Lessons from 35 Years of Newsletter Publishing (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Lessons from 35 Years of Newsletter Publishing (2022)

cjchilvers.com

81 pointsherbertl13 comments

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I’ve run two newsletters for about a decade each and every item is on point.

A few more lessons from my experience

- getting it sent is more important than the platform

- ask people to email you their thoughts

- make it very clear where people signed up originally

- make it very clear how to Unsubscribe

- people grow and change. Sometimes with you and sometimes without you

- Unsubscribes are a part of life and it's bitter-sweet

- new subscribers don't now the ongoing context so inside jokes need to be referenced heavily or dropped completely

- sometimes you won't want to write a newsletter. That's the most important day to make sure the newsletter gets written

- if [clothing store] can email me just about every 8 hours it's okay to ask subscribers if they want to hear from you more than once in a blue moon

"Sometimes you won't want to write a newsletter. That's the most important day to make sure the newsletter gets written"

This is excellent advice. I find that the same principle applies to anything in which you want to succeed.

Also because if you break the chain once, you'll break it again. The only way to stay committed is to allow for no excuses.

"There’s bravery in brevity. Small is considerate, difficult, and valuable. Most books should be a blog post. Most blog posts should be a tweet. Most tweets shouldn’t be."

I really like this bullet.

> Remember: the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

This is very wise. I was having a conversation last night where two people were discussing how dejected it can make them feel when someone is critical of the work they put forward. I think it’s easy to let others’ hate consume you and to take it as a bad sign, but the reality is that you’ve engaged someone and an engaged person is far more valuable in the long run than an indifferent one. Relationships are built on engagement not on apathy.

25 years of LWN experience says that this advice is mostly right on — except that I wish "content creators" were in the sort of oversupply he says.

Why?

I suspect because he has been searching for a new journalist at LWN for the past 10 months, without a lot of luck.

Thank you for sharing these great tips. I am a photographer and have wanted to write a more personal email for years but have no idea how to start... I get lost in the platforms... TinyLetter, Mailchimp, Buttondown... And have no idea how to collect people's contact information.

As a relative noob to newsletters this post was solid gold. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom!

> 23. Cut ruthlessly.

And still 35 lessons. ;)

Don't you mean learnings?

Actionable learnings?

There's a big difference between lessons identified and lessons learned.

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