How to Build an Automated Newsletter with AI

Last updated: June 2025

Most "passive income" advice is garbage. Someone tells you to start a newsletter, grow it to 50,000 subscribers, then sell sponsorships. Cool. That's like saying "just get famous and then money appears." Not helpful.

Here's what's actually interesting right now: the economics of newsletters have fundamentally changed because of AI agents. You can build an automated newsletter that curates, writes, and sends itself—reducing what used to be 10-15 hours of weekly work down to about 30 minutes of oversight. And the sponsorship market for newsletters is absurdly good right now.

Let me walk you through the whole machine: why the money is there, how to build the curation engine, and how to get enough subscribers that sponsors start coming to you.

---

The Newsletter Sponsorship Market Is Underpriced (For Now)

Before we touch any tools, let's talk money, because if the economics don't work, none of this matters.

Newsletter sponsorships typically price on a CPM (cost per thousand subscribers) basis. For niche B2B newsletters, CPMs range from $30 to $80. Consumer newsletters sit lower, around $10 to $30. Here's what that looks like in practice:

• 5,000 subscribers, niche B2B topic: $150–$400 per sponsorship slot
• 10,000 subscribers: $500–$1,500 per slot
• 25,000 subscribers: $2,000–$5,000 per slot

The TLDR newsletter charges over $15,000 per slot. Morning Brew was pulling in millions before their acquisition. But you don't need to be Morning Brew. A tightly focused newsletter with 10,000 engaged subscribers in a profitable niche (DevOps, fintech, e-commerce, AI) can realistically bring in $2,000–$8,000 per month from sponsorships alone.

Why are CPMs so high? Because newsletter readers are choosing to open that email. It's not an algorithm shoving content at them. Advertisers know this. Open rates for good newsletters hover between 40-55%, compared to the roughly 1-2% engagement rate on social media ads. Sponsors aren't paying for eyeballs—they're paying for trust and attention.

Here's the arbitrage: if you can produce the newsletter for near-zero marginal time cost using AI agents, your profit margin approaches 90%+. That's the machine we're building.

Platforms like Swapstack, Paved, and Sparkloop make finding sponsors dead simple once you hit a few thousand subscribers. Beehiiv has a built-in ad network. You don't need a sales team. You need a good newsletter with a real audience.

---

Building the Curation Agent: The Actual How-To

The core of an automated newsletter is the curation engine—an AI agent (or team of agents) that discovers, filters, summarizes, and drafts your newsletter content. You're essentially building a very focused research assistant that runs on autopilot.

There are three tiers of complexity here. Pick the one that matches your technical comfort.

Tier 1: No-Code (You Can Start Today)

If you don't write code, Beehiiv + Zapier Central is the fastest path.

Step 1: Set up Beehiiv. Create your newsletter. The free tier works fine to start. Beehiiv's built-in AI writer can generate drafts from URLs you feed it—paste in three articles, and it'll produce a summary section with your framing.

Step 2: Build a Zapier Central bot. Zapier Central lets you create AI "bots" that run on schedules. Here's a real workflow:

• Trigger: Every Monday and Thursday at 6 AM
• Action 1: Fetch top 20 posts from 3-4 RSS feeds (use Zapier's RSS integration—point it at industry blogs, subreddits, Hacker News)
• Action 2: Send those to an AI step with this prompt:

"You are a newsletter curator for [YOUR NICHE]. From these articles, select the 5 most interesting and actionable. For each, write a 2-3 sentence summary and explain why it matters. Ignore anything that's just a product launch with no substance. Write in a [casual/professional/witty] tone."

• Action 3: Format the output and create a draft in Beehiiv via their API integration

Total setup time: about 2 hours. Cost: $20-40/month for Zapier, $42/month for Beehiiv Pro.

Alternative no-code stack: Use Relay.app instead of Zapier—it's built specifically for AI agent workflows and has a cleaner interface for multi-step curation. Their "human-in-the-loop" feature lets the agent draft everything but pause for your approval before sending.

Tier 2: Low-Code (n8n + OpenAI)

If you're comfortable with a visual workflow builder and can read (not necessarily write) code, n8n is incredible. It's open-source, self-hostable, and has native AI agent nodes.

Here's the workflow I'd build:

1. Source Ingestion Node: Use n8n's HTTP Request node to pull from:

• NewsAPI (broad news coverage, free tier gives 100 requests/day)
• RSS feeds (use the built-in RSS node)
• Reddit JSON feeds (append .json to any subreddit URL)
• Twitter/X lists via a scraping service or API

2. Deduplication: Use n8n's Function node to hash article titles and filter out duplicates from previous runs. Store hashes in a simple SQLite database or Google Sheet.

