How to Launch Your Indie Newsletter

These stories are presented thanks to beehiiv, an all-in-one newsletter suite built by the early Morning Brew team. It’s fully equipped with built-in growth and monetization tools, no code website and newsletter builder, and best-in-class analytics that actually move the needle. Some of the top newsletters in the world are built on beehiiv, and yours can be too. It’s one of the most affordable options in the market, and you can try it for free — no credit card required. Get started with beehiiv today.

Launching a newsletter is unlike any type of project you’ve worked on before.

When you commit to launching a newsletter, you’re really committing to becoming a publisher. You’re committing to a regular schedule — daily, weekly, monthly — when you intend to publish. You’re committing to a lot of writing. You’re committing to a certain tech stack to help you send, grow, and monetize your newsletter. You’re committing to delivering great content for your readers and you’re going to have to work, week after week, to prove that you deserve your place in their inboxes.

And then there’s the timeline. Building and monetizing a newsletter is a process that might take two years — or more. Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, and yes, assuming that you’ll be the exception is a mistake.

This is going to take time, this is going to be real work, and there’s no guarantee that it will work.

But building an email list might also be one of the most important choices you make. If you can build a loyal, engaged audience, then whatever you choose to do next becomes that much easier, since you’ve built an audience who wants to hear from you and support you.

So let’s get you through the first steps and on your way in your first 30 days. There are four key phases to the first 30 days of your newsletter:

• Picking your email platform
• What to do before you launch
• How to write your first newsletter
• How to start promoting your newsletter

Let’s start with the first two phases.

Picking your email platform

There are a lot of email platforms to choose from. How do you choose among them?

Good news: I’ve worked with newsletters on dozens of platforms and gotten the chance to see what works and what doesn’t. From there, I put together a guide to six options that are actually worth a closer look:

• AWeber
• Beehiiv
• ConvertKit
• Ghost
• Mailchimp
• Substack

Before you do anything else, go through this guide and find the platform that’s going to be right for you.

AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, or Substack: Which Is The Right ESP For Your Indie Newsletter?

What to do before you launch

Once you’ve picked your platform, it’s time to go through your pre-launch checklist. Here are a few things you’ll need to do before you publish your very first newsletter:

Name your newsletter

Don’t overthink the name for your newsletter. The very first time I launched my own newsletter and news site, I decided to call my project “Stry.” The idea was that it’d be pronounced “story,” which fit with my mission to tell interesting stories from undercovered places. What ended up happening instead was that over the next two years, hundreds of people mispronounced my brand and told me that they’d tried to go to my website but couldn’t figure out how to spell it. I felt foolish for picking a complicated name.

So keep things simple! Make sure your newsletter site name and URL are easy to spell and remember. A memorable name that’s easy to spell will go a long way towards making your newsletter successful.

Let’s say I want to launch a newsletter that covers local news in my neighborhood in New York City. I live in Midtown East, so I decide to give my newsletter a straightforward name: The Midtown East Report.

First, I’d do a quick search to see if anyone else owns that domain. Then I’d check Domainr — a search engine tool for domain names — to see if my website name is still available. That search reveals that there are a few different options:

I’d go ahead and buy all of these. (I don’t want someone else to buy up a domain and try to steal traffic away from my newsletter!) I’d probably just use one — the dot com address — as my main URL, and then redirect the others towards it.

Identify your audience

When I talk with indie newsletter writers, I often start with this question: Who are you writing your newsletter for? If the answer is “Everyone!”, I’ll encourage that writer to dig a little deeper. The writer who’s writing for everyone often discovers that they’re writing for no one.

