How to See the Value You Provide?

The point of a newsletter is to provide value to your readers. Ok, sounds simple. But what does this mean?

Before sending your newsletter, we suggest looking at it through different lenses. If you can see these qualities in your newsletter, you’re definitely providing value to your readers.

1. Give vs. Ask Ratio

2. Types of Value

3. POP - Personal/Observational/Playful

4. IPO-able Ideas

5. Rhetoric - Ethos/Pathos/Logos

Give vs. Ask Ratio

Are you giving more than you’re asking?  Are you credible in what you’re giving?  Giving without credibility is actually asking, as your reader needs to do homework to believe you.  Aim for a high Give/Ask Ratio in your newsletter - tons of giving without much asking.

Valuable Content

We now understand the importance of Giving, but how can you give?  According to Ed Latimore, a writer can provide value by 1) entertaining, 2) inspiring, 3) providing solutions, 4) educating, and 5) empathizing.  By empathizing, he means persuading the reader to feel better about their problems. 

Any of the 5 is fine, but to really Give it should be at least one of them.

POP - Personal - Observational - Playful

From David Perell, make your writing personal, observational, and playful to increase reader engagement.  Include personal stories.  Show what is interesting to you, and connect the dots to form patterns.  Use metaphors, interesting vocabulary, and cultural references to bring life to your writing.

IPO-able ideas

We teach the concept of Idea Public Offerings (IPOs) in Newsletter Launchpad.  Newsletters are a safe space where you can incubate ideas until they’re ready for public dissemination.  We’ll go deeper into this concept in the course.  IPOs build your audience because they’re the ideas that you stand for.  Scan your newsletter for them.  Another way to think about them: What ideas are in your newsletter that you would bring up at the dinner table?

Rhetoric - Pathos - Ethos - Logos

The core concepts of Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric, the science of persuasion. Pathos - emotion. Ethos - authority. Logos - logic. You don’t need all three, but you need at least one in order to persuade your audience.

Newsletter of the Week:

Alex & Books writes a weekly newsletter where he summarizes one book, gives advice, suggests 3 podcasts, and gives a reading lesson and a quote. If you look at his newsletter through the five lenses, what do you see?

Tip of the Week:

Half the fun of a newsletter is hearing from your friends. Ask your readers what they thought of your newsletter. And make sure you reply.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

The Role of Randomness

Louie and Chris internalized the role of randomness in our creative projects from Daniel Vassallo’s course “Portfolio of Small Bets.” 

Most people assume that the world is predictable and that results are guaranteed if you follow a plan well enough. Daniel says that the real world is usually not like this. 

Success is mostly randomly determined.

Power Laws and Pareto’s Law dominate in many creative fields and entrepreneurship. With such wide ranges in outcomes, the vast majority fail. 

But the successes have huge upsides. The winners can pay for all the losses.

Venture Capital is a good example of this. Most businesses fail, so venture capitalists pepper their investments across many businesses; the few that succeed pay for all the losers. The film industry is another example. The studios may fund many films only to have a few make all their money. Venture Capitalists and Film studios don’t put all their eggs in one basket.

So what does randomness have to do with newsletters? Well, newsletters fall into that same type of creative work and business world that the VCs and Film Studios have figured out how to tame.

Instead of fighting randomness, let randomness work for you. 

To give yourself as many opportunities as possible to succeed with newsletters and to take advantage of randomness:

1. Consistently publish every week.

2. Breaking up your newsletter into modules can give you multiple chances to succeed each week

3. Multiple shares within each module also create more opportunities.

4. Make your newsletter skimmable so that the losses can be skipped and your winners can pay for those losses. Have clear delineations between modules. If your reader is getting bored, make it easier for them to skip ahead than delete.

5. Keep the effort bar low - remember effort alone does not determine success. You can spend 10 hours writing your newsletter and it could still be a miss. Your modules should be on content that you regularly consume to reduce that effort and make it easy. Surprisingly this seems to increase your odds of producing hits.

6. Positive feedback tells you where to focus. When you are winning, it’s easy to double down, you need to get to some writing and some shares that are winners. Then you can figure out what works and take advantage and produce more of that.

The goal of any newsletter ought to be to provide something of value to your reader in every issue; by doing that, you will become top of mind to your readers and create opportunities for yourself.

