Nicolas ColeCo-Founder Ship 30 for 30, Premium Ghostwriting Academy

One Of The Best Opportunities For Newsletters In 2026 #writer

8 May 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:14

In this monologue, Nicolas Cole argues that newsletter creators on Substack should consider launching paid video podcasts behind their paywall. He outlines three core reasons: (1) video on Substack is a new, under‑explored format that offers a fresh content avenue; (2) each interview adds to a growing library, increasing the product’s value for new subscribers who instantly gain access to a year’s worth of content; and (3) interviews turn the newsletter into a tangible asset not only of the creator’s own intellectual property but also of the collaborative insights from guests. Cole notes that with more resources he would pursue this strategy, describing it as an "insanely powerful upgrade" for paid newsletters.

Chapters

I have trained myself to reject shiny objects so much that I almost don't even want to share, but I think there's a lot of opportunity in— if you have a paid newsletter on Substack— doing a video podcast that lives behind the paywall. I think that can become a very powerful incentive where one of the benefits of being a paid subscriber is you get access to these interviews with people. And the reason that I think that that's so cool is because A, it's a new content format. Whenever I see new formats on platforms, I always kind of spend time exploring it. I think video on Substack is a new format, and so there's something interesting there. Second is the more interviews that you do, the more the value of your library grows, because a year from now, if someone joins paid, they instantly unlock a year's worth of interviews. So you think of it like the product continues to get built naturally on its own. And then third is, if you think about the value of paid newsletters being tangible assets, what's cool about interviewing people is now it's not just you creating tangible assets from your IP and yourself, but you can actually make— another benefit of being a paid subscriber is getting tangible assets that you create from the conversations that you have with other people. And so I think that there's something very interesting there. If I had more resource, that's probably what I would do. I think that that would be an insanely powerful upgrade.