Newsletter Success 🚀
It’s Friday… And another week bites the dust! As one of many, who started a newsletter these recent weeks, I thought I would share a few helpful and insightful links around the topic for any interested maker. It’s a massive topic, and although there are a number of podcasts and videos to keep you busy over the weekend, the following is a brief take on the subject and by far not exhaustive.
Source: Unsplash, by Brian McGowan
Earlier this week, Tim Ferriss put out the question, how many subscribers the largest one-person written/driven newsletters in the US have. As you will see there were many responses, many self-promotional 😎 but James Clear puts his readership at a staggering about 715K and growing. Pretty staggering!
🌐 Newsletter Makers
In early March, when the lockdown was still confined to China, Substack hosted a gathering in New York, where a number of newsletter writers spoke about their experiences, three of which are listed below and well worth listening to (each one is approx 15-20 minutes long).
Source: Substack
Their newsletters cover different topics and they each discuss a range of issues ranging from marketing, switching from free to paid as well as going full-time on their newsletter.
Heated by Emily Atkin: Turning her climate change newsletter into a six-figure income
NumlockNews by Walt Hickey: Expanding to multiple newsletters
🌐 Newsletter Market
Channing Allen at Indie Hackers produced a good post earlier this month on some successful newsletter-only startups, such as The Hustle, which makes $10m+ and the Morning Brew, which makes $13m in ad revenue. He also mentions a new #OpenStartup Mailbrew, a platform where you can create your own customized mailing list from sources including Twitter, Hacker News, Reddit and now it seems Substack as well. Read the full post here.
Following on from the above, you should listen in on David Perell’s North Star Podcast with Austin Rief, Co-founder & COO of Morning Brew. It’s from last May, but still very current and good input for anyone contemplating a paid or ad-based newsletter startup. Listen Here.
Jason Calacanis, who is an avid email fan (owns Inside newsletters) believes like many others that the advertising game has been won by Google and Facebook. Last year, 90% of the gains went to these two. In January, in This Week In Startups, he interviewed Substack Co-founder and CEO Chris Best. They discuss Substack’s mission to empower writers, the contrast to Facebook, the importance of developing and owning your own community and much more. It’s a longer interview, but well worth listening to over the weekend.
🌐 Newsletter Resources
In my humble opinion, if you want a fully hosted option, where you can focus on the writing and not the tech or setup, I would recommend Substack or Revue. They vary a little on functionality and pricing, but let you kick off quickly and require little to no maintenance.
A further player in the market is the publishing site Ghost. This will require a little more work to set up than the two above but will also deliver more functionality. They are an #OpenStartup and have been showing impressive growth over the past year.
Lastly, there is the traditional option of building your signup landing page using Carrd or another website builder, integrating an email service provider such as Mailchimp, Mailerlite or ConverterKit and if you want to go paid, connecting Stripe and/or a membership software.
And please remember to make sure you adhere to GDPR, CCPA or any other data protection and privacy laws that are applicable to you.
Addendum: You should also read Dru Riley latest Trends Report out this week, which covers a broad spectrum of info on paid newsletters. Trends#0011 - Paid Newsletters.
OK, that’s it for this week. I hope the above keeps you a little entertained over the weekend and lends a little inspiration. Have a great weekend!