3. AI Scoring Agent: Send the batch to OpenAI's API:

// n8n Function node - prepare prompt
const articles = $input.all().map(item => ({
  title: item.json.title,
  description: item.json.description,
  url: item.json.url
}));

const prompt = `You are a newsletter curator for [NICHE]. 
Score each article 1-10 on relevance and novelty. 
Return JSON array with title, score, and a 2-sentence summary.
Only include scores 7+.

Articles:
${JSON.stringify(articles, null, 2)}`;

return [{ json: { prompt } }];

4. Draft Assembly: Take the top 5-7 scored articles and feed them to another AI call that writes the full newsletter draft with an intro, the curated stories, and a sign-off.

5. Send to Beehiiv/Email: Use n8n's HTTP node to POST the draft to Beehiiv's API, or directly to your ESP (Resend, SendGrid, ConvertKit) via their API.

6. Schedule: Run the whole workflow on a cron trigger—twice a week is the sweet spot for most niches.

Cost: ~$20/month for OpenAI API usage, n8n cloud at $24/month (or free if self-hosted on a $5 VPS).

Tier 3: Full Agent System (CrewAI / LangGraph)

This is where it gets powerful. If you write Python, you can build a multi-agent system where specialized agents handle different parts of the pipeline. This is what the best automated newsletters actually run.

Here's a CrewAI implementation skeleton:

from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew, Process
from crewai_tools import SerperDevTool, ScrapeWebsiteTool
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI

llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o", temperature=0.3)

# Agent 1: The Researcher
researcher = Agent(
    role="Senior Content Researcher",
    goal="Find the 20 most interesting stories in {niche} from the past 3 days",
    backstory="""You are an expert curator who reads hundreds of sources daily. 
    You have impeccable taste and only surface stories that are genuinely novel, 
    actionable, or contrarian. You ignore fluff, PR pieces, and recycled takes.""",
    tools=[SerperDevTool(), ScrapeWebsiteTool()],
    llm=llm,
    verbose=True
)

# Agent 2: The Editor  
editor = Agent(
    role="Newsletter Editor",
    goal="Select top 5 stories and write compelling summaries",
    backstory="""You write like a sharp, opinionated friend who happens to be 
    an expert. No corporate speak. Every summary should make the reader think 
    'oh, that's interesting' or 'I need to act on this.' You write tight—
    no wasted words.""",
    llm=llm,
    verbose=True
)

# Agent 3: The Assembler
assembler = Agent(
    role="Newsletter Assembler",
    goal="Compile the final newsletter with intro, stories, and CTA",
    backstory="""You create the final newsletter draft in clean HTML. 
    You write a punchy 2-sentence intro that hooks the reader. 
    You end with a single clear call-to-action.""",
    llm=llm,
    verbose=True
)

# Define tasks
research_task = Task(
    description="Search for the latest news, blog posts, and discussions about {niche}. Find 20 candidates.",
    expected_output="A list of 20 articles with titles, URLs, and 1-sentence descriptions.",
    agent=researcher
)

edit_task = Task(
    description="From the research, pick the 5 best stories. Write a 2-3 sentence summary for each.",
    expected_output="5 curated stories with summaries, ranked by importance.",
    agent=editor
)

assemble_task = Task(
    description="Create the final newsletter in HTML format. Include intro, 5 stories, and a CTA to share.",
    expected_output="Complete newsletter HTML ready to send.",
    agent=assembler
)

crew = Crew(
    agents=[researcher, editor, assembler],
    tasks=[research_task, edit_task, assemble_task],
    process=Process.sequential,
    verbose=True
)

result = crew.kickoff(inputs={"niche": "AI and machine learning"})

Run this on a cron job (GitHub Actions works great for this—free for under 2,000 minutes/month), pipe the output to your ESP's API, and you've got a newsletter that builds itself.

The multi-agent approach matters because each agent has a distinct role and constraints. The researcher casts a wide net. The editor is ruthless about quality. The assembler handles formatting and tone. This mimics how real editorial teams work, and the output quality is noticeably better than a single prompt.

Pro tip: Add a fourth "fact-checker" agent that uses Perplexity's API or Tavily search to verify claims before they go into the final draft. Hallucinations in newsletters destroy trust fast.

