Reduce Newsletter Overwhelm

A recipe for calm

Hi there,

If you’re new here, thanks for joining me. I’m Karen and I have a $14K paid newsletter on Substack, published under my ‘real’ name Karen Constable. The newsletter you’re reading (published under a pen name) is where I share everything I have learned in my two years on the platform.

This week I want to share the method I used to avoid overwhelm when I started my paid newsletter.

High pressure beginnings

I was super-keen when I launched my newsletter! I knew there were Substack newsletters with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. I wanted to get 100,000 subscribers and 10,000 paying subscribers. (I still want that!)

Did I put pressure on myself when I launched? You betcha I did.

Was I worried about sticking to a weekly posting schedule. Absolutely terrified.

Luckily, from past experience with websites and blogging, I knew that almost no one was going to see my posts for weeks or months after I launched. This gave me confidence to be a little ‘lazy’ with my format when I was starting out.

I started my $14K newsletter with:

* no headlines (just “Issue #1, Issue #2…)

* no images

* no lead magnets

* no CTAs (call to actions)

And I still got subscribers, growth and (ultimately) revenue.

Problematic role models

Newsletter overwhelm is caused by our admiration for super-star creators who do

ALL THE THINGS

So we think we have to do all the things too: fancy logos, landing pages, optimized headlines, email banners, special offers…

But in fact…

Today’s super-star creator probably started their newsletter journey with

* inconsistent formatting

* a not-really-clear offer

* no branding

* typos and mistakes

* false-starts and missteps.

They were once where you are now. They didn’t have everything nailed right away.

You don’t have to get it all nailed right away either.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

Messy action

The solution to newsletter overwhelm is to start with an imperfect post. Follow it with another.

Just publish something. Do it regularly. This gives you practice and makes newsletter posting easier. Only after the process starts to feels easier should you start to try to optimize.

It took me FIFTY WEEKS to add headlines (before that I called each email Issue #1, Issue #2 )

It took me almost a year before I felt I could cope with writing headlines each week.

It took me 15 weeks to even have the head space to choose images. Instead, I just used a logo as the preview image for every post. Why? To keep my workload manageable each week on newsletter writing day.

Calls to action came later.

Then an optimized About Page.

Don’t get me wrong, you need these things for a successful newsletter but…. you don’t need them to be perfect when you first start out.

If I had started my newsletter, trying to write a high-quality informative post each week while also learning the tech, AND worrying about images and headlines AND stressing about the marketing, I would’ve been paralyzed with overwhelm.

A recipe for calm

Avoid overwhelm by:

- starting small;

- learning as you go;

- getting comfortable with the process;

- adding new features when you have nailed the basics;

- tweaking constantly.

Leonardo’s Mona Lisa wasn’t a masterpiece when he first put paint on the canvas. Your newsletter doesn’t have to be a masterpiece on day 1 either.

But it does need a day 1. Just get started. Grow and learn.

And your newsletter will grow with you.

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That’s it for this week. I hope this post inspires you to take off your over-thinking cap and write something. Then hit “Send”.

Have a great week,

Karen