Latest / The Newsletter Podcast with Fexingo: Substack, Beehiiv, and Email Newsletter Business / How Newsletters Use Collaborative Writing to Grow Faster
Transcript
- Lucas: I want to start with a number that stopped me this week. The email newsletter platform Beehiiv reported that newsletters with two or more writers see open rates about thirty percent higher than solo-authored ones. Luna: Thirty percent? That's not a rounding error. That's a structural advantage. Lucas: Exactly. And it got me thinking about something we haven't really talked about on this show — the collaborative newsletter model. Not guest posts, not interviews. I mean two or three people who actually co-write a single newsletter together, week after week. Luna: Like a writing partnership. So what's the mechanism? Why does adding a second voice lift opens that much? Lucas: Part of it is consistency. When you have a partner, you're less likely to miss a week. Subscribers trust the cadence more. But the bigger factor, I think, is variety. A solo writer can get predictable. A second voice brings a different perspective, a different tone. Readers stay curious. Luna: Right. You're not just getting the same hot take every Tuesday. There's a tension, a dialogue. Lucas: The best example I found is a newsletter called The Browser. It's been around for over a decade now, and it's written by two people — Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton. They curate five must-read articles every day, and each edition includes a short commentary from one of them. The trick is they alternate who writes the main note. Luna: So the reader gets two distinct voices. One might be more analytical, the other more playful. Lucas: Exactly. And that built them over a hundred and fifty thousand subscribers without any paid ads. Just word of mouth and the quality of the curation. Luna: I love that example because it's not about being flashy. It's about consistent value delivered by a team. Lucas: Speaking of teams, Beehiiv's platform data shows that co-authored newsletters also have a lower churn rate — about ten percent lower than solo newsletters after the first three months. That's huge for a paid publication. Luna: Ten percent lower churn. So if you have a thousand paid subscribers at ten dollars a month, that's an extra twelve thousand dollars a year you're keeping. Lucas: Exactly. And the reason, I think, is depth. A single writer can only go so deep on so many topics. With a co-writer, you can cover more ground, or you can double-team a single topic from two angles. Subscribers feel like they're getting more for their money. Luna: But there's a catch, right? Collaboration isn't easy. You have to manage egos, schedules, editorial disagreements. Lucas: Absolutely. The biggest pitfall is editorial friction. If you and your co-writer have fundamentally different standards for what's publishable, you'll spend more time arguing than writing. Luna: I've heard horror stories of partnerships where one person wants to edit everything the other writes. That kills the whole point. Lucas: Yeah, the best collaborations I've seen have a clear division of labor. On The Browser, Robert and Caroline split the curation duties and each writes their own commentary. They don't rewrite each other. They trust the other's judgment. Luna: So structure matters. Maybe one person owns the lead essay, the other does the links section. Or you alternate weeks as the lead writer. Lucas: Exactly. And the revenue split has to be clean too. If it's fifty-fifty from day one, that's easy. But if one person brings an existing audience, you might need a different split. The key is to talk about it before you start, not after you have a hundred thousand subscribers. Luna: Let's talk about tools. Substack and Beehiiv both support multiple authors now. Beehiiv even lets you assign different revenue shares per post. How do you recommend people set that up? Lucas: Substack's multiple-author feature is pretty straightforward — you add a co-author, and they can write and publish under their own name. But the revenue split is all-or-nothing: you have to split all subscription revenue evenly, or manually transfer money. Beehiiv is more flexible. You can set custom splits per post, which is great if one writer does a big feature and the other just does a short intro. Luna: That flexibility matters. If you're doing a weekly newsletter where one person writes the main piece and the other curates links, you don't want to split revenue fifty-fifty. You want maybe seventy-thirty. Lucas: Right. And Beehiiv also has collaborative drafts, so you can both work on the same post in real time. That reduces back and forth email chains. Luna: So if someone is listening and thinking about starting a newsletter with a friend, what's your single best piece of advice? Lucas: Write three test editions together before you launch. That will surface every disagreement about tone, length, formatting, and what's worth covering. If you survive three tests, you can survive a year. Luna: That's smart. It's like a trial period without the pressure of an audience. Lucas: And if the tests are painful, better to know that before you've committed to a weekly schedule. Some friendships don't survive co-writing. Luna: True. But when it works, the results speak for themselves. Higher opens, lower churn, more depth. It's a model that more newsletter creators should consider. Lucas: Absolutely. And if this episode sparked an idea you're actually going to try — maybe you're thinking of asking a colleague to co-write — you know, that's exactly the kind of thing where listener support keeps this show going. If today was worth a coffee to you, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a simple way to say this kind of practical conversation matters. No pressure, just if it lands. Lucas: So back to the numbers. One more stat I found: newsletters with two writers grow their subscriber base about twenty-five percent faster in the first six months than solo newsletters, according to data from Substack's internal analytics. Luna: That makes sense. Two people can each promote to their own networks. You double your distribution from day one. Lucas: Exactly. And that network effect is the real accelerator. Your co-writer brings their audience, you bring yours, and the combined list is bigger than either of you could have built alone. Luna: So the next time someone says they want to start a newsletter, maybe the first question should be: who could you write it with? Lucas: I think that's exactly the right question. Collaboration isn't just a nice to have. It might be the most underrated growth strategy in email right now.