📩 How to Start Your Newsletter
A simple guideline to own your publication
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
The best way to become an expert on any topic, industry, or skill is to start a weekly newsletter about it.
🔓UNLOCKING: STARTING A NEWSLETTER
Building a newsletter is simple yet not easy.
And starting something new can be scary, confusing and subject to procrastination regardless of its simplicity.
So, we need a guideline most of the time, even if it is a simple one.
Here is the #11 issue of Digiboarding to make pushing the start button easier for you if you consider starting a newsletter.
No long entry with fancy words discussing the philosophy of creating a newsletter. We have already done that. I directly jump into the actions to start your own publication.
🔦DEEP DIVE: A SIMPLE ROADMAP TO START A NEWSLETTER
1. Choose a Niche, Reader Persona and Tone of Voice and Evolve in time
Choosing what you will write about can seem overwhelming but whatever you choose is subject to change.
You may niche down, make it broader or go towards a different direction in time.
What you need to do is just to start to write about an area that you are interested in.
The more you write, the better you understand which topics your potential audience needs, which sub-niches you like writing about and are eager to learn more.
Let them read, collect feedback, make iterations and write again.
Repeating this process is totally OK until you are comfortable with your niche and format.
While deciding on your tone of voice and format, you may start with defining your reader persona and how they want to be communicated. It can be informative, educative, entertaining etc. Similar to all aspects, this is also subject to revisit. What is critical here is to stay authentic and genuine.
2. Find a Name Buy Your Domain
After deciding on your niche, choose a catchy name, giving the sense of your content and ensure it is in English if you target a global audience.
As a second step, consider purchasing your domain name before someone else buys it.
It gives you the flexibility to open your website anytime you want.
In the future, you can use your website as part of personal branding, to expand your reach via SEO by publishing your articles, generate income via affiliate marketing and ads, sell e-courses, e-books, and freebies or include other services you provide.
Check out GoDaddy and Namecheap to buy your domain name.
3. Choose a Newsletter Service Platform
There are many alternative platforms to start a personal newsletter. Try to choose one that best fits your need and budget.
I use Substack, which is more than just a service provider but a blog and community platform for writers. Everyone on Substack has a profile and can be discovered on the platform. The network of writers, publications, and readers on the platform drives more than 40% of all Substack subscriptions.
On the other hand, it is possible to sell digital products on Convertkit or you may find Beehiiv’s integrations with other tools where Substack falls far behind more attractive. Ghost is another one that is growing recently.
In any case, no need to overthink. You may export the e-mail list of your subscribers and transfer to another platform anytime if you decide to switch.
Check out this article for a detailed comparison of features and pricing of alternatives.
4. Write “About” sections and Welcome e-mail
It is important to define your newsletter's offer and set the frequency, length and format expectations.
Create an automatic welcome e-mail and utilize it as a tool to get to know your readers in addition to introducing your newsletter. Ask about their expectations from your newsletter, their current interests, problems etc. Try to understand how you can help them.
If they don’t return your welcome e-mail, reach out to each one by one. It is a higher probability that they will get back to a personalized e-mail.
5. Open Social Media Accounts
Until you create a well-working system for yourself to create and distribute your content, try not to focus on multiple social media channels.
It is not easy to manage multiple platforms. Start with the best platform to reach your audience and once you nailed it, continue with the second one.
Depending on your objective, you may decide to distribute your content via your personal accounts.
In any case, similar to Briand O’connor’s Twitter, make sure that you clearly state:
what you write about for whom
why they should read you
call to action for subscription with newsletter link
Your other links like Medium, website, other social media channels etc.
TIP: You can use linktr, to collect all your platforms under one link which looks cleaner and more organized.
6. Create a Simple Logo & Banners
Don’t spend huge time on this phase. Create something good enough not to leave empty sections for logo, profile picture and banner both in your newsletter profile and social media accounts.
Use Canva to design all in minutes. There are templates with appropriate sizes for different channels (e.g. Logo, Twitter banner etc.).
Its free version is more than enough.
7. Create A System to Plan and Write Your Issues, Gather Your Ideas, Notes and Track
If you need help finding topics to write about or validating your ideas, you can do some research on Reddit, forums and social media.
For example, if you start a newsletter about career transitions, checking out the conversations & questions of your potential audience in the career change subreddit can be a rich source.
Utilizing some platforms to organize your writings and ideas is also critical.
I use Notion as the main platform that serves as my second brain.
I write all newsletter issues, keep track of my progress, plan social media posts and gather ideas on Notion.
TIP: Use Notion Web Clipper Chrome Extension to directly save pages&websites to Notion.
In addition to Notion, I use My Mind and Readwise to take & organize notes and Mailbrew for a daily digest of my favorite content.
8. Optimize Writing Process - A few Tips and Tricks
Don’t write and edit on the same day. You weirdly got blind to what you write after a while.
Giving a second look on the day after is healthier for making revisions & improvements.
Making a weekly plan on Sundays, before the week starts, increases productivity. Allocate separate days & time blocks to researching, writing, editing and distributing your content.
Try to pile up a few weeks’ issues in advance to spare more time to distribute your content, gather feedback and reach out to your initial subscribers individually.
If you write in English and are not a native speaker, use Grammarly to prevent any spelling & grammar errors.
Use pre-scheduling tools like Typefully or Hypefury for social media posts to minimize distraction. I prefer Typefully and am quite happy with it.
Ensure your e-mail doesn’t go to the spam folder by asking your readers to reply or add your address to contacts.
That’s all about setting up a newsletter. We will discuss “how to grow your subscribers and the ways to monetize a newsletter” in another issue.
For now, just start writing today if you plan to do it someday.
I am going to use this advice "Don’t write and edit on the same day. You weirdly got blind to what you write after a while. Giving a second look on the day after is healthier for making revisions & improvements.".
Thanks for taking the time to explain and make all this easy to understand :)
Thank you for such helpful insight!