discovery (a meaningful share of new subscribers on growing Substacks comes from Recommendations and Notes), built-in payments, podcast and community features, and a clean writing experience. If you have no audience yet, Substack’s network effect is the single strongest free growth channel in newsletters right now.

Where Kit wins

Automation (welcome sequences, evergreen funnels, tagging by interest or purchase), deliverability controls, lead magnets with double opt-in per form, integrations with WooCommerce, Teachable and Shopify, and far lower fees on paid subscriptions. If your newsletter supports a business — courses, services, affiliate income — Kit is the more serious toolkit. Try Kit free up to 10,000 subscribers →

Can you use both?

Yes, and it’s a popular setup: publish publicly on Substack for discovery, and run your “money list” (lead magnets, product funnels, affiliate promotions) on Kit. Substack allows exporting your subscriber list, so you can sync new Substack subscribers into Kit periodically.

Verdict: which one in 2026?

Choose Substack if you’re starting from zero, want to write (or podcast) without tech setup, and growth is your main problem.
Choose Kit if you sell anything, want automations, or already have 100+ paying subscribers — the fee math tips in Kit’s favor around the $1,000/month mark.
Use both if you want Substack’s discovery and Kit’s monetization.

For the full landscape (including Beehiiv, MailerLite and Ghost), read my best newsletter platforms of 2026 roundup. Comparing email tools specifically? See Kit vs Mailchimp 2026 and my ultimate guide to email marketing.

FAQ

Is Substack really free?

Yes — you pay nothing until you turn on paid subscriptions. From that moment Substack takes 10% of revenue, plus ~3–6% in Stripe processing and billing fees.

What does Kit cost in 2026?

Kit’s free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers. Paid plans start at $39/month (Creator, 1,000 subscribers) and $79/month (Creator Pro), with subscriber-based tiers above that and ~16% off annually.

Which platform is better for making money?

Below roughly $1,000/month in subscription revenue the difference is small. Above it, Kit’s flat 3.5% + $0.30 beats Substack’s 10% + Stripe by a growing margin — and Kit adds funnels for selling products beyond subscriptions.

Can I move from Substack to Kit later?

Yes. Both use your own Stripe account for paid subscriptions and both let you export your list. Migration is a CSV export/import plus asking paid subscribers to re-confirm billing.

Does Kit have anything like Substack’s Recommendations?

Kit’s Creator Network lets creators recommend each other’s newsletters, including paid recommendations. It works, but Substack’s network is bigger and more active in 2026.

Question 11

Email Marketing, Marketing

How Do You Actually Make Money With a Newsletter in 2026?

TL;DR: Newsletters monetize through four stacks: affiliate links (works from ~500 engaged subscribers), paid subscriptions (from ~1,000; Substack takes 10%, Kit just 3.5% + $0.30), sponsorships (from ~2,500; consumer newsletters earn $25–70 CPM, B2B $50–100+, B2B SaaS a median of $112 in early 2026) and your own products (any size, highest margin). Most six-figure newsletters combine at least two. Start with affiliate links, add the next layer once your open rate holds above 40%.

Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through them I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

The four ways newsletters make money (and when each works)

Model	Works from	Realistic at 5,000 engaged subs	Watch out for
Affiliate links	~500 subs	€200–1,000/mo	Disclose clearly; only tools you use
Paid subscriptions	~1,000 subs	€500–2,500/mo (2–5% convert at €5–10)	Platform fees eat margin
Sponsorships	~2,500 subs	€300–2,000/mo (2–4 sends)	Price per open, not per subscriber
Own products	any size	€500–5,000+/mo	Takes the most work up front

Stack 1: Affiliate income — the fastest start

Recommend the tools you already use, with honest context (“here’s what it costs, here’s who shouldn’t buy it”). Recurring-commission programs beat one-off bounties: an email platform referral can pay 30–50% monthly for the customer’s lifetime. That’s why tool-comparison content is the money engine of this blog — see Kit vs Mailchimp and Substack vs Kit for the format in action.

Stack 2: Paid subscriptions — mind the fees

The platform decides your margin. Substack charges 10% of revenue plus Stripe fees (13–16% all-in); Kit charges a flat 3.5% + $0.30 including Stripe, on every plan. At €1,000/month that difference is roughly €100/month — at €5,000 it’s €500. Full math in Substack vs Kit. Convert 2–5% of your free list at €5–10/month and paid subscriptions become your most predictable income line. Kit handles paid newsletters on the free plan →

Stack 3: Sponsorships — price per open, not per subscriber

2026 benchmarks: consumer/lifestyle newsletters earn $25–70 CPM, B2B niches $50–100+, and B2B SaaS a median of $112 (top decile $180). An open rate above 40% justifies a 20–50% premium, and a top-of-email placement costs 30–50% more than a footer slot. Half the market now runs on CPA/CPL or revenue-share instead of flat CPM — if your audience buys, performance deals can out-earn flat rates. Minimum viable pitch: a one-page media kit with list size, open rate, CTR and three audience facts.

Stack 4: Your own products — the margin king

Templates, mini-courses, workshops, services. No platform fee beyond payment processing, full price control, and your newsletter is the perfect launch channel. Start with one small product (€19–49) that solves the problem your lead magnet introduces.

The order that works

Affiliate first (no minimum audience, no product needed), sponsorships or paid subs once engagement is proven, own products when you know what your readers keep asking for. And keep growing the list underneath it all — my pillar guide to starting and growing a newsletter covers that side, and the best newsletter platforms of 2026 compares the monetization features per platform.

FAQ

How many subscribers do I need to make money with a newsletter?

Fewer than you think: affiliate income starts working around 500 engaged subscribers. Meaningful income (€500+/month) typically arrives between 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers with 6–18 months of consistency.

What’s a realistic sponsorship rate for a small newsletter?

In 2026, consumer newsletters charge $25–70 per 1,000 opens, B2B $50–100+. Below ~2,500 subscribers, charge a flat rate (think $50–150 per send) rather than CPM.

Are paid subscriptions better on Substack or Kit?

Substack is easier to switch on; Kit is cheaper at scale (3.5% + $0.30 vs 10% + Stripe). The break-even sits around $1,000/month in subscription revenue.

Do I have to disclose affiliate links in my newsletter?

Yes — legally (FTC/EU rules) and strategically. A short line like “some links are affiliate links, at no cost to you” protects you and builds trust.

What’s the biggest monetization mistake?

Selling to a cold list. Monetization multiplies engagement, it doesn’t create it — fix your open rate before you add a paywall, sponsor or product.

Question 12

Website Holiday Calendar - Plan ahead for success

Black Friday, Marketing

Plan Your Website’s Holiday Calendar: A Guide to Boost Your Business Strategy

The holiday season is just around the corner, and it’s time to gear up your website and business strategy to make the most of it. This blog post will guide you through a journey of optimizing your website for key holidays such as Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. By planning ahead, you can capture the attention of early bird shoppers and maximize your sales during this festive time. If you’re looking for a done-for-you solution, check out the Black Friday Roadmap.

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