You Don’t Have To Monetize Your Newsletter
Have you noticed the obsession with people asking how you’re monetizing your newsletter lately?
Newsflash: It’s actually completely ok not to have an income-producing newsletter.
Dan Oshinsky (yes, the same one from the Screen Share video above) took a moment to remind the newsletter writers of LinkedIn about that in this post.
“You’ll find that your newsletter — or any side project — can be hugely successful, even if it doesn’t make a single dollar.”
He suggested that we non-monetizers set goals, such as personal, professional, leadership, and learning goals, to measure the success of our newsletter efforts.
For instance, a freelance writer might launch a newsletter to showcase your talent and attract clients. Or someone with a passion for cooking might start a newsletter that journals their adventures in the kitchen.
Not every newsletter needs a paid subscriber base or sponsorships. It’s still completely ok to do a thing for the fun of doing it, or to build an audience that you might be able to sell something to one day.
Psst! Dan’s new not an issue of Not a Newsletter came out yesterday. There’s a ton of useful info in it for you, as always.
Pssssssst! If you do want to earn cash from paid subscriptions, Curated is now supporting that in addition to the sponsorship tools we’ve offered for years. See Curated News below.
Newsletter Content The Axios Way
You may recall an article I curated last fall about what someone learned from analyzing 1,300 Axios emails.
This one comes from a different writer, but it’s a similar story. In this round of breaking down Axios newsletters, Arik Hanson focuses on 5 content lessons the newsletter powerhouse’s local issues can teach us.
They’re all solid ideas, but I’m partial to the curation one, which recommends following their Catch Up Quick list of stories readers might have missed.
Click through to see if you can implement any of these ideas.
Did You Choose A “Top 10” Email Font?
Saffa Faisal provides a little font wisdom in this Unlayer article, which rounds up the “10 Best Fonts for Email Design in 2021.”
Is yours on the list?
I use Merriweather and Lato.
Discovered via Really Good Emails.
More Responses To Apple’s Announcement
I’ve seen varying degrees of frustration and “don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world” about this issue in my social scrolling and email reading this week. The following is a round up of those thoughts in one list.
“Apple: You can't track email open rates anymore.
Marketers: OH NO! The world is ending. Email marketing is dead.
NEWS FLASH: Email open rates have NEVER been accurate.
“If you send good email that your readers love, you’re going to be fine.
The metrics you use to measure success may change, but you’re still going to be able to measure plenty of things when it comes to email.”
“There’s a middle ground position that could be had here that protects users’ privacy and offers just enough data for email senders to work with, but Apple has chosen to paint people who simply want to run a small business over email in the worst possible light instead.”
Creators often debate if they should clean subscribers off their email lists who are no longer engaged. We know from running an email provider that sends over 1 billion emails per month, the data is very clear: to maintain great inbox placement you must clean inactive subscribers...
...Inbox providers like Apple ask that senders keep their list clean and engaged, but then take away the metrics senders need to actually do that.
If creators rely on click tracking—the only remaining method of determining engagement—to clean their lists they’ll remove a lot of engaged subscribers who simply consume the emails without clicking through to the web.”
There’s No Reason To Panic About Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
You heard, right? Apple announced this week that iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey will introduce new email privacy options including pixel blocking.
For the newsletter newcomers, the way your email service provider creates an open rate report is by including pixels in images and counting each unique pixel view as an open. It’s never been perfect, because some email clients block images, so even if a subscriber opens, they may not be counted as an open.
Note: Curated currently tracks both pixel views and clicks as opens. This means that if someone has images blocked but clicks a link, they’re added as an “open.”
It seems we newsletter senders live and die by open rates. So, naturally, we’re all a little concerned that the metric we depend on (even if we know it’s a little fuzzy) is about to become much fuzzier because Apple Mail’s solution to blocking pixels is going to mean that if someone blocks pixels, they’ll count as an open even if they don’t actually open.
And it won’t just be outliers. Last month, Litmus reported that 93.5% of all email opens on phones come in Apple Mail on iPhones or iPads. On desktop, Apple Mail on Mac represents for 58.4% of all email opens (same report).