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion

For those who are already convinced that a newsletter is valuable and want to start one or fairly recently started one, The Newsletter Launchpad Cohort 2 will start on September 13th. There are only two days left to sign up.

​​Our live course will go deeper on these concepts, and the goal will be to publish your newsletter weekly and get direct feedback from us and the community. You will get the content flywheel spinning and get the reps in. We will focus on removing the obstacles until publishing a newsletter is easy, and then we work on improving your newsletter.

​Louie and Chris will give personal feedback on the first four editions of your newsletter. In the live classes, we will workshop your newsletters - suggestions on modules, highlight IPO-able ideas, and clarify your arguments.

You will also be a part of a community of people that want to succeed with newsletters long term.

Newsletter of the Week:

Josh Spector’s For the Interested, comes out every week on Saturday. He shares 5 pieces on content creation and 2 pieces of his own content (tweets or essays). He has another module that’s sponsored content, which is usually tools that he uses. And he ends with a quick final lesson.

On top of this weekly newsletter, he sends a daily email - one short share of useful or inspiring content. This is optional, you can opt-out of the daily. But it’s so short.

Josh Spector is increasing the chances of you finding something useful through him. And he makes it low cost, low downside. If you find one interesting thing a week out of all the items he’s shared, he will probably gain credibility with you.

His content is easily consumable and you can opt-out. It’s high upside, low downside. He’s letting randomness work for him.

Tip of the Week:

Form a newsletter mastermind group with other early newsletter creators. Not only can you share feedback, but you can all learn from the experiments the other members conduct.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

What if I Have No Credibility?

In our previous issue, we discussed how proof of an accomplishment is the best way to establish Credibility on the internet. And with strangers. 

Everyone wants to know how you did what you did, but only after they trust that you did it.

But what if you feel like you haven't "accomplished" much, don't have receipts to provide, or aren't comfortable sharing proof?

First, Chris and Louie from the Newsletter Launchpad believe everyone has been up to something and has something to share. It's just that most people aren't placing the right value on their achievements or have fears about sharing them.

But since our beliefs are out of the scope of this edition, we will give you a few other ways you can get Credibility with strangers.

Some alternatives:

1. Credibility by Referral - Like when a friend recommends a plumber, you're relying on someone else's judgment. People with Credibility on a topic on the internet can willingly lend you Credibility; it can be something as simple as a retweet, a like, comment, or any sort of amplification. That amplification signals to their followers that they can trust you know your stuff on the topic. Credible people don't do this willy-nilly, just like your friend would be afraid to recommend you a bad plumber. Saying someone is good when they aren't would hurt their own Credibility. So this is another way to establish Credibility in a networked world.

2. Borrowed Credibility w/ Permission - You can borrow someone else's Credibility by referencing their material or working with them. Eric Jorgenson writing the Navalmanack is a great example of this. Eric compiled this book out of all the material Naval Ravikant generated. By organizing and compiling the knowledge, he added value to a body of work that already had huge Credibility. Other examples are working with a "name" corporation or credible people on a topic.

3. Borrowed Credibility without Permission - You can also borrow Credibility from credible people without anyone's permission. Referencing sources of knowledge does not require explicit permission. In fact, much of the internet is permissionless. This means you can curate someone's work without working with them directly. They may or may not choose to amplify you, but it does not matter because you are referencing their material, like an essay for school.

4. Certification or a prestigious program - A degree from a high-status school, completion of a well-known program - for example, Google or Microsoft certifications. The internet has similar clubs popping up; for example, being selected as a Mentor for a course like Write of Passage establishes Credibility with a small group of high-caliber people. Or teaching something in the Small Bets community again establishes Credibility with a group of high-caliber people.

5. Respected Media - If you're featured or mentioned in media, this can give you Credibility. For example, Forbes 30 under 30.

6. Do It Live - And finally, if you really feel you don't have much from the past to draw from to establish Credibility, you can establish Credibility by building in public. That is by sharing every single step, everything you are doing. By sharing failures and wins, the network has memory; if enough nodes on the network see you do a thing live, they will like, comment, and retweet when you speak on that topic, and you will be credible on it. For example, if you want to be credible in coding but have never coded, start coding and sharing everything you are learning all along the way. Share code snippets, talk about what you built, and so on. Given enough of this, it will be impossible to say you are not credible. Of course, this can take a while, but it works.

