260. How I Produce My Weekly Newsletter

<p>If you want to grow an audience online, it’s great to have a consistent newsletter. It keeps you in touch with your subscribers, and it gives you a place to test out small ideas you can later grow into big ideas. I’ve been delivering my Love Mondays newsletter every week for more than 100 weeks (and you can sign up at kdv.co). Here’s how I streamline and automate the process, so I never miss a week.</p> <h3>Small bites of information</h3> <p>Newsletters work great as small bites of information. Your subscribers get your newsletter right in their inboxes, so they’re in a hurry. If they know they can get a quick hit or two from your newsletter, they won’t put off opening it.</p> <p>You can see this with newsletters such as Tim Ferriss’s <em>Five Bullet Friday</em>, or James Clear’s <em>3-2-1 Thursday</em>. The fact that these newsletters are full of quick hits is right there in the titles.</p> <h4>Keeping the bites organized</h4> <p>I design <em>Love Mondays</em> to have a few tiny bites of interesting things, as well as a light main dish. Each <em>Love Mondays</em> newsletter has a quick thought – maybe 150–300 words, about navigating the <a href= "https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mediocristan-vs-extremistan/">Extremistan</a> world of making it as a creator. Plus, I have what I call “ABCs” – Aphorisms (or Quotes), Books, and Cool tools. Additionally, I may make a short announcement in the postscript.</p> <p>Each newsletter has the main quick thought, two ABCs, and sometimes there’s a P.S., sometimes there’s even an P.P.S.</p> <p>That’s a lot of different things to think up each week, so I’ve designed my system so I don’t have to do it all at once. Using a spreadsheet I built from a service called <a href= "http://kadavy.net/airtable">Airtable</a>, I’m able to organize the ideas I’d like to share in <em>Love Mondays</em>, as well as Aphorisms, Books, Cool tools, and other announcements. I combine them to create each week’s newsletter. My system keeps me from switching mental states trying to think up each item. The