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I didn’t work from cafés for 45 days for some reason.

But I visited two cute cafés this week, making me realize how much I missed hanging out with my friends. Something new I learned about coffee:

Anyway - Getting to biz, I felt it’s been a while I wrote a crowdsourced issue. So I messaged in Insiders and other communities I am part of.

I asked everyone the same question: “Ask me anything about newsletters,” and I am glad the members patiently listed their questions.

I have categorized the questions into Setup, Management, Writing, Growth, and Monetization. I will address them in that order. I’ll keep them short and more importantly, actionable.

And and anddd…

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Setup (Stuff you need to figure out before starting a newsletter)

We have said no to our 30+ Dopeletters cohort applicants because we felt they were not ready to start their newsletter yet. This is because I believe you need one of these two things to start a newsletter:

A. Social capital or digital footprints:

You need a decent personal brand that acts as your Top of the Funnel (ToFu) or you should be super active in communities (people who know your expertize.)

Social media/Digital footprints act as channels for your rented audience and newsletters are placed at a step higher with an owned audience (email lists) or monetized audience (premium subs, selling ebooks, etc.)

Meaning: It is difficult to acquire subscribers initially if you don’t have an authoritative social presence (or even in the offline world if you can’t have access to people)

B. Money

Organic growth is one end of the spectrum. But if you are ready to invest money starting up, you’re ready to start a newsletter.

This includes acquiring email lists, running ads, investing in Beehiiv boosts, influencer marketing, etc.

PS: Make sure you have figured out your niche, validated your structure, showed sample content to your ideal audience, and have your goals in place before you put in the real money.

A. Cognition:

I was always into documentation. I like reviewing my processes and drawing a thesis on what worked and didn’t work.

From Monday to Friday, I worked on my content and freelancing. Then I reviewed my week and action plans for the following week.

I posted my insights every Saturday on Linkedin. I used to get into details (like I still do today), and it made the posts inevitably long on social media.

I knew the content was of high value, but the social media attention span and the content volume were such that posts greater than 500 words couldn’t survive. Especially when I hardly had 1000 followers.

I started looking for a place where people are comfortable reading long-form content and is not controlled by any algorithm. Revue was the most happening newsletter platform back then on Twitter (now it’s shut down), so I started documenting my learnings on Revue - and called it Cognition.

B. Vikra’s Café

One day it hit me that I have made all my online personality about content and freelancing, which is sooooo unlike me. I am a person of multiple interests, and I have so many fun and interesting perspectives to share with my friends, more than just talking about work.

There was a little self-doubt attached as well. I was like, “Who would want to read about where I travel to, what I watch, what my opinions are on different things are, what I do in my life, etc.?”

Surprisingly people love reading it every week.

I will always suggest writing to ONE audience if profitability is your goal. It’s not a secret that money is in the niches and more specific audience you have, the longer commitments you get from brands (and higher.)

In my case, I have divided my newsletter into two categories:

1. Everything about work: Cognition

2. Everything else apart from work: Vikra’s Café

It’s as simple as that. I have written 20+ sponsored Cognition issues and 5+ sponsored Vikra’s Café issues - and I have started monetizing both simultaneously. So that tells a story.

PS: It doesn’t mean you can’t monetize and attain profitability with broader newsletters like Vikra’s Café. Sponsorships might not contribute to major revenue and retention will be a problem. But you gotta do more - my next stop for Vikra’s Café is an ebook for less than INR 500.

This purely depends on how aligned the reader personas are.

I define marketing as a niche and writing as a sub-niche. Saas product copywriting would be a micro niche. So within the broad range of niches and subniches, it’s totally fine if you club 2-3 reader personas.

For example, Cognition has three primary personas: Content creators, Business writers, and Freelancers. Consider these as sub-niches. On a broader spectrum, clubbing three personas comes under either content marketing or service-based businesses. You can do it because it’s still relevant if not directly useful to your readers.

But I can never write for marketing and entrepreneurship together. Or marketing and operations. Or marketing and tech. It’s because the audience is on different ends of the pendulum, and including more niches only makes it difficult for them to connect with one niche.

So:

I wrote this issue in 2022. I still abide by it and implement the Self-Qualification Theory. It explains how to establish authority even as small creators with our action points - what we implement daily and the results we bring.

Speaking of authority - IMO, there is one way to build authority. Results.

You do good work in your field. You bring results. You talk about your results to attract more work or audience.

It’s honestly that simple.

PS: Simple, not easy.

I am parking the issue for now because we just crossed a thousand words.

We have only covered the prerequisites. There are about ten more questions in writing, management, growth and monetization of newsletters. This might be a three-part series depending on how deep I get into each topic (it’s completely impromptu; I have no control over it. This was supposed to be a one-off issue, but here we are.)

I will see you next week 🫡