These are just a few of the ways you can establish Credibility on the internet and with strangers. We may have missed other ways, but pick a way to do it and get it done.

Remember that without establishing Credibility with strangers on the internet, they may not pay attention to you. Your content will come off as asking; asking content usually goes ignored. 

We have dedicated two issues just to this topic because we feel it's that important, especially to grow the newsletter.

A Little Shameless Self-Promotion

Next week we will have a free webinar on newsletters. If you decide to join us, you can expect to learn why we believe starting a newsletter is valuable. And what you can expect to get out of starting a newsletter. We will run it twice so folks that may not be able to make one night can attend the other on Tuesday, Sept 6th, and Thursday, Sept 8th at 8:00 PM EST.

You can sign up here for Tuesday or here or Thursday for the free webinar.

For those who are already convinced that a newsletter is valuable and want to start one or fairly recently started one, The Newsletter Launchpad Cohort 2 will start on September 13th. In that live course, you will get all of our lessons on newsletters live and hands-on feedback twice a week for 3 weeks. You will also be a part of a community of people that want to succeed with newsletters long term.

Newsletter of the Week:

Two examples of credibility in the newsletter world:

Hacker Newsletter - Hacker News, by YCombinator, aggregates technology articles and is read by millions of people. This newsletter curates “the best” of those articles. Hacker Newsletter uses the credibility of Hacker News to produce a product for those who want exposure to the Hacker News content, but don’t have the time to wade through the firehose.

Substack - Substack has a recommendation engine for newsletter writers to recommend other newsletters. It’s a great discovery engine and works on the referral principle we mentioned above.

Tip of the Week:

Don’t be afraid to experiment with your modules. If one module feels tedious, maybe leave it out. If you’re excited about something, maybe share it. We’re not saying to constantly experiment, but don’t have the thinking that your format is locked in stone.

Establish Credibility

Trust is everything. It is everything in any relationship, not just in online ones. 

And credibility is the key to the kingdom of trust. If people don't trust you, you might as well not say anything because they won't pay attention. We don't buy from brands we don't trust, we stop working for bosses we don't trust, and the list goes on.

How can you gain credibility in the Online Game? How can you get credibility on social platforms with algorithms, so people decide to subscribe to your newsletter and listen to you? 

There are a few ways. But one powerful way is to show proof that you accomplished something. If you want to talk about writing, or give writing advice, show what you've written. If you want to talk about getting in shape, show your exercise routine and maybe a body picture or two to prove it. Show videos of you working out. That's hard proof. Louie talks about engineering career progression, and he shared his promotions and once even shared his pay stubs. Proof cuts through the noise.

Going back to last week's lesson on "Giving vs. Asking," if you are not credible, you're asking, not giving to people. Even if you follow the three ways of giving that we touched on, but you have no credibility; you're asking, not giving. 

Why would this be the case? Because when no one knows you know something, you are asking them to go verify that you aren't full of crap. There is so much noise and so many people giving advice that have no business giving certain advice that readers have become allergic to it. 

Think about it, if I'm not a software engineer, but I give you ten reasons to choose Ruby over Python, you're still going to need to do more research before making that decision.

But you can trust my advice without verifying if I've written a few books on programming languages or have a software engineer-focused newsletter. And I can prove that to you.

Next time we will go over other ways to gain credibility, such as by saying other credible nodes in the network say we are credible. Sort of like the way you would recommend a friend for a job.

While the newsletter launchpad is much more focused on starting a newsletter and sticking with it, the internet game becomes important because it is where we will go to get our readers. Most of the people that land on your newsletter you will already have established credibility with, or they wouldn't let you into their private space, their inbox.

And if you want to learn more about these concepts and growing on Social Media and want to go much deeper, Daniel Vassallo's course on how to build a Twitter audience is the gold standard, and at $25, we highly recommend it as a baseline.

Newsletter of the Week:

Josh Spector has a ton of credibility on newsletters.

1. He has 23.5k followers on Twitter

2. 19k subscribers to his newsletter.

3. He has articles on entrepreneurship, newsletter growth, productivity, social media, and writing tips.

4. He has 324 issues of his newsletter, all available at a click.

5. He constantly tweets and engages about newsletters

Because of this massive amount of credibility that Josh has built up, he doesn’t need to announce his credentials every time he says something. His audience has already bought in.

