What do I decide before I write anything?#
Write one line for each of these three, and do not open a tool until all three exist on paper.
| The decision | What a finished answer looks like | What a fake answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | "Small builders who tender for council work in the UK" | "People in the industry" |
| What they get | "Deadlines and one thing that went wrong, weekly" | "News, tips and insights" |
| When it arrives | "Tuesday at 7am, because that is when they plan the week" | "Regularly" |
The middle row is where newsletters die. A reader who cannot tell what they are going to get cannot decide to keep getting it, so they unsubscribe at some point without ever knowing why.
What should my newsletter be about?#
The problem your reader has, not the work you do. Those feel like the same subject and are not. A tiler writing about tile ranges is describing inventory; a tiler writing about why a bathroom floor falls to the drain wrongly is describing the thing that keeps their customer awake.
A working test: would this issue be worth reading by somebody who has never heard of you? If the honest answer is only sometimes, the newsletter is a company bulletin wearing a newsletter's clothes. Bulletins are useful, so write one if you want, but do not expect strangers to subscribe to it.
How do I structure a newsletter?#
This is the skeleton that holds for a small business, and the order is the point.
- One sentence saying what this issue is about. Written last, sent first.
- The one thing. A single piece with a fact, a number, a photo of the actual job, or a decision you made and why.
- Two smaller things, one or two lines each. Two, not six. A list of six links is a page the reader visits instead of an email they finish.
- One link that goes somewhere you want them to go, described by what they get rather than by the button word.
- A sign-off a specific person signs. A name, and one line that sounds like them.
Read the whole thing back in under three minutes, and it should look like something a person wrote rather than something a marketing team produced. The moment it needs a header image and three columns, it has stopped being an email.
How long should the first issue be?#
Shorter than you are aiming for. Three hundred to five hundred words earns a reader; a first issue of two thousand words is a document. Write what you would say if they were standing in the doorway, then cut the paragraph that explains why you are qualified to say it.
Do I need a website before I start a newsletter?#
No. You need somewhere to put an address and a domain to send from, and neither requires a site. A signup form on a page is enough to collect the first hundred names, and the newsletter itself becomes the reason people later want a site.
What you do need is your own sending domain rather than a shared free address, because the reputation of a shared address is not yours to build on. That is a five-minute job with your domain provider and worth doing before the list exists rather than after.
Should I start on a newsletter platform instead?#
A platform is worth it when writing is the product and you plan to charge readers. It is the wrong shape when the newsletter exists to bring work to a business you already run, because then the list is a sales channel and the platform becomes the place your customers live instead of you.
Three questions decide it, whatever the product is called: can you export the addresses at any time, does your name and domain appear on the mail rather than theirs, and what happens to your reach if the platform changes how it shows your work. Some products let you take the list, some publish a fee for paid subscriptions, and the answers are in each product's own documentation, so read it there rather than trusting a blog that includes this one.
On LinkedIn specifically: a LinkedIn newsletter gets discovered by people already on LinkedIn and cannot be mailed outside it. That is a reach advantage and a hard ceiling in the same breath, so write there if the audience is professional and already scrolling, then move the ones who matter to an address you hold.
How do I get the first fifty subscribers?#
People who already have a reason to want it. In order of how well they convert: your existing customers, the people who have asked you a question in the last year, anyone whose work you would be reading yourself, then friends who will read it rather than politely receive it.
Write them individually rather as one blind copy. "I am starting a short monthly email about tender deadlines. Would you want it, and should I put your address down?" gets you forty real subscribers and a list whose consent you can prove. It also tells you within a week whether the idea was worth a recurring email at all.
After that, the placements do the work: the ask at the end of a booking, a line in a confirmation email, a form on your own site. Where to put them, ordered by how much each one collects.
What should the first six issues be?#
Decide the six before you send the first. This is the shape that turns a new newsletter into a habit, and each issue teaches you one thing you cannot learn from a plan.
| Issue | What it contains | What you learn from sending it |
|---|---|---|
| One | Who this is for and what arrives each month, stated plainly | Whether the promise is interesting enough that anybody replies |
| Two | One thing you did, with the number attached | Whether the reader cares about the work or only about you |
| Three | One question a customer asked and the answer | Which questions are worth a whole issue |
| Four | One thing that went wrong and what fixed it | That honesty moves more readers than polish does |
| Five | The one date your reader has to know this month | Whether utility holds an open rate on its own |
| Six | What the last five got you, and a question | Which part of the list is awake, from who answers |
Six issues is about the point a new newsletter stops being a guess. By then you have a run of your own numbers to read, a sense of how long an honest issue takes, and the first evidence that the subject holds six more issues after those.
Write them in order rather than in parallel. Issue four is easier once issue three has told you which questions people ask, and a plan written six months deep is usually a plan rewritten three times.
What do I write when I have nothing to say?#
The fix is a source rather than a schedule. Pick one recurring input and let it produce the issue: the strangest question a customer asked that month, one job and what it cost, one thing that went wrong and the fix, or the three most-read things on your site. With a source, an issue writes itself in an hour. Without one, week eleven is empty.
And when the month produced nothing: send nothing. A filler issue teaches your list that your emails can be skipped, which is the one habit that survives a good run.
How often should a new newsletter go out?#
Monthly, until you have run out of things to say at monthly. Weekly is a promise you cannot make from a standing start, and the first reader to send two weeks without hearing from you unsubscribes for the same reason you would. The full answer, including what capacity has to do with it, depends on your list rather than your ambition.
Can I start a newsletter for free?#
Yes, and the honest version of that sentence has a limit in it. Writing and collecting addresses cost nothing but time. Sending does cost somebody: mail is not free to move, which is why the big suites start around a hundred dollars a month and why any product offering unlimited sending to a large list is paying for it elsewhere or planning to change its mind.
Our free plan is 5,000 emails a month, which is a 1,200-name list going out weekly. Names are not counted, because storing them costs us almost nothing. That is the whole of the free offer, not a trial with a card at the end of it.
When does a newsletter become a business?#
When a reader would pay for it or an advertiser would pay to reach them, and either way that needs a hundred times more than a first list. The three routes are all slow: subscriptions require trust built over issues, sponsorships require an audience a sponsor recognises, and selling your own work through the list is the fastest of them by a wide margin for a business that already has something to sell.
For a small business the newsletter is not the business. It is the reason the same customer comes back twice instead of once, and that is worth more than a subscription would pay you at this size.
What does a good first issue look like?#
Subject: "The one thing councils get wrong about the 14-day rule". Opening: "You have probably had a tender close in less than a fortnight and assumed that was legal. Sometimes it is not." Body: the rule, one real example from your own work, the sentence you would text a colleague. Then: "If you want this monthly, you are already on the list. Reply and tell me which part was useless." That last line is the part nobody else sends, and it is where the next three issues come from.
Campaign Kicker mails your newsletter from your own domain, keeps the addresses, and records each signup with the time and where it came from. There are designs to drop your words into and an editor that will not eat your formatting. The free plan sends 5,000 emails a month, holds as many names as you have, and asks for no card.
Write the first issue