How to Start an Email Newsletter

last week i spoke to alex lieberman who started writing an email newsletter in his dorm room and then a few years later sold it for 17 million dollars for me starting an email newsletter was one of the best decisions i've made in my life as a creator and now every time i send an email i make around five thousand dollars which is more than i was making in a whole month of working full-time as a doctor so in this video we're going to be breaking down why you should potentially consider starting an email newsletter what you might want to write about and then the step-by-step process of how to go about this completely for free and this is episode one of creativepreneur club which is a new series where we're gonna explore principles strategies and tools that we can use to kickstart or level up our creative entrepreneurial projects let's get into it part one why you should maybe start an email newsletter right so starting an email newsletter is the perfect starting point if you are new to the whole being a creator thing so firstly because it's completely free there are a bunch of platforms out there that we're going to talk about later in the video that are completely free you do not have to pay a penny at all to start an email newsletter and this is kind of different to starting a youtube channel where yes you can film with your phone but then there's there is an element of like cost that it takes to get started with something like a youtube channel an email newsletter is completely free secondly an email newsletter is very very low friction it's pretty easy to just get started writing if you know how to type something you can probably send an email newsletter again something like starting a youtube channel or starting a tick tock or an instagram it's like it it does take a certain level of friction and a certain level of faff whereas when it comes to an email newsletter all you have to do is type a few things and hit send and so it's one of the easiest kind of platforms that you can get started with as a creator thirdly an email newsletter is private in a nice kind of way in that you're writing stuff for public consumption but realistically no one is going to be finding your thing there is no algorithm that encourages people to sign up to your email newsletter so really if you want you can send your first several issues completely in private and hopefully that'll help you get over the hurdle the kind of the emotional barriers that get in everyone's ways whenever we're thinking of starting a new creative endeavor putting yourself out there on camera on a youtube channel is admittedly a pretty big step a lot of people really struggle with that step but if you can put yourself out there in a small way and take those baby steps by for example sending a weekly email update to like a handful of friends or even no one or even just your mum or grandma that really helps you kind of wet your appetite for what it's actually like to be a creator and share stuff publicly on the internet and the final reason why starting an email newsletter is a great starting point is because ultimately it's all about writing now any other kind of creative platform that you create on like youtube channels and youtube videos are really about the writing even like tick tocks and stuff if you're gonna do them well it's about scripting it and writing it and like structuring it in a way that makes a lot of sense but the problem with all these public platforms is that you ultimately don't own the audience on the audience that sounds kind of weird but you ultimately don't own the audience youtube owns the audience and i right now i'm just you know building a house on borrowed land like this youtube channel is only successful because of youtube platform whereas if i can take some of my audience and put them onto an email list now i have a direct relationship with that audience now i can show up in their inbox because they've given me permission and i can show up in their inbox every single week and share stuff of value which also means that when i have something to sell i could potentially sell it to my email list and to be honest we've made over two million dollars from selling our part-time youtuber academy not through selling it on the youtube channel because i tend not to mention it on that but actually through selling it on our email list because generally when people are on an email list they've given you permission to contact them they can unsubscribe anytime and it does help you build that relationship people can reply to the emails you can reply back i've also made a bunch of friends through the internet because people have signed up to my newsletter and then have replied and then i replied and we've fought and formed an exchange and maybe met up in real life or had zoom calls so that's one of the downstream benefits of having an email list that you can build up this audience which you then kind of own in a way that you don't really own your audience on other platforms and the second main reason is that to be honest an email newsletter itself could become an asset that you can then monetize further down the line if you want to i spent like three and a half years writing my weekly email newsletter before i monetized anything in it although i did have some affiliate links so i was always making a few dollars from amazon book recommendations here and there but recently we started to get sponsors on the newsletter who pay several thousand dollars for like a slot in the newsletter that's kind of insane that anytime i just send a weekly update which i treat as a bit of a public journal that hey here are some thoughts on my mind here are some articles that i like all that kind of stuff by the way that's in sunday snippets my newsletter if you want to sign up to it anytime i do that a sponsor is willing to pay five six seven thousand dollars at the moment uh to basically kind of get their message out to the audience which is pretty sick and of course as i mentioned at the start there are people like alex lieberman who started an email newsletter called morning brew who are instantly sponsoring this video but more on those later alex lieberman started morning brew in his university dorm room and it was just a daily email newsletter that helped people keep up with what's going on in the world of business and then he sells it five years later for 70 million and this newsletter generates ridiculous amounts of revenue which is why they're able to sponsor videos like this one so obviously i'm not saying that like my newsletter or your newsletter or anything is going to end up selling for 70 million but i am saying that there is the potential that this itself just an email something as simple as an email that