Tip of the Week:

Don’t be afraid to skip a module! If it’s a difference between missing a module and missing a whole edition of your newsletter, you can always skip a module every so often and come back to it the next week.

The Internet Game: Give vs. Ask Ratio

Social Media is a lot like real life but taken to its extremes. 

To succeed wildly on Social Media it's important to give way more than you ask. 

But first, let's get into what is giving and what is asking?

Giving is adding value. According to Ed Latimore, there are three ways you can add value to other people:

1. Educate

2. Inspire

3. Entertain

Educating is giving. It is one of the simpler ways to add value because you're fixing problems and teaching someone to do a skill.

Inspiration is giving. Inspiration encourages someone to do something they aren't inclined to do. Chris was inspired to go to Hawaii after a friend told him about the amazing things he did there. You can inspire people in a lot of different ways. You can inspire them to take action and exercise; you can inspire them to start a business; you can inspire them to start something they would have never thought to do before they saw you succeed with it. 

Entertainment is giving. We all value things that put a smile on our face, make us feel awe, or just grab our attention. Just look at how valuable companies that entertain us like Netflix and Disney are.

What's asking? 

You can think of asking as anything that's not giving. That sounds ambiguous so let's get more concrete.

Asking ranges from asking people to buy a product to take some action, doing some research, and so on. Asking can also be talking about things you know nothing about. It can be talking about things you aspire to learn but have not learned yet. Why is that asking? Well, because you are asking your audience to do their research to determine if your statement is accurate. 

That's why giving is when you truly know the thing you are talking about. And you genuinely want to give it away so others get something without expecting a return. Most people are reluctant to do this, but Social Media is just like real life taken to its extremes. The more you can give, the more you will succeed.

So what's a good ratio of Giving vs. Asking on Social Media? 

After all, we all get on Social Media because WE want to get something out of it. But people on Social Media care very little about what you want and very much about what they need. 

Gary Vee and Sahil Lavingia, two very successful Social Media entrepreneurs, will tell you that a good ratio of Giving vs. Asking is 20:1. That is, give twenty times before you ask for one thing. But, the better your relationship with your audience, the lower that ratio can be. This is why the newsletter has a different Give vs. Ask ratio than traditional Social Media. You can succeed at much lower ratios in a Newsletter because you already have high credibility with the people there.

That is, you can ask more frequently; the better you know your audience. So it's easier to ask in your newsletter than on Twitter.

If you want to learn more about these concepts and growing on Social Media, Daniel Vassallo's course on how to build a Twitter audience is the gold standard, and at $25, we highly recommend it as a baseline. It will help you even with newsletters because the concepts apply to all social channels.

Newsletter of the Week:

In For the Interested, Josh Spector shares five items every week. In the last two weeks, these are the 10 items he’s shared.

1. How To Get The Right Clients

2. A Master Class In Content Creation Systems

3. 34 Ways To Make Money As A Creator

4. How To Overcome Your Fear And Make Authentic Video Content

5. 10 Frameworks That Make It Easy To Write High-Converting Copy

6. How To Sell Without Feeling Fake

7. How To Define Your Niche

8. How Amanda Natividad Went From 1K to 60K Twitter Followers In A Year

9. 8 Questions To Help You Get Clarity About Your Business

10. How To Sell Your Newsletter

Notice that six starts with “How,” obviously educating the reader. In fact, Josh uses “how” seventeen times in these two newsletters. Three other items are lists, which provide solutions, and the tenth is a “Master Class.” Every single item Josh shares is Giving.

In the two newsletters, Josh had one Ask, which was to subscribe to his new podcast. And if you’re a regular subscriber who loves his content, you might not even consider that an Ask; you might think it’s another Give!

Tip of the Week:

Differentiate your newsletter by having an emoji in the Subject Line! Sometimes it’s hard to stand out in an inbox; a colorful emoji is an easy way to catch someone’s eye.

Introduction to The Internet Game

Playing the Internet Game is what we call interacting with and posting on any platform that has network effects and algorithms. Social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok all have network effects and algorithms and fall into this bucket.

Louie has increased his Twitter following to over 18,000 playing this game. And recently, his LinkedIn following to over 6,000. Many of these followers follow him for his expertise in engineering management, newsletters, real estate, and his recent journey into entrepreneurship.