Think a little about who you want to write this newsletter for. I like to start by pulling out a yellow legal pad and writing down everything I know about my audience. Who are they? Where do they work? What kinds of things are they interested in? What kinds of content inspires them? What do they spend their time reading or working on? Look to existing sources of data — like the insights tab for a Facebook group or Instagram profile, if you have one already — to understand more about the people who already follow you. Or maybe you’ve had conversations with friends or acquaintances who might be potential readers of this newsletter, and you can use those conversations to better understand the audience. Write down as much as you can, as quickly as you can. And once you’ve done that, go back and try to organize all of those ideas into two big categories:

1. Demographic data, like age, gender, industry, or location
2. Behavioral data, like a reader’s interests, ambitions, motivations, or inspirations

You might even want to take those notes and put it into a Google or Word document. You’ll find yourself referring back to this data often — every time you write something, you’ll ask yourself: Is my audience going to love this story? You’ll probably even add or edit out items in that document as you learn more about your audience.

And if you really want to dive in deep, you might look to survey some of your existing audience (Google Forms is great for this sort of simple survey), or even spend time chatting with them 1-on-1, to better understand who they are and what they care about. The more you understand them, the better you’ll be able to create content and stories for them, and the easier it will be to craft the right voice that will resonate with your audience.

Create your launch post

When you first launch, you’re going to start with a post announcing your newsletter. This launch post is your first chance to pitch them on why this newsletter exists, and what you’re going to do for them. It’s a crucial part of your early success. It’s the thing that tells your audience:

• Here’s who I am
• Here’s what I’ll be writing every week in my newsletter
• Here’s why this newsletter will matter
• Here’s why you might be the right person to subscribe to this newsletter

And in the launch post, I’ll start with a headline that explains the basics of what I’m doing. So for my hypothetical newsletter about Midtown East, I might go with a headline like this: “Welcome to The Midtown East Report, Your Source For News About What’s Happening In Our Neighborhood.” Then I’ll tell them a little about my credentials and why I’m the right person to launch this newsletter. I’ll tell these readers about the kinds of stories I’ll be publishing every week — will it be hard news? Politics? Arts and culture? Restaurant reviews? I’ll want to lay that out. Then I’ll explain why I was inspired to create this newsletter — for The Midtown East Report, I’d talk about how my neighborhood is home to one of the biggest newsrooms in the world, Bloomberg News, but there are no reporters or publications devoted to what’s happening in the blocks around that giant Bloomberg office! And lastly, I’d ask my readers to subscribe. (Some platforms will automatically insert a sign-up box at the bottom of this post for you. For others, you may have to embed the sign up box.)

Before you hit publish, you might even want to share your launch post with a few potential readers. Ask them: Does this make sense? Does it explain what I want to do? Would you subscribe if you read this? Use their feedback to make it better — you only get one chance to make a first impression!

Want to see a sample version of this page? Here’s one I created for The Midtown East Report.

This launch post won’t be the only post you want to have ready to go at the outset — but we’ll talk about your first series of posts later on.

Write your welcome email

When a new reader subscribes to your newsletter, most email tools will allow you to send them a thank you note for subscribing. Use this note to tell them a little more about your newsletter. What will they get, and when will they get it? This welcome email is usually pretty short — just a few sentences — but helps set the right expectations for the relationship. If you have a paid offering at launch, add a sentence about the value of paying for your newsletter, and include a link back to your subscription page.

I set a sample version up for The Midtown East Report — sign up here and you’ll get it in your inbox.

Set your business goals

Think about what you’re hoping to achieve with this newsletter. I’d love for you to set two types of goals:

First, I want you to set some Impact goals for your newsletter. I call these Impact goals because they’re about the impact that your newsletter should have if you succeed. What do you want it to do for your readers? What do you want it to do for your career? Take a few minutes to jot down what you hope your newsletter will be able to do, for both you and your audience.

Next, I want you to set some Growth goals. How big do you want your free audience to be at the end of the first year? And if you’re launching a paid offering, how much revenue do you hope to bring in from your newsletter?

One rule of thumb that might help you set these Growth goals, based on my experience with writers on several platforms: 

• Add up the number of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter followers that you have to get the size of your overall social reach. 
• Most writers are able to convert at least two percent of that total audience to newsletter subscribers. The very best writers might convert up to 10 percent of their audience to their newsletter. 

