Hey Reader!

Ok, so I subscribe to a LOT of newsletters.

• Tips on living with ADHD (I’m not diagnosed, but suspicious).
• An overview of recently published novels (TBR list is longer than my commute).
• A link roundup from an ultramarathoner (don’t have to do it if I read about it).

So, yeah, I hear from a lot of experts on the regular.

Recently I realized that the newsletters I’ve stuck with over the years have this in common: they look the same every week.

Not to say I don’t hear from their authors at other times, in other formats.

But their basic, regular, this-is-the-one-I-signed-up-for email uses a very solid, unchanging template.

• One is a list of eight literary things.

A weird word of the week, a quote, an offer - and then five other things, mostly with links.

• Another offers job leads for writers.

It goes like this: intro, tell your friends about this newsletter, opportunities of the week, tip of the week, sign off. Sometimes short, sometimes long, but the intro, outro, and three headers are always there, in the same order.

• My fave is a progressive thinker's link roundup. (This newsletter has 50,000 subscribers and has been going out weekly since 2013! That’s some serious longevity in this realm.)

It includes a picture, an intro, a section that links to articles, a secret treat for subscribers, a look & listen section, and classified ads. And? Sometimes some other sections.

That’s the beauty of a template; it can include all the things you MIGHT want to use, even if you decide not to.

I don’t know if these newsletters started with the exact structure I see now; they may have iterated and landed on the thing that worked best.

(I’m guessing that none of them have the gene I carry that demands that I change EVERYTHING at least once per annum.😬)

But whether or not their frameworks are the ‘best’, they work. And how lovely to pull up a tried and true template and just… fill it in.

It just so happens that I have a Newsletter Template Pack with a BUNCH of templates all set up for you.

Promoting your podcast? I’ve got one for that. Nurturing your audience? My favorite template. Sending a tip of the week? Got you covered.

If you like to nurture your audience one week and promote your Youtube channel the next, use them both.

In addition to made-for-you templates I’ve put together a menu of every potential newsletter section I can think of so you can build your own.

Plus a lot of tips about just generally making your email look and read better.

I talk a LOT about consistency, and using a template is a great tool for staying on it. It’s not exactly fill-in-the-blank, but having a roadmap definitely helps.

​Start with a template and you’ll never have to stare at an empty page again.

Yours in sustained effort,

Julia

PS - those newsletter are: Scribbling Buddha by April Dávila, Amber Petty, and The Ann Friedman Weekly.

PPS - definitely subscribe to those, but get yourself those templates first.

​Daft Punk is getting better and faster and so is this email. Forward it to someone who’s ready to go for broke.

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