We call it a game because you can't take it too seriously. And if you're not having fun, what's the point? Not only will you not play the game well, but you likely won't last long enough to have any meaningful success in it.

We also call it a game because trial and error is a prerequisite. The only way to succeed in the Internet Game is by trying things out and having fun.

But even though this game is silly, it has rules, and the impact of success is very serious. And just because you may learn the rules, it doesn't mean you will be able to play well on day 1. Mastering this game takes reps.

Your newsletter has no algorithm and weak to no network effects. This is good and bad; on one hand, everyone that subscribes to you is guaranteed to get your content. This is not true on places like Twitter. Even if you have 18k followers on Twitter, as Louie does, there is no guarantee that the algorithm will allow 18k impressions of any tweet. 

On the other hand, this is bad because platforms like Twitter have network effects and algorithms - they can showcase your content to many strangers. This is how your audience grows. When strangers see it, they may decide they like you and follow your journey.

So the answer is to do both. To play the internet game well, you can experiment in your newsletter where the rules are very flexible, and you control everything. Then you take ideas that resonated and bring them as native posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on. If you recall last week's lesson, we call this an Idea Public Offering.

The ideas that resonate well in places with Network Effects and Algorithms can lead to more people seeing them. The people that really like it then can decide to join your private newsletter where you own everything.

To play well in these public places with network effects and algorithms, one should play by the rules as much as possible.

There are three guiding principles or rules to the internet game:

1. Have a high Give/Ask Ratio

This means giving stuff you know well away and not asking people to do research or click on things.

2. Establish Credibility

This means people need to know you know the stuff. If you talk about stuff you don't know well or have no credibility in, you are asking people to research and ensure your posts are accurate.

3. Understand the role of Randomness

Understand that even if you follow all of the rules and play the game super well, there is still no guarantee that your content will do well. That's because the right people that are into that topic have to see it. The right people have to believe you are credible before they amplify it, and so on, among many other factors.

Over the next three weeks, we'll explore these three topics in depth. 

But if you are interested in playing the internet game well, Daniel Vassallo has a course on how to build a Twitter audience. It is excellent and applicable to anything with algorithms and network effects. We highly recommend it as a way to go deeper into this topic.

Newsletter of the Week:

Josh Spector is an expert at the Internet Game. We’ll be using his newsletter, For the Interested, to demonstrate the Internet Game in the coming weeks.

Tip of the Week:

Get feedback before you send! Ask a friend to take a look at your newsletter and provide feedback and advice. An objective point of view can help you communicate to your audience.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

Our personal newsletters:

The M&Ms Newsletter
Unknown Unknowns

Multiple Modules - Can’t I Just Write an Essay Every Week?

In an earlier edition, we explained the module strategy but never explained why we think it’s such a great strategy. 

To recap: The module strategy is a way to construct your newsletter out of various parts, like legos. If you watch many YouTube videos, you may want to include a curated module on YouTube videos each week. There is a lot of value in good curation; it could be tweets, essays, or books. If you enjoy drawing, you may include a module on that. The module possibilities your newsletter could be made out of are endless.

We believe there are three big advantages to this strategy.

Advantage number one is that different modules appeal to different people. Each module is a chance to engage with your audience. Your audience doesn’t need to like every module; as long as they get value from one module, they will appreciate your newsletter.

Advantage number two, with multiple modules, there’s less pressure to write a perfect newsletter. Many newsletters consist of a single essay. While these can be great, it’s a lot of pressure to write an interesting essay every week. It’s easy to procrastinate and not ship due to perfectionism.

Lastly, modules create a structure for your newsletter. With modules, you know exactly what content to collect during the week. And if you follow our recommendations, that content is based on things that you already consume and enjoy. We believe in making the newsletter fit your lifestyle, so you can stick with it and keep publishing week after week.

These module constraints will fuel your creativity and make it easier to ship your newsletter every week.

Newsletters of the Week:

Alina Okun’s Can Do newsletter is a fantastic well of inspiration. She has four modules in her newsletter. An update on her Portfolio Career, an article, a quote, and a tweet.

Alina views her career as a portfolio. She divides her career into five buckets: DAO’s, writing, mentoring, Small Bets, and advising. She will always be able to give an update on one of these aspects every week.