Now might be the time to start measuring beyond open rates, which makes me sad because it’s such an easy way to measure newsletter engagement, but I’m not anti-privacy and if this is the wave of the future then we’ll just have to find another (less invasive?) way.
In Will Apple end the newsletter boom?, newsletter writer and reporter Casey Newton interviewed email industry experts who advise newsletter creators to pause, chill, and look on the bright side.
“The advertising industry has addicted itself to tracking, prioritizing bottom of the funnel metrics at the expense of great content and creative. It’s tragic,” said Alex Kantrowitz, author of the free, ad-supported newsletter Big Technology. (He previously covered the industry for Ad Age.) “And it’s why people hate advertising and ad companies.”
“Pixel blocking makes placements like this more valuable and gives quality email newsletters a leg up on the junk clogging most people’s inboxes,” Kantrowitz said.
Casey reports that publishing industry executives told him writers “can triangulate reader engagement by plenty of metrics that are still available to them, including the views their stories get on the web, the overall growth of their mailing list, and — most meaningful of all — the growth of their revenue.”
The piece is worth a read and stays fairly unbiased, although he does speculate that Apple is implementing privacy policies with the intention of funneling ad money away from other platforms to its own.
Has Scrolling Changed The Meaning Of The Fold?
In this piece, Ben Clay, Senior Designer at Action Rocket, suggests that the print concept of “above the fold” may have lost its oomph in the current digital age.
Not because we should just think of the top, visible part of the screen as the “new fold,” though. He believes that social media platforms (which promise fresh content just below what we see) have actually conditioned us to scroll.
If we think about this in the context of email newsletters, we can see the evidence. Readers seem less averse to longer issues these days. In fact, when someone complains about length, it’s actually a complaint about the content being boring (to them).
Are you more apt to scroll the entire length of a newsletter these days to see if there’s something valuable below the fold?
I am.
And now I’m wondering if, especially on mobile, this style of newsletter feels a bit like a curated social feed.
Should You Use This Newsletter Advice?
When it comes to newsletters, context matters and advice isn’t one-size-fits-all... at least according to CJ Chilvers.
For example, when it comes to business vs. personal, he says,
“Personal newsletters should have no rules. They are where you find your audience, voice, topics, cadence, products, etc.”
Check out this quick read and see what you think.
Related: Speaking of advice that may or may not work for you, check out How to Create More Engaging Newsletters That Connect With Customers.
Also Related: Consider these tips from Josh Spector’s recent newsletter audit to see if any appeal.
The Charleston Wine Shop Newsletter That Started As A Joke
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: testing an idea by launching a newsletter and measuring interest is a great MVP for seeing if you can build and grow a business off that idea.
For instance, Charleston wine shop employee Chris Rollins launched a newsletter as a joke but saw immediate subscriptions and list growth.
This article, Charleston area food fans so hungry for newsletters they sign up for ones that don’t exist, is a little confusing, but the general takeaway is that there’s substantial demand for newsletters these days.
Also, the crowd of people who think email is dead should probably read this:
“I was really surprised that people wanted to read a newsletter from us, since our Instagram captions are pretty confusing and vague,” Rollins said. “But we made one, and it’s become a huge success for us. We get significantly more subscribers, visitors and interaction from the newsletter than any other social media pages or the website.”
A (Scientific) Guide To Better Open Rates
According to Steven Macdonald (and anyone who’s ever created a newsletter), before you can get people to click through your email, you’ve got to get them to open it. This guide offers some concrete data behind open rate success.
A few highlights:
Related: Watch this discussion about the power of open and click reach rates.
Also Related: Learn how to avoid automatic clicks and opens.
Are Content Creators The New Startups?
A power shift from institution to independent creators is upon us. Are you part of the emerging creator economy?
According to Gabe Wiseart, it boils down to this: creators who are killing the game (aka have a following, recurring revenue via paid subscriptions or established ad streams, etc.) are being taken much more seriously these days. As in, they can actually get advances on future earnings.
What does this mean for you?
If you’re an indie newsletter creator with a dedicated audience, you may be part of a wave of free agents going solo. Just remember that the quality of your content has to be worthy of whichever monetization model you pursue.
Related: Listen as NPR’s 1A asks successful creators, “Why Is Everyone Talking About Newsletters?”