you send once a day or once a week or once every other week does have the potential to even make you money further down the line and yeah i just find it pretty insane that like something as simple as an email has the potential to do that part two what should you actually write about okay so at this point let's say we're sold on the idea of having an email newsletter and you're thinking okay cool it might be a thing like generally at this point most people have this incredible like barrier that stops them from doing anything which is that i don't know what i would even write about and what i would say to that is that there's a few different ways of approaching it number one broad brushstroke you can write about whatever you want really being a creator if you're new to this thing is about finding a way to create content that you enjoy creating kind of intrinsically for its own sake and then you're kind of hoping that that content is able to add value to other people as well what i wouldn't recommend necessarily is for example starting a newsletter starting a youtube channel starting at tick tock whatever with the intention that like i i want to make money from day one or i want this to be successful because in the early days when no one is watching your stuff no one is subscribing to your channel no one is like reading your email newsletter it's really hard to have extrinsic motivation be the reason that you do the thing whereas if it's an intrinsically motivated reason of i genuinely enjoy writing harry potter fan fiction and therefore i'm going to make an email newsletter where every week i write a few paragraphs of harry potter fan fiction and i'm doing it for the sheer joy of the craft that level of intrinsic motivation makes it way easier to stay consistent with the habit and generally in the creator economy being consistent is the ultimate secret to getting results so you can just write about whatever you want when it comes to my email newsletter sunday snippets i do just write about whatever i want every week i think huh what have i been thinking about this week last week i wrote about the odyssey plan which is how i'm figuring out what to do with my life the week before i wrote about a conversation i had with a friend that made me think about like how how like i'm considering my career and over time i've just built up an audience of people who just care about what's on my mind which is kind of nice and i sort of treat my newsletter as a public journal of sorts where i'll just share whatever i want and then share a few links to articles or books or podcasts that i'd listened to or read that week that i enjoyed and it's generally pretty chill and i don't think too hard about the email newsletter which is why i like it so much to be honest on my youtube channel i don't just make videos that i want to make because it is like a business asset in a way and you know anytime i feel weird about the youtube channel it's because i'm over optimizing for the numbers but on the email newsletter front it's just so easy to not really care about those it's just a public journal i'm sending to people who i consider are my friends i eat people like you guys who subscribe to the newsletter and people reply to and say oh this was really helpful or this made me think about this or have you read this blog post instead and then i read it and then i reply to them and it's just it's just a kind of nice relationship builder in a way that's fairly chill if you're looking for other ideas for things you could do the other option for an email newsletter is to just curate things so if you're watching this video and you've gotten to this point chances are you're the sort of person who is quite smart sophisticated intelligent very handsome very good looking of course but you also probably spend your time reading stuff listening to podcasts watching videos and every week you've probably got something or another that you've read that you found is interesting and you can just share those in a weekly email newsletter that's how tim ferriss who runs one of the most successful newsletters in the world started five bullet friday every friday he just sends out a list of five things he's enjoyed that week it might be a blog post it might be a book it might be a documentary it might be a gadget and he just started off sending it to friends and then started selling it to his audience and now he's got over two million subscribers to this email list and he probably has generates millions and millions of dollars a year just off the back of a single email list so curation is an option the other thing that you can do is you can write about something that interests you and just do that every week for example that's how morning brew got started morning brew by the way thank you for sponsoring this video is a completely free daily email newsletter which basically gives you updates in the world of business and tech and finance and so if like me you're interested in those things you can sign up completely for free in the link in the video description and every morning they'll just send you a nice summary of what's going on in those worlds straight to your inbox they do it in a genuinely entertaining way that helps you understand what's going on like what's what the hell is going on with elon trying to buy twitter and then pulling out of it what's the deal with that what is happening to the price of bitcoin these days and what are the macroeconomic factors around like inflation and stuff that's making that happen what are some businesses that are succeeding despite the recession and like how are they doing it there's interesting things like that that's written in a genuinely engaging and informative and kind of fun way and it's completely free you might as well sign up it's completely free you can unsubscribe anytime i read it every morning because it helps me get updates in the world of business and tech and finance which is three things i care about so yeah check out the link in the video description to sign up to morning brew and thank you so much morning brew for sponsoring this video and morning brew was started by alex lieberman who i mentioned at the start of the video and i interviewed on my podcast last week and he talked about how he was just interested in the world of business he was getting into the world of business and he just realized that there was no good resource out there that helped you stay updated on business advice which is why every day he just decided to write this thing and then it grew into this ridiculous like enormous media company that he then sold for 70 million so you can check out that podcast interview i've done with alex uh we've had a bunch of comments saying that that's like an incredible podcast episode and we