Newsletters are having a moment.
As someone who publishes one to empower creators every week, shares the secrets to how I grow my audience and business in another, runs a newsletter creators community, and even has a course to help you grow your newsletter, I’ve thought a lot about newsletters.
Following are a collection of quick lessons to help you make your newsletter all it can be.
1. If you’re going to publish a daily newsletter, there better be a damn good reason why it can’t be weekly.
2. A newsletter for everyone will be ignored by everyone.
3. Don’t confuse a newsletter with email marketing — one’s designed to provide value to an audience and the other to extract value from an audience.
4. Your newsletter signup page isn’t about your newsletter — it’s about the value your newsletter can provide to a subscriber.
5. Want to know how to publish a newsletter every week for 200 weeks in a row? Publish it one week in a row, 200 times.
6. You don’t need as many subscribers as you think to accomplish your goals.
7. Always send your newsletter at the same time — you can’t become a habit for readers if they don’t know when to expect to hear from you.
8. You may send your newsletter to the masses, but it’s read by individuals so write it as if you’re sending it to a single person.
9. Most paid newsletters fail because they’re selling more when they should sell different.
10. If you subscribe to the right newsletters your inbox can become your most valuable social feed.
(Btw, For The Interested will help you grow your newsletter.)
11. No one wants to read your newsletter — they want the results they can get from reading it.
12. The goal of each newsletter issue is to share at least one thing so valuable that anyone who sees it will want to open your next issue.
13. If someone’s not opening your newsletter, they’re not in your audience — remove them from your list.
14. The more you know about your subscribers, the better you’re able to serve them.
15. It doesn’t matter how many subscribers you have if you can’t count on them to regularly open and read your newsletter.
16. The less “news” you feature in your newsletter, the more interesting it’s likely to be.
17. Don’t get bogged down trying to figure out your tech stack — it’s the least important element of a newsletter.
18. Newsletter subscribers are more valuable than social media followers because when you share something with them it reaches more than 10% of them.
19. There’s so much value to be had in writing a newsletter even if no one ever subscribes to it.
20. People chase the external value of a newsletter (subscribers), but the internal value of writing one is even greater (learning).
21. Every newsletter issue you send is an audition — but it’s also an opportunity.
22. Newsletters don’t go viral (and that’s a good thing).
23. The best way to become an expert on any topic, industry, or skill is to start a weekly newsletter about it.
24. A newsletter creates an opportunity for the people who care what you have to say to reveal themselves.
25. If someone unsubscribes from your newsletter it doesn’t mean your newsletter sucks — it means it wasn’t for them.
(Btw, check out my Newsletter Booster to learn how to get subscribers in 5 minutes a day.)
26. A newsletter can be whatever you want it to be — it’s simply a value delivery mechanism.
27. A one-sentence newsletter format would be incredibly successful as long as that one-sentence was always valuable.
28. There are a lot of ways to make money with a newsletter, but they’re all rooted in creating something that helps someone else get something they want.
(Btw, my newsletter features tips to help you make more money from your creations each week.)
29. Once a year send your newsletter late and see if anyone notices.
30. If I give you my email address to get your newsletter, don’t send me other stuff.
31. If I give you my email address for other stuff, don’t send me your newsletter.
32. A great newsletter will do more for you and your business than a great social media account ever could.
33. You can learn a lot about your audience by seeing what kind of links they click in your newsletter.
34. Nobody wants to get more emails…unless they’re valuable.
35. Figure out your favorite newsletter to read and then create your version of that for a different niche audience.
36. Writing a newsletter teaches you a lot of skills and maybe the most important of them is patience.
37. Don’t call your newsletter a mailing list — no one wants to join a mailing list.
38. Email is a two-way medium. Use it that way.
39. No one wants a newsletter from a company, but lots of people would like a newsletter from a smart person who works for that company.
40. Just press send.
For more tips like this, check out how to get newsletter subscribers and my Newsletter Accelerator course.
Want more newsletter tips? Meet your favorite newsletter.