Your newsletter doesn’t need to be a novel.

You keep meaning to start a newsletter. Then you picture another blank page to fill every week and decide that sounds like a problem for future you.

So here are some tips for future you. 

An email list gives people a way to hear from you beyond their social feeds. You don’t need a huge following or something to sell to start building that connection. But you do need to give people something valuable to keep them coming back. That doesn’t mean writing a novel for every edition.

In our recent Creator Generation conversation, we talked to Haley Janicek from Kit, who has helped some of the world’s biggest creators with their newsletter strategy. Haley recommended choosing a simple theme, making it repeatable and showing up consistently with something valuable. Just like a good mate, give people a reason to be glad they’ve heard from you.

To help you apply that advice, we’ve put together a quick exercise. Think about one useful thing you could regularly offer your audience, then finish this sentence:

“Subscribe to get ______, so you can ______.”

For a cooking creator, that could be recipes from their videos so viewers can cook without repeatedly pausing YouTube with flour on their hands.

For a filmmaker, it might be a fortnightly scene breakdown with one technique readers can try.

James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter makes its promise clear: three short ideas, two quotes and one question every Thursday. The topics change, but the structure stays familiar. Readers know what they’re signing up for and what to expect when it arrives.

Turn your promise into a simple, repeatable format. A cooking newsletter might include one recipe, a shopping list and a substitution tip. A filmmaking newsletter might break down one scene, explain a creative choice and give readers one technique to try.

Outline your first three emails using your chosen format. Note the topic and what readers will get from each, then estimate how long each email would take to put together. Use that to choose a realistic schedule. If weekly feels like too much, try fortnightly.

And keep it tight. Once you’ve delivered what you promised, stop. Short is a strength when it gives readers exactly what they came for.

Start with one useful promise and outline your first three emails. Keep it manageable enough that future you might actually thank you.

For more on building a connection through email, listen to our Creator Generation conversation with Haley Janicek from Kit.

Cheers ✌🏼 Team Changer

Join the YouTube × Tropfest Filmmaker Accelerator Workshop, powered by Changer, to explore how to build an audience and develop your business on YouTube.

Join the YouTube Mastermind Lab for News Creators, delivered by Changer in collaboration with the Google News Initiative, to strengthen your content, grow your audience and develop your business on YouTube.

Designed for independent news creators, journalists, podcasters and newsletter writers, the Lab combines a two-day Mastermind on 30 November and 1 December with eight weeks of online support and individual coaching.

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✌🏼 Changer Team