Hey Oskar! Thank you so much, me neither. If my memory doesn’t betray me, most of Morning Brew is free, but they do have an extra Sunday edition (?) that is accessible either as a loyalty reward or a small fee, can’t remember.

From what I understood the absolute majority of their revenue comes from sponsorship deals. If you look at their newsletter, there’s usually one or two content pieces that are labeled “Sponsored.”

Their philosophy can be defined in two principles:

1. Look for companies that are dying to get in front of your reader (young, professional, tech-and-business-savvy demographic, predominantly male) — this enables them to quote juicy prices — Alex has said on numerous occasions that they’ve “grown out” of their old clients (e.g. schools) as their prices went up. So the $13m seems to be the sum of very expensive daily sponsorships that clients are happy to pay. I’ve neither seen or heard about affiliate links or anything of the sort when it comes to MB.
2. They are targeting clients who are already promoting via newsletters. So it’s like — hey, you’re buying these ads, we can do much better for a larger price. So I think a large part of their success is due to their effectiveness in landing ‘the perfect clients’ consistently— they weren’t making a bank in the beginning, but it’s safe to say their sponsorship calendar was booked solid throughout those 36 months. Which allowed them to grow, plan, reinvest (Macbook giveaways, ads, loyalty program) and gradually increase prices.