---

Building the Audience: The Part Everyone Skips

You've got the machine. Now you need subscribers. Here's what actually works in 2026, in order of effectiveness:

1. Cross-promotions via Sparkloop or Beehiiv Boosts. This is the cheat code. Other newsletter creators recommend your newsletter to their audience in exchange for you doing the same (or paying $1-3 per subscriber). This is the single fastest way to grow. A well-targeted boost can bring in 500-2,000 subscribers per month.

2. Twitter/X and LinkedIn content. Pick one platform. Post 3-5 times per week with insights from your newsletter content. Your newsletter is the "full version"—social is the teaser. The funnel is: see interesting post → click link in bio → subscribe. This is slow but compounds. Most newsletters that hit 10K+ subscribers did it partly through consistent social presence.

3. SEO-optimized web archives. Host your newsletter archives on your website (Beehiiv does this automatically). Each issue becomes a page that can rank. If you're curating content about "AI tools for marketers" every week, those archive pages start capturing long-tail search traffic over time. Free subscribers, forever.

4. Referral programs. Beehiiv and Sparkloop both have built-in referral systems. Offer a simple incentive—access to a resource, a bonus email, shoutout—for subscribers who refer 3 friends. The Hustle and Morning Brew both scaled heavily through referrals.

5. Paid ads (once you're monetized). Once you're earning from sponsorships, reinvest a percentage into Meta or Twitter ads driving to a landing page. If your subscriber acquisition cost is $2 and each subscriber is worth $0.50-$1/month in sponsorship revenue, you're profitable within 2-4 months. That's a money printer.

What doesn't work: buying email lists (destroys deliverability), posting in random Facebook groups (waste of time), or waiting for organic growth without any distribution strategy (you'll give up in month three).

---

The 30-Minute Weekly Workflow

Once everything is set up, here's what your actual week looks like:

• Monday (15 min): Review the AI-generated draft. Fix anything that sounds off. Add one personal observation or hot take—this is what makes it your newsletter and not just an RSS feed.
• Monday (5 min): Approve and schedule the send.
• Thursday (10 min): Same thing for your second weekly issue.
• Ongoing: Respond to replies (this builds loyalty and gives you content ideas). Check analytics monthly. Adjust sources quarterly.

That's it. The agents handle discovery, filtering, summarization, and drafting. You handle taste, voice, and relationship-building. The things humans are still better at.

---

Common Mistakes That Kill Automated Newsletters

Over-automating the voice. If your newsletter reads like ChatGPT wrote it (because it did, without editing), subscribers leave. Always add at least one human-written paragraph per issue. Your take on the news is the product, not the news itself.

Too many sources, not enough filtering. An agent pulling from 50 RSS feeds will produce noise. Start with 5-8 high-quality sources. Expand only when your filtering is dialed in.

Ignoring deliverability. None of this matters if your emails land in spam. Use a custom domain. Warm it up properly. Authenticate with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Beehiiv and ConvertKit handle most of this automatically—another reason to use established platforms rather than sending raw through SendGrid.

Choosing a boring niche because it seems profitable. You still need to care enough to write that one paragraph of original insight. "Enterprise SaaS procurement trends" might have high CPMs, but if you can't bring any genuine perspective, the newsletter will be dead within six months.

---

What to Do Right Now

If you've read this far, here's your action plan:

1. Pick your niche. Intersection of: something you know about + something with commercial intent (advertisers exist) + something with enough weekly news flow to curate. Examples that work well: AI tools, e-commerce tactics, climate tech, DevOps, creator economy, personal finance for [specific demographic].

2. Set up Beehiiv. Free tier. Takes 20 minutes. Get your first landing page live.

3. Build your v1 agent. If you don't code, use Zapier Central + RSS. If you code, start with the n8n or CrewAI approach. Spend one weekend on this.

4. Send 4 issues manually-ish. Use the agent output but edit heavily at first. Get a feel for what your audience responds to.

5. Start cross-promoting at 500 subscribers. Join Sparkloop, reach out to complementary newsletters, start the growth flywheel.

6. Pitch your first sponsor at 2,000-3,000 subscribers. Use Swapstack or cold email companies already advertising in similar newsletters. Your first sponsorship, even at $200, proves the model works.

The people making real money from newsletters in 2026 aren't the ones writing every word by hand for 15 hours a week. They're the ones who built the machine, added their perspective on top, and focused their energy on growth and relationships. The AI does the grunt work. You do the thinking.

That's the whole playbook. Now go build the thing.