The article that she shares is usually career-focused. This week it was Sam Altman’s essay “How to be Successful.”

The quote and the tweet are likewise inspirational.

Alina gives the reader four chances to be inspired. If just one works, she’s succeeded.

Each module also fits her lifestyle. Alina can easily give an update on one of the areas in her Portfolio Career each week. Likewise, because she’s a prolific reader, she’ll have an article, a quote, and a tweet easily at hand every week.

The pseudonymous newsletter, Liberty’s Highlights also uses a variety of modules to please different audiences. He starts off with a series of short hits (quotes, links to essays, thoughts). Liberty then has three main modules: 🏦 💰 Liberty Capital 💳 💴, 🧪🔬 Liberty Labs 🧬 🔭, and 🎨 🎭 Liberty Studio 👩‍🎨 🎥. Sometimes he calls them Business & Investing, Science & Technology, and The Arts & History (I don’t know why he switches between the headers). These modules are more in-depth thoughts on news and essays in these three areas. Given the wide range of topics, it’s very likely Liberty’s audience will find something interesting in these modules.

Tip of the Week:

Clearly demarcate your modules. It makes it easier for skimmers to know when to pay attention to a new section.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

Our personal newsletters:

Memes & Motivations
Unknown Unknowns (link fixed)

Newsletters with a Narrow Focus

The common advice to those just starting with online writing is "find your niche," and you'll succeed. This advice has merit because the internet is so large even a tiny niche can attract tons of readers and followers.

In fact, it's counterintuitive, but the more specific your writing becomes, the more likely your readers are to feel like a piece of content was written just for them.

Our advice to creators starting out is to bend the newsletter to their lifestyle, not the other way around. But there is nothing wrong with bending the newsletter to a specific and tiny part of your lifestyle if you enjoy it so much that you know you'll be able to stick with it.

Newsletters can be broad or narrow in terms of topics, and both can work very well. They can focus on one, some, or all of your interests.

Our examples so far have been broad. But we have plenty of examples of newsletters that are very narrow in focus that succeed.

Like this newsletter you are reading now, which is just about starting and succeeding with newsletters. And we have other examples from students of the Newsletter Launchpad starting and sticking with one focus.

This begs the question, are there any special considerations for newsletters with a narrow focus?

We know that your readers sign up for your newsletter for a reason. They expect you to entertain, educate, inspire, or provide solutions. When your newsletter has a narrow focus, your readers want to learn about that topic.

It's a constraint, but it's also direction.

In the Newsletter Launchpad, we believe in using the lens of "Giving vs. Asking" when judging your content. We will write about this more in future editions, but when you write on a topic you know and understand well, that is very clear "Giving" to your readers. Modern readers on the internet are pressed for time, but they all love receiving and hate when you ask them to do something.

So from that lens, what can you teach your readers about that subject? What is the latest news in the area? What are use cases? How can your readers apply the lessons to their projects?

Newsletters with a narrow focus make the need for your newsletter to "give to the reader" much more vital.

You need to consider how each piece of your newsletter is relevant to your reader and make it easy for the reader to digest.

Don't make the reader do homework or research to figure out if you are full of crap or know your stuff.

So "pick your niche" is good advice if you know, love, and can stick with something. But if you don't know what niche to pick, that's ok too. A broad newsletter that spans many topics can also be a great way to find your niche and later double down on what works. Like we have with the Newsletter Launchpad.

But remember that the most important thing by far is starting and sticking with your writing. If we put a single topic vs. multi-topic newsletter debate on a scale and compare it to publishing, they don't weigh anywhere near the same. Publishing weighs a ton, and the topic weighs a pound.

Newsletters of the Week:

Anish Dalal has a newsletter called Applied NLP with Anish. He does a great job of showing how NLP (Natural Language Processing) is relevant to his readers. This is an exciting area, as you can see by the debate over Google’s AI sentience. In his last issue, Anish showed a use case for semantic search and explained why his favorite article of the week is pertinent to the reader.

The Tone Knob newsletter focuses on brand voice. Nick Parker drills down on a brand every week, showing how brands communicate and the reasons behind specific branding. He finishes every newsletter with three lessons that you can apply to your own branding.

