There are multiple reasons why you should start a newsletter.

You might want to share what goes on within your business. Or you might want to share insights from your work or lifestyle. It could also be that you want some way to capture your audience's attention and funnel that attention into your business.

No matter your goals with the newsletter, you can angle it toward your needs.

The 4 reasons why I started a newsletter were:

1. To practice my writing

2. To share my ideas

3. To own my audience

4. To monetize my writing

I already did 3 out of four.

I have practised my writing, shared my ideas, and moved some of my audience from social media (rented audience) into this newsletter (owned audience).

But, I never did number 4, which is the next step in my journey.

But, before we dive deeper into the four reasons, I will talk about why people fail to start a newsletter.

The number one reason I hear is that people wait for the perfect idea or, even worse, the perfect time.

Perfectionism is the enemy

One of the things that held me back for the longest time was perfectionism.

The need for every part of the newsletter to be perfect. A perfect idea, a perfect design along with perfect writing. That’s an impossible standard to have when you start anything new.

Here are 5 other things that often hold people back as well:

1. Endless planning

2. Overly critical self-evaluation

3. Negative comparison to others

4. The endless loop of analysis paralysis

5. Fear of people giving you negative criticism

The truth is it doesn’t have to be perfect.

You are allowed to practice in public.

That’s the beauty of newsletters. If people don’t like what you write, they can unsubscribe.

Look at my reasons for starting a newsletter. Maybe there’s one of those reasons you can start with. And then move on to the later ones after you get going.

Let’s tackle them one at a time:

1. Practice writing

Writing long-form content is a great way to challenge yourself to write more.

You go deeper with every idea and start to formulate your own opinions and views. You also practice to hold attention throughout longer passages of text. And to make people’s eyes keep going down the page.

So, if you want to practice your writing, newsletters are a great way to do so.

2. Share ideas

Your ideas are not necessarily for everyone.

But, by the very fact that people opt-in to read your words, they are also much more likely to be interested in your ideas. So, having a newsletter audience means you have an interested audience. An audience that’s interested in you and what you have to say.

Newsletter audiences are the most dedicated audiences.

3. Own the audience

Any social media platform could potentially be shut down tomorrow.

Your newsletter is just a collection of email addresses that could potentially live anywhere. So, apart from securing yourself against any potential shutdowns, you’re also invested in a much more intimate relationship with your audience. Your email goes directly to their inbox.

They have already invited you in, and your job is to give them a meaningful reason to stay.

4. Monetize writing

There are numerous ways to monetize a newsletter.

Such as:

1. Running a paid newsletter through something like Substack

2. Paid referrals to other newsletters (often a built-in feature with most newsletter providers)

3. Affiliate linking to Amazon products or digital products

4. Sales funnel to your own digital products

5. Promotions & sponsorships with relevant brands

Most of them require a large audience to start seeing actual income.

But some of them you could get started on right now.

I’m going to be writing more about newsletters these coming weeks as I’m preparing for the launch of my course The Newsletter Blueprint.

Along the way, I’m going to share insights as well as free giveaways.

Those can be found on X (formerly known as Twitter) as well as in this newsletter.

I hope this was helpful!

Talk to you next week.

Peter