Category: NewslettersCategory: Newsletters

Mario’s been shipping The Morning Shakeout every Tuesday for almost a decade, and the through-line is simple: doing the work every week is the “trick. It’s not hacks, not social reach, not “growth systems.”

We talked about how having your own website isn’t optional if you want staying power, how platforms come and go but archives and backlinks keep paying dividends, and why consistency beats trying to manufacture viral hits.

Mario’s approach is boring in the best way: show up, write, publish, repeat, and do it long enough that people can’t ignore you, and long enough that you actually figure out what you’re here to say.

Had a great time talking with Claire Venus via Substack Live. We covered a lot in this hour long chat! Substack’s platform features and distractions:

We talk about the increasing features on Substack, like Notes and video, which creates an “attention economy,” which is often times what we’re trying to avoid!

The value of an Email List: Direct access to your audience is so important, and very much worth the time and energy.

Monetization and payments: The challenge in asking for payment, and exploring options like “Buy Me a Coffee” buttons instead of paid subscriptions.

Connecting beyond vanity metrics: We talked about building genuine connections with readers and other writers through personal outreach, and small gatherings, and how that can be more valuable than viral hits or ranking on arbitrary leaderboards.

Tenacity in reaching readers: Not all subscribers see every post or email, so it’s necessary to employ “creative bothering” (thanks Cody Cook-Parrott) and talk about your offering more than once to make sure your message reaches your audience.

Had a great time talking with Claire Venus via Substack Live. We covered a lot in this hour long chat!

Substack’s platform features and distractions: We talk about the increasing features on Substack, like Notes and video, which creates an “attention economy,” which is often times what we’re trying to avoid!

The value of an Email List: Direct access to your audience is so important, and very much worth the time and energy.

Monetization and payments: The challenge in asking for payment, and exploring options like “Buy Me a Coffee” buttons instead of paid subscriptions.

Hosting your own Zoom calls!

Connecting beyond vanity metrics: We talked about building genuine connections with readers and other writers through personal outreach, and small gatherings, and how that can be more valuable than viral hits or ranking on arbitrary leaderboards.

Tenacity in reaching readers: Not all subscribers see every post or email, so it’s necessary to employ “creative bothering” (thanks Cody Cook-Parrott) and talk about your offering more than once to make sure your message reaches your audience.

I’m always telling you to have an email list, but it’s only going to be helpful if your newsletter is worth opening.

Is your email showing up like those messy grocery store flyers we all get in the mail?

That’s the sort of noise we easily tune out, knowing we won’t really miss out on anything if we ignore it.

But those vinyl record deliveries, that package of zines, artwork, or art supplies we ordered – those feel different, right?

These are things we’re looking forward to. We ordered something, and then we keep an eye out for those shipping updates. Delivery confirmations.

But then we all get emails like this everyday.

”New merch in our store”
”Deals ending soon”
”New workshop announced”

Sure, these can work. They’re serviceable. “Don’t ask, don’t get.” I get it!

But consider this email from Lauren Denitzio, of the band Worriers, with this subject line: ”Tips for tour and life.”

Everyday we get emails asking for something; buy now, book soon, pre-orders available.

But how many emails are we getting that are giving us something, too?

How many creative beings send out emails of stories, unraveling the wonders of life by way of their unique viewpoint?

• Like Lauren above, sharing tips for life while also promoting their hand written lyric sheets.
• Like Cody Cook-Parrott sharing how they got XC skiing equipment for free during their spending ban while also promoting a limited edition version of their new book.
• Like Tom Bland and Diana Pappas who decided to live blog the making of their latest photographic art drop.

You’ve already done the hard part; you’re a photographer, a painter, a professional mountain biker, a comic book maker.

We just need to use that same creative vision to talk about the work we do in our own unique way.

If our newsletters stopped acting like product catalogs, maybe our newsletter becomes something that people won’t want to miss.

I posted this over the weekend on Substack Notes, but you probably didn’t see it.

Five people called me, and we had some nice chats.

Most of my email subscribers don’t spend time on Substack Notes, and probably don’t even know it exists.

I’m certain of this, as over 80% of you read my newsletter in your email inbox.

It might be the same for your newsletter, too.

Hard truth: Substack Notes is social media, where algorithms control what you see and where most of your audience doesn’t see what you post anyway.

The best remedy to all this is delivering a message to their inbox.

This is why when you post a new song on Spotify, you should send an email to your fans to let them know. You can’t trust that Spotify will surface this new song to all your subscribers on their platform.

If you post a new video on YouTube, you should still send an email to your subscribers and let them know. You can’t trust YouTube to distribute your new video to everyone who subscribed to your channel.

Leaving the distribution of your work to algorithmic platforms is a dead-end street. Posting isn’t enough; you have to reach out to your audience directly if you want to survive.

Now, maybe you’ve got some objections…

🚫 Sending too many emails is spammy

✅ If people don’t want to hear from you, let ‘em leave. An unsubscribe is just making room for someone else to come and enjoy your work.

✅ Funny how we don’t want to send too many emails, yet most of us posted multiple times per hour on social media, right?

🚫 Sending a newsletter is too much work

✅ You don’t have to make vertical videos, and you don’t need to make new static images. If you’ve already posted about your new thing on Instagram, just copy and paste the caption you wrote – 95% of your audience didn’t see it anyway, so re-use it!

🚫 I don’t have enough email subscribers

✅ If you have 1,000 social media followers, you might reach 10% of them (that’s 100 people).

✅ If you have 100 email subscribers, 99.9% of them will get your next newsletter (so make sure you write a good subject line).