Just the tip

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know I’m borderline obsessive about my health. I’ve been a Superpower member for two years now, and it’s the single best health investment I’ve made.

Superpower is what healthcare would be if it were built today: personalized, preventative, and performance-enhancing.

And last week they launched peptides.

Members can now get prescribed peptide treatments alongside their bloodwork, clinical evaluation, and ongoing support from their care team.

✅ Trusted pharmacy partners
✅ Clinical protocols shaped by leading doctors
✅ Peptides produced in the USA

The first orders ship at the end of the month.

_{Peptides offered through Superpower are compounded medications that have not been approved or authorized by the FDA. All Superpower peptides are prescribed by a board-certified US licensed clinician.}

We launched beehiiv five years ago this month. Pretty damn wild.

Back then, the complaint was that beehiiv didn’t do enough. Today, the complaint is that we do too much. I’m choosing to read that as progress.

Let me explain…

In the beginning, we were solely focused on building the world’s best newsletter platform. To quote what I wrote in last week’s newsletter:

Once we’d established ourselves as the best newsletter platform (and proved we could reliably ship great product), users started very vocally asking for more.

First, they wanted a more advanced website builder. Our original builder was way too simple and limiting. So we acquired Typedream (a YC-backed company with an AI-native website builder) and launched a new and improved builder in 2025.

That allowed users to build beautiful custom websites like these:

Once users were building these sites and driving traffic to them, the obvious next step was monetizing that traffic. For a while, the most popular feature request was selling digital products: ebooks, templates, guides, etc.

So last November we launched digital products. Users can now create and sell whatever they want directly on beehiiv, and unlike almost every other player in the industry, we never take a cut of revenue. Here are a few examples of what people are selling on the platform:

The GMV of digital products has doubled every quarter since launch.

About a year ago, I had dinner with an investor who said something that stuck with me: “You didn’t build a newsletter platform, you built trust and an engine that can reliably produce new products that help people succeed.”

It turns out that if you build trust (we care a lot, move quickly, update the platform constantly, stay accessible online, and keep prices super competitive) and are objectively creator-first (an open platform with no algorithmic feeds, no revenue take rates, and no platform lock-in), people will keep asking more of you.

Beyond the website builder and digital products, the two most popular requests for years were podcasts and community.

This April, we launched podcasts so users can host, distribute, and monetize directly on beehiiv. Just last week we launched podcast ads, so podcasts can instantly monetize every single download (including their back catalog) with high-quality, highly targeted ads.

Then in July we launched community. It gives readers a place to connect and build deeper relationships on a platform owned by you, not faceless algorithms.

Historically, creators only provide value when they create content (publish another newsletter, drop another episode, etc.). Community flips that upside down. Creators can provide value and monetize their audience simply by bringing the right people together.

What’s ironic is that for years, users pleaded with us to offer these products or they’d churn to a platform that did. “If you don’t launch podcasts, I’ll have to leave and find a platform that does both.”

Ditto for websites, community, products, etc.

Now that we offer the most complete suite of creator tools in a single platform (at an extremely attractive price), we hear: “Newsletters are the only thing I care about.”

Funny. How. That. Works. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

The reality is that once you hit a certain scale, it’s objectively impossible to please everyone equally. But newsletters have always been our north star. Everything else is possible (and works better) because newsletters sit at the center of it all.

Launching a podcast? It’s a whole lot easier to get downloads when you’re promoting it in a newsletter that goes to 25,000 people every week. Ditto for your latest guide, course, or community. (When Big Desk Energy community for founders? 👀)

We’re a newsletter platform first and foremost, and that’s never going to change. Any of our users with massively successful podcasts and communities can attest to the importance of owning their audience and distribution through email.

That’s why, despite launching a website builder, digital products, podcasts, and community, we never stopped shipping new features to our email suite. In the past month alone we’ve shipped click-triggered automations, new Send API capabilities, additional deliverability insights, and so much more.

But maybe we just weren’t loud enough about it.

So two weeks ago I announced that we’d prioritize and relentlessly ship as many newsletter-focused features and updates as possible… and shout them from the rooftops.

As of this writing, we’ve shipped 40 new features and updates, and we aren’t even halfway through the backlog. Btw — if you have any requests, reply to this email with them.

The other thing that’s always top of mind for us: helping users monetize.

You can offer a subscription product to your audience (one unified subscription across your website, newsletter, community, and podcast), and we’ll never take a cent of your earnings. beehiiv users have earned over $60M from subscriptions to date… a figure that’s growing rather quickly.

The beehiiv Ad Network has premium brands like Roku, Netflix, Dell, and so many others. October was a record month for Ad Network earnings, and we’ve introduced tons of CPM deals while hustling to bring on better and more relevant advertisers.

But why stop there?

This week we’re testing the newest way to earn on beehiiv: a tip jar.

Whether your newsletter is paid or entirely free, you can ask readers for a tip in exchange for your work. Most newsletters on the platform are free (mine included), and we wanted to give users yet another way to generate earnings.

Letting readers tip writers is a frictionless way to say “thank you.”

When people think of beehiiv, I want them to think about optionality. Sure, you can launch a newsletter on beehiiv. But if you also want to record that first podcast episode or invite your superfans into a community, you can do that too (without having to find, pay for, and configure more software). And if you want to turn your passion project into income, you can earn via subscriptions, ads, products, and now… tips.

Right now we’re slowly rolling this out to a select few users in a private beta. If you’d like to test it on your newsletter, reply to this email and I’ll hook it up.

Otherwise, if Big Desk Energy has ever inspired you, helped you with something, or even made you laugh… it’d mean the world to me if you left a small tip as a token of appreciation.

Plus, I’m in the private beta and need to make sure this thing works :)

P.S. You can even leave a funny note. I’ll share my favorites on social.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe: mail.bigdeskenergy.com/p/just-the-tip

Shoutout Liz for the awesome reader submission 🫡

I’m so thankful I got to spend four incredible years in New York. I don’t see myself moving back though, unless I can have an office like this and this sunset every evening.

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Until next Tuesday 🕺🏽

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