🔶 7 things I learned from writing a weekly newsletter for one year

For a little over one year, I've been writing the News Alchemists newsletter, a curation of links to make you think and give you hope about reimagining journalism in a people-centric direction.

It's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

In this post, I share 7 things I've learned so far.

1️⃣ You need to make it easy. Like, very easy.

About a decade ago, I spent six months in Southeast Asia on a solo backpacking trip. I decided to write a blog to document the adventure, and I was very committed.

I wrote five posts before the trip even started. Then one post per week in the first month or so. Then the frequency quickly faded as the trip went on, and in the last two months I wrote only once.

Five years later I decided to quit a job without a new one lined up, and what did I do? I started a newsletter to talk about it, of course. But mindful of the blogging experience, I set out to outsmart myself: no long-term commitment I won't be able to maintain, I'm only going to write this newsletter for twelve weeks.

Couldn't even do that. After just four weeks, I couldn't keep up with the every-other-week rhythm. Nine editions in, I stopped writing altogether.

Fast forward to February 2025, when I decided to start writing the News Alchemists newsletter. I knew one thing: if I don't make it easy on myself, this is not going to last.

I needed to 'template it' to avoid staring every week at a blank canvas. Enter the "seven links to make you think and give you hope" format, which makes starting the writing process feel more like a drag-and-drop exercise, bypassing the blank canvas fear entirely.

How do I know it worked? To my amazement, I have not skipped a single week yet, except for when I took time off from work.

2️⃣ Numbers lie. All the time.

I am a data nerd. I have spreadsheets for everything. The books I read. My finances. How my body weight changes day after day. (I know, it's weird.)

No surprise then that I run my newsletter's operations mostly through a spreadsheet that currently has... [counting]... [still counting]... twenty-four different tabs.

Of those tabs, the one I spend most time looking at and updating is all about the analytics: open rates, click rates, click-to-open rates, number of new subscribers, how many people unsubscribe, etc.

And yet that's exactly the tab that lies to me most often.

Take open rates: they are generally understood to be unreliable because of a mix of privacy and security factors that contribute to somehow overestimating and underestimating open rates at the same time.

Example: readers who allegedly click on links in your email... without even opening said email.

And if readers use a tool like Readwise, good luck to you. No matter how many emails they're opening, the open rate is always 0%:

How about click rates, you ask? Exaggerated by bots clicking on every single link as soon as the newsletter lands in someone's inbox.

Even growth numbers lie in their own way.

I've been saying for over two months that I am at "almost 1,000 subscribers". What's happening? Is nobody signing up for my newsletter anymore?

Nop. It's just that Ghost (the CMS I use to send the newsletter) becomes more expensive once you cross the 1,000 threshold, so I started cleaning the mailing list more aggressively. What would be the point of paying extra for inactive subscribers who haven't opened any emails in over twelve months?

Makes sense, right? And yet it looks like the newsletter has stopped growing, which can be detrimental when trying to attract advertisers.

The moral of the story is: whether you're writing a newsletter or following someone who does, take numbers with a pinch of salt. Focus instead on the quality of the content, on the engagement with readers, and on the value the newsletter creates for the people who read it and engage with it.

3️⃣ There's so much more to do than "writing it"

The title I gave to this article is a little misleading: the actual writing amounts to no more than 40% of the time I spend on the newsletter. The other 60% includes:

• Researching and saving stuff to include in the newsletter;
• Monitoring its performance in the CMS;
• Promoting the newsletter on social media (mostly LinkedIn) and other channels;
• Reading about new trends, tools, and strategies to grow and optimise newsletters;
• Looking for sponsors and advertisers (Is that you?);
• Keeping the newsletter's website clean and tidy;
• Constantly optimising the infrastructure that powers the newsletter behind the scenes;
• And so. Much. More.

The most time-consuming aspect about writing a newsletter running a newsletter business though? Engaging with readers. And yet...