Tip of the Week:

Many newsletter readers skim through newsletters. Summarizing what they will learn in the beginning or what they have learned in the end can cause the reader to read more closely.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

Our personal newsletters:

Memes & Motivations
Unknown Unknowns

Types of Modules

Last week, we introduced the concept of the Minimum Viable Newsletter. The idea is to fit the newsletter to your lifestyle, not the other way around, so you can stick with it.

The best way we have found to create the minimum newsletter is to break it down into parts. Each part of your newsletter you can think of as a module.

You should be able to fill in your modules easily each week. You can think of the modules themselves as things you are already into and do regularly. For example, if you watch many YouTube videos regularly, bookmark and share the best one. If you consume a lot of tweets, share the best ones. This newsletter itself is constructed with three modules: "The Lesson of the week," "The Newsletter of the week," and "The tip of the week."

At first sight, you may not think there is a lot of value in that. But we know from experience that curating and sharing the best things with your close circle of followers leads to conversations and new ideas. It also leads to a publishing cadence and a newsletter you can stick with.

We gave some examples of modules we've seen in the wild, but let's dive deeper into a few others.

A Curation Module: Probably the most popular module we have seen and one of the easiest to do. Curation is simply linking to content that you consume regularly. For example, the list is endless: YouTube videos, Tweets, podcasts, a chapter in a book, essays. A simple enhancement to this module that leads to more conversations and ideas is adding commentary - why do you find this content interesting? What did you learn from it?

A Module with your own writing: Another popular module is your own writing. Use your newsletter and captive audience to showcase your own writing. Your audience has subscribed for a reason - give them what they came for. If you have an older essay, a recent tweet thread, or something else, link to it and tell people why they should read it.

A Recipes module: Do you cook every week? Share a picture and the recipe. Cooking is an aspirational skill for many people. Your cooking skill level is always higher than you think. Where did you find the recipe? Is there an interesting story there? A childhood memory or a special occasion? Nothing connects people like food.

A Drawings Module: Draw every week? Share a drawing. People love seeing expertise. Don't think you're an expert at drawing? You're an expert to those just starting out on the journey. Besides, this doesn't have to be drawing; it can be any creative hobby that you do.

A Module With Use Cases: If you write on a specific topic, a module of examples of use cases in your topic would be interesting and engaging to readers. Abstract theory may be interesting, but nothing like seeing the topic in real life grabs attention. In the same way that stories make writing interesting, Use Cases make your topic more interesting. Share your use cases with your newsletter readers.

A Solutions Module: A problem you came across/solved. Everyone has problems that come up, and most of these problems are relatable to other people. If you've figured out a solution, it's broadly interesting.

These are just some examples. The key is to see what is happening in your life and use it. Think of your newsletter as a log of your interests. The most important thing about your modules are that they come from your life. It's recording your life, not producing more content.

Newsletters of the Week:

Here are two newsletters that showcase the use of modules.

Newsletter Adventure with Christine has three modules - (1) a short essay, (2) Building in Public, (3) Weekly Resources and Lessons

Christine starts off with a short essay reflecting on a recent event in her life.  This week, it was on the courses that she’s signed up for.  Her second module is called “Building in Public” where she recaps the progress she’s made in her projects.  Finally, she has a module called “Weekly Resources and Lessons”.  In this section, she shares a link in three areas that are important to her: Fitness, Writing, and Life.

The Middle Way by Christian Champ also demonstrates a wide range of modules.  Christian has four modules: (1) an essay, (2) Things to Think About, (3) Things to Listen, See, and Watch, (4) Words of Wisdom

Christian writes an essay every newsletter.  This week’s was on how doing hard things makes your life easier in the long run.  His second module, Things to Think About, curates essays that he finds interesting.  He adds commentary on why it’s interesting to him and how he applies the ideas.  His third module, “Things to Listen, See, and Watch” is a curation of twitter threads, podcasts, and YouTube videos, again with commentary.  He skipped this module this week.  Finally, he ends with Words of Wisdom, a collection of quotes with no commentary.

Tip of the Week:

Emojis!  Emojis are a great way to catch your reader’s eye.  They can interrupt skimming, mark where there’s a new section, and insert some emotion.  You can see examples of all of these in both Christine’s and Christian’s newsletters.

Thank you for reading. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two.

Louie & Chris

P.S. you can respond directly to this email. We read every reply. We'd love to hear from you.

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