4 ms·

Advice for Newsletter-ers

31 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

petercooper 6y ago
Newsletters have been my main business for ten years (starting in an era everyone thought they were "old hat" and wouldn't work again) and baking in the flexibility to take a break that Robin talks about here is a great idea. I've found the pressure of having customers (and therefore money to refund) has kept me going every week, but I've seen so many people burn out with a fixed schedule and give up on newsletters that would have thrived if they'd given themselves room to breathe. This advice suits podcasting and blogging too, but seasons and irregularity respectively are more naturally baked into those formats.
etherio 6y ago
Wow this is super interesting. I had never thought of the idea of building your content around "seasons" but I do think it'd probably be an important motivator. This idea could also be generalized to blog posts. I'm just not sure what you'd structure your seasons around though.
- petercooper 6y ago
  It feels a bit like https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/ is doing this with her blog right now with the current 'season' being daily reports from her time with Recurse Center: https://jvns.ca/categories/rc-2020/ https://jvns.ca/categories/rc-2020/
bamazizi 6y ago
Subscription fatigue Newsletter fatigue Notification fatigue Social media mentions, pings and ... fatigue It's real folks! I'm might not be the only one, but I went on a rampage a while ago and unsubscribed from 90% of #$%^ that arrived at my mailbox and cut the cord on many subscription services (software apps, tv apps, sport apps, music app, newsletters, patreon, and others) ... now my credit credit statement is only a few lines!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jlelse 6y ago
  That's why I rely on RSS and syndication feeds. If someone wants me to read their content, they better support RSS, ATOM or JSON Feeds. Miniflux is a nice and minimal feed reader.
mjgs 6y ago
Structuring your newsletter into seasons sounds a bit strange at first but the author does make quite a compelling argument. I guess my newsletter technically would be right in the middle of season 1 right now. Likely the season 1 finale is probably going to be this weekend: https://markjgsmith.substack.com https://markjgsmith.substack.com

31 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

Newsletters have been my main business for ten years (starting in an era everyone thought they were "old hat" and wouldn't work again) and baking in the flexibility to take a break that Robin talks about here is a great idea. I've found the pressure of having customers (and therefore money to refund) has kept me going every week, but I've seen so many people burn out with a fixed schedule and give up on newsletters that would have thrived if they'd given themselves room to breathe. This advice suits podcasting and blogging too, but seasons and irregularity respectively are more naturally baked into those formats.

etherio 6y ago

Wow this is super interesting. I had never thought of the idea of building your content around "seasons" but I do think it'd probably be an important motivator. This idea could also be generalized to blog posts. I'm just not sure what you'd structure your seasons around though.

petercooper 6y ago
It feels a bit like https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/ is doing this with her blog right now with the current 'season' being daily reports from her time with Recurse Center: https://jvns.ca/categories/rc-2020/ https://jvns.ca/categories/rc-2020/

bamazizi 6y ago

Subscription fatigue Newsletter fatigue Notification fatigue Social media mentions, pings and ... fatigue It's real folks! I'm might not be the only one, but I went on a rampage a while ago and unsubscribed from 90% of #$%^ that arrived at my mailbox and cut the cord on many subscription services (software apps, tv apps, sport apps, music app, newsletters, patreon, and others) ... now my credit credit statement is only a few lines!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jlelse 6y ago
That's why I rely on RSS and syndication feeds. If someone wants me to read their content, they better support RSS, ATOM or JSON Feeds. Miniflux is a nice and minimal feed reader.

mjgs 6y ago

Structuring your newsletter into seasons sounds a bit strange at first but the author does make quite a compelling argument. I guess my newsletter technically would be right in the middle of season 1 right now. Likely the season 1 finale is probably going to be this weekend: https://markjgsmith.substack.com https://markjgsmith.substack.com