So multiply your overall social audience times .02, and then .10, to estimate the initial audience range you’ll be able to reach in the first few months after launch. (Don’t worry — you’ll be able to grow your audience beyond that number!)

As for a paid offering, you might be able to convert about five percent of your overall audience to support your work — maybe a little more or less. It might take a year or more to reach that mark, but that’s a good benchmark to aim for.

Identify content formats that might work for you

There isn’t one right way to write your newsletter. In fact, most indie newsletter writers mix in several different types of posts over the course of a month. Among the formats you might want to try:

• Advice columns — Readers ask questions, and you answer them in a post.
• Essays — Share thoughts or analysis on a specific topic.
• Event calendars — Share a list of upcoming events in your community.
• Q&As — Have a conversation with an expert or influential member of your community, and then share the highlights of the interview with readers.
• Lists — Put together a list based on a theme, like the best books to read this month.

Look through what other newsletter writers are trying, and see if you might find a format or two that you can use as a template for some of your upcoming posts.

Build out the content calendar for your first month

The first month after your newsletter launches is your chance to start building your audience. Every time you write something that resonates with your audience, expect to see some growth in your overall email list. Producing great content is the best way to help your newsletter grow.

So to give yourself the best chance of success in that first month, plot out what kinds of stories you’ll publish in the first few weeks. I know that not all writers can plan out every story — many writers react to what’s happening in the news, and I know you don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future! But try to plan out as much as you can in advance. Maybe that means doing an interview or two in advance for your newsletter or working on a feature story that you’ll plan to publish after launch. Give yourself every opportunity to publish stories that will wow readers and showcase the best of what your newsletter can be. Use your list of content formats to identify the types of posts you want to write in that first month.

Authenticate your newsletter

Gmail and Yahoo now require anyone sending newsletters to authenticate their domain using three different authentication tools: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Fail to comply with these new rules and you’ll be unable to send to Gmail or Yahoo inboxes — and Gmail and Yahoo often represent more than half of the email addresses you send to.

That sounds scary, but the good news is that it’s pretty easy to set up all three forms of authentication. I’ve got a whole guide walking you through each step of the process.

What You Need to Know About Gmail and Yahoo’s Big Changes for Newsletters

Build out the promotional calendar for your first month

Most writers think about the content that they intend to publish in that first month — but few think about how and where they’ll promote their newsletter in those first few weeks. My suggestion: Spend a few minutes writing out a few different reasons why your newsletter is worth signing up for. 

For instance, for the fictional Midtown East Report, I might write down ideas like:

• Want to know what’s happening in your neighborhood? Sign up for The Midtown East Report!
• Subscribe to The Midtown East Report to get the latest news on local businesses, schools, politics, and more!
• Get the news you need about what’s happening in Midtown East. Sign up for our weekly newsletter!

Once you have a few of those written down, think about where you want to promote your newsletter, and when. For instance, if you’re going to promote your newsletter to your social media audience — and you should! — come up with a calendar for when you’ll do promotions. To start, think about doing maybe one big promotion per week per platform. This week, you might focus on converting your Instagram audience via stories about your newsletter; next week, you might look at promoting your newsletter to your LinkedIn followers.

Ask your network to sign up in advance of launch

Reach out to your network and encourage them to sign up for your newsletter. I like to use a tool called Gmass to email lots of friends, family, and colleagues all at once. If your launch post isn’t live, you might want to send them to a Google Form where they can enter their email, and then you can upload the .csv with those email addresses to Creator Studio before launch.

What’s next?

Now that you’ve gotten everything prepped and ready for launch, you’re ready for the next steps in the process: Writing your first newsletter and promoting it to your audience. Let’s dive into that part of the launch process.

How to Write and Promote Your First Newsletter

Thanks to our sponsor

The stories you’re reading on inboxcollective.com are made possible thanks to the generous support of our winter sponsor, beehiiv. They’re an all-in-one newsletter suite with built-in growth tools, customizable templates, and best-in-class analytics that actually move the needle. If you want to start a newsletter or are looking to grow your existing email list, try beehiiv today.