The Hustler Dairies Part 4: Launch a Newsletter
I’d been thinking about launching a newsletter for a while, but I hadn’t done it. Now is the right time to do the thing that you’ve long thought about doing. If not now, then when? You could use the time you’ve spent thinking about not having done the thing to actually do the thing. It will be easier than you think to get it done. At least, that’s what I found when I sat down to do some research and launched my newsletter.
Do what’s easy
Let’s not make things any more complicated than they should be, shall we? After all, perfect is the enemy of good. From the outset, I figured I’d probably use Mailchimp or Substack. I was generally aware of the former, which I think is maybe better if you are a business, and I’d been reading more about the latter lately, which I think is maybe better if you are a writer. I decided to go with Substack because: it looked easy to use, it had a straightforward subscriber model, it was initially free while I was working out the kinks. From what I read, it seemed like the best thing to do was to have it be free to subscribers for at least the first 90 days. Then you can make some of it or all of it for paying subscribers. The overhead is zero.
Do something, anything
I decided to call my newsletter “The Valley.” The tagline is: “Reports from the epicenter of the universe.” You can sign up here. It’s about Los Angeles, the Valley (where I live), and my life as a writer. TBH, I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be about. So I left myself a lot of latitude to figure it out as I went along. The first one was supposed to be an introduction, “Welcome to the Valley,” but it came out sort of a hot mess. I wrote a draft of it, then butchered that, and it has kind of a Frankenstein feel. Maybe a less hearty soul would’ve given up at this point, but I’ve been a writer so long that I’ve come to expect that not everything will be perfect. Then I hit the publish button. Off I went! I was doing the thing I hadn’t been doing.
Do like a peacock
After that, I shared the link on my various social media accounts, and my buddy gave me a nice shout out, and people started signing up. What a fine thing, the internet is. One day, you are doing no newsletter. A couple hours later, you are doing a newsletter. I intend to publish them once a week, probably on Fridays. BTW, I was very inspired by photographer Noah Kalina’s newsletter, which is awesome, so sign up for his.