What I learned from curating a weekly newsletter for one year(ish)
Almost a year back, I announced my intention here to start a newsletter for personal accountability. Along the way, I learned a bunch of truths that people would do well to bear in mind before embarking on this journey themselves.
P.S. Of course, it’s in the form of a listicle because if you’ve been here long enough, you know that I love a good listicle!
P.P.S. These apply to most types of content, IMO.
#1 Curating or writing content is not enough. You need to add value.
Even though I started it for personal accountability, let’s be clear: I eventually derived accountability through the value I brought to the audience I wrote this newsletter for.
That’s because, let’s face it, access to someone’s inbox space and time every week is a privilege.
Irrespective of why they signed up for the newsletter, there was no reason they needed to continue their readership if I didn’t add value. This is why, as a creator/curator, you must define how you bring value to the table with the content you create/curate at the outset.
Ask yourself the question, what is it that people derive from your newsletter or content that they cannot from others?
#2 Consistency is key.
Please believe me when I say that writing a newsletter every week or producing any content on a routine basis is HARD WORK after the initial excitement wears off. It’s very similar to how we find it difficult to stick by our new year resolutions once January ends. It’s easy to slip away from routine once the feeling of it all being an uphill climb sets in, which is why consistency is IMPORTANT.
This doesn’t mean I advocate for hustling. Far from it. I’ve been burned out fairly recently, and if there’s one thing I remember, it was not a pleasant feeling to be depleted of energy despite doing nothing for days.
P.S. I’ve even spoken about this with Savitha at KubeCon EU 2022. You can view the recording here.
The first step toward ensuring consistency is knowing what a good schedule looks like for your newsletter or the content you create.
Ask yourself, what’s a good routine I can stick to despite everything?
Accept that even after this, there will be days when you need to pause for a bit because you’re human. Give yourself that freedom to step away.
#3 Your subscriber count will not magically skyrocket. And that’s okay!
Unless you’re an established brand or extremely lucky, you’re not going to hit 10,000 subscribers with your first issue. I know it is disappointing and frustrating. It feels like you’re screaming into a vacuum despite all the interesting stuff you curated/created that, you think, people will enjoy reading.
Building your audience takes time. Nurturing a community? Takes even more time! But to achieve any of the above, people need to know that you and your newsletter exist.
For the lack of a better word, you must actively share your content, invite people to listen to/read/view it, and seek feedback.
#4 Figure out your “type.”
I hate to be the harbinger of this news, but despite your effort, you might not get the readership you wanted. You might wonder what type of newsletter could guarantee readership. Are people only interested in curations? Will people not accept long-form content? What if the author wants to mix it up?
The answer is: It depends.
In what might be a revelation, you can write just about anything in any form, and there will be people who consume it. You just need to put in the effort to find them and share it with them.
Unfortunately, there is no magic formula here! You need to go the mile and experiment based on the feedback you get from point #3.
Remember, sometimes, no feedback is also feedback!
Ask yourself, who are your potential readers? What would they like to read about?
#5 Hosting
I used Revue to host my newsletter all through 2022. Several folks use Substack and other platforms for hosting & publishing their newsletters. Some prefer self-hosting.
Each publishing site comes bundled with integrations for easy social media sharing, sending emails, and maintaining an address list. Some platforms even suggest similar newsletters based on the one you’re viewing. All of this enables better discoverability. Unfortunately, this also means you’re very dependent on these integrations and will likely suffer from flexibility issues if you choose to move your content and subscribers someday. I know I did!
On the flip side, there is a lot of admin work in setting up self-hosting for newsletters. Buying a domain and setting up the security controls is the easy part. Then, customizing it, adding and paying for all the individual integrations you need, and making it discoverable via SEO is an uphill climb. But you’ll never have to worry about the website shutting down or terms and conditions changing because of mergers & acquisitions.
Therefore, each of the aforementioned options has its merits and trade-offs.
Ask yourself, does the option you choose make the merit worth the trade-off?
I’d love to hear your take on this. Do/did you author/curate a newsletter? What was your experience? Does any of this resonate with you?
Leave a comment below or let’s continue the conversation on Twitter, Mastodon, or LinkedIn.