talk about a bunch of things like life and happiness and the death of his father and how he dealt with that and like a bunch of stuff that's just generally interesting and outside of the world of newsletters but it might be quite an inspiring podcast to listen to if you're looking for ideas for what sort of email newsletter you might want to write about but really the overall message here is you can write about whatever you want and the great thing about an email newsletter is that it's a fantastic practice ground for being able to dabble with what it's like being a creator after that point you might decide you don't like it you might decide you know what i cba can't be bothered to write anything every week i don't really like the idea of sending stuff publicly i'm very happy in my day job and just like whatever that's fine but at least you've tried it out or you might do what happened to me and a bunch of my other creative friends and think oh it's actually kind of fun sending out an email every week that just tries to add a morsel of goodness to people's lives and help them out in an interesting way or just document something i've learned and you might decide to stick with it and i've been sticking with it for the last four years and it's now a you know stable part of the business and it's really fun and it's the sort of thing that i probably am going to continue doing for for the long term part three how to get started with an email newsletter all right so the first step to get started with an email newsletter is to pick a platform now there are a few different options you've got here the option that i use personally for my newsletter and have been using for the last like two plus years is called convertkit but the problem with convertkit is that you have to pay for it it is a paid platform it is ridiculously powerful incredible if you want to take this newsletter thing seriously they have a free plan i think your first 1 000 subscribers are free but you do then have to pay and it does get quite expensive right now we pay several thousand dollars a month for the privilege of using convertkit it's totally worth it but it is a paid product i'll put an affiliate link in the video description if you want to check it out but it's generally not what i would recommend getting started completely from scratch if you want to get started completely from scratch and you want to do it without spending a penny there are two main options that you've got that i would recommend the first one is sub stack and the second one is review i was using review for the first two years of my email newsletter and it was absolutely fantastic and it's completely free and it was recently acquired by twitter so the nice thing about review is that if you are serious about growing on twitter people can subscribe to your email list directly from your twitter profile because it's nicely integrated and it's completely free so you can try out review alternatively we've got substack now subtac has been around for a few years now as well and honestly if i were getting started completely from scratch today sub stack is probably the route i would go down basically you go on substance.com not sponsoring this video or anything but people at substance if you're watching this let me know would love to work with you and we just hit start writing you can make an account or you can sign in with twitter exactly like i've done and you just write a quick description musings from my day-to-day life as a doctor turned creativepreneur lol kinda cringe but oh well if you have an existing email list you could bring a csv in and populate it but you don't have to you could add subscribers from day one so you can get your parents or your grandparents or your friends to sign up if you really want to again i'm gonna skip this step and here we are i've just now got my own newsletter which also doubles at its as its own website alibaba.substit.com it's live you can check it out if you want and now if i want to send my first issue all i have to do is click new post and i can just write whatever i want and i've just written my very first issue of my email newsletter now i'm going to hit publish and then i can send that to everyone do you want to add subscribe buttons to your post yeah why not now i have my first email newsletter i hit publish and we are good if i want to i can share it on facebook and share it on twitter or i don't have to i can just do this like this and treat this like my own personal practice ground for publishing something on the internet and now if we open up an incognito window and go to aliad.substack.com here is what it looks like ali's newsletter musings from my day-to-day life as a doctor term creatorpreneur launched a few seconds ago and then people can subscribe directly from this which is kind of nice it's quite simple or they can read it first and they can read my kind of first issue which should be here somewhere my first email newsletter there we go this is cute this is kind of nice and then there's the option for people to subscribe and it's all completely free and i know people personally who have made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by just starting a completely free email newsletter on substance and later switching on monetization or getting sponsorships or selling their own products all that kind of stuff which is all part of the business of being a creative printer if you've gotten to this point in the video and you start an email newsletter send me an email alia aliable.com and i promise i will subscribe to your email newsletter so you will at least have one subscriber if you would like if you don't want your friends and family to be your first subscribers if you are potentially interested in learning more about the ins and outs of what it's like being a creative printer i have any course on this it's called the part-time creatorpreneur you can check it out link in the video description and if you're looking for more theory more of a framework on how to get started with being a creator you might like to check out this video over here which is my my three level system for growing a youtube channel but the same thing applies to growing an email newsletter or any other sort of creative business so check out that video over there thank you so much for watching do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already and i'll see you hopefully in the next video bye

Channel: Ali Abdaal

Views: 529,222

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, Ali abdal, email marketing, email newsletter, how to create a newsletter, how to make money online, how to use notion, newsletter, newsletters, notion setup, self improvement

Id: ozWseKZV6Ac

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022