Knowledge is Power – Newsletter Marketing!

The Art of Selling Knowledge!

“Knowledge is power.”

— Sir Francis Bacon

In today’s world, we are flooded with information. The common method to find information is to go to Google and do a simple search.

Search has become so synonymous with Google, that we started calling the act of searching as “Googling”.

Anyways, the point I wanted to make is that information is in abundance.

Which makes finding useful content very difficult.

Since the time Google has introduced Gemini and integrated it into their search results page, the Google snippets which was a popular way of showing relevant information, has lost its relevance (at least to some extent).

You might have heard the controversy around some of the search results saying “human’s should eat more rocks to intake more nutrients” and “adding some non-toxic glue to stick cheese to pizza and prevent it from sliding off”.

But it still does help and does save you a lot of time that you will have to spend searching for information.

My go to resource to find information and learn, once used to be Google search, but with the search results showing content that isn’t always relevant, I find it increasingly difficult to find information, especially if I wanted to learn something.

Then I switched over to YouTube.

If you can spend some time there, you will be able to find some good informative videos.

(With people learning the art of gaming thumbnails and titles, and with the amount of ads that show up on videos, YouTube has also become a junkyard, at least to some extent)

That is where my newfound love came in – Newsletters.

Since the time I started reading newsletters, I have stopped wasting a lot of time on search.

Newsletters can be a really effective way to learn, get information and even run a low ticket business. Let’s explore why newsletters are valuable and how to use them effectively.

The Hidden Power of Newsletters

Newsletters provide curated, focused content.

When you sign up for a particular newsletter, you know what you are getting and it is highly likely that you will be bombarded with useless information that you will then have to skim through to find anything relevant.

There is a newsletter for pretty much everything – morning news (Morning Brew) to AI updates.

They come straight to your inbox and are simple and easy to manage –

• Sign up if you like it.
• Unsubscribe if you don’t.

This makes it easy to manage your learning sources.

And with more and more people reading newsletters and recommending them, their popularity is slowly growing. A friend or a professional recommends a newsletter, you subscribe, and the cycle continues.

Managing Newsletter Overload

Whenever I talk about newsletters, one of the most common complaint is that newsletters clutter your email.

But with a little organization, you can manage them easily.

Here’s what I follow and what I recommend:

1. Create a separate email account just for newsletters. I would recommend signing up to a new Gmail account with something like dknewsletters@gmail.com. This makes it easy to remember the email address.
2. Use this account to sign up for newsletters.
3. Read the first 2-3 editions to see if they are valuable.
4. Unsubscribe from those that aren’t.
5. Organize your newsletters into folders.

Automate Your Newsletter Management

Once again, if you are somebody who subscribes to a lot of newsletters on different topics (which is what I do), keeping up with everyone of those and skimming through the information can be challenging.

It is here that automation can help.

Automation makes handling newsletters easier.

And I am able to get to the most relevant information quickly and easily.

Here’s a system that I use and I would recommend:

1. Get tools like Readwise or Matter. You can use any reader app. The only requirement is that it should allow for sending emails to the app.
2. Forward newsletters to the reader app. You can either setup an auto forward from your Gmail account or, directly use the email that the reader app provides, to subscribe to the newsletter.

Now starts the fun part.

These reader apps have a summarizing feature (thanks to AI). At least Readwise and Matter has those, and others too should, though you will have to check.

I use Readwise. And every newsletter that is forwarded to Readwise is summarized and I get a short summary of what is included in the email.

All I do is read the summary to see if there is anything relevant for me. If there is, I read the entire newsletter, takes notes into my Notion diary and archive the newsletter.

You will need to be a little organized for this system to be effective, which is what I will show in the next step.

Weekly Review Routine

I started a weekly review routine, after I took up the “Building a Second Brain course”, sometime back.

It really helps reviewing your goals, your performance and achievements. At the same time it also help do some of the organization chores.

Add newsletters to your weekly review routine. And use it to review the information and organize.

Here’s a simple plan:

1. Check your newsletter email inbox.
2. Take notes on key points from the newsletters.
3. Delete newsletters that aren’t useful.
4. Move valuable ones into your PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) folders in a tool like Notion.

This routine takes about an hour a week.

It offers great benefits, like generating content ideas and learning new concepts.

In fact, a lot of the content ideas for my LinkedIn posts, Podcast and even my YouTube videos have come from some of these Newsletters.

PS: this will need you to understand how to work with the PARA folders. You can read more about it in the book from Tiago Forte – PARA Method.

Benefits of Reading Newsletters

I have been subscribing and reading newsletter for quite some time.

Morning Brew was my go to resource for international news and updates. It helps get rid of the clutter and gives you only the information that is relevant. (Unfortunately, there is nothing similar in India though, at least until now)

Here’s how I use all of the information I gather from Newsletters.

• Content Creation: Newsletters provide a lot of ideas for blog posts and social media content. I use quotes, researches, statistics, data, ideas etc. all from these newsletters and create my content. (that’s how most top creators create content too)
• Continuous Learning: They keep you informed about new concepts and trends. There are newsletters on pretty much every topic out there. If you are somebody like me, who likes learning, then these newsletters are your university!
• Staying Updated: Regular reading ensures you stay in the know. In fact, newsletters are the easiest way to stay up to date with what is happening around you.

Recommended Newsletters

If you’re not sure where to start, here are some of my favorites:

• Send and Grow – https://sparklp.co/p/3ad4af3653
• The Story Grid – https://sparklp.co/p/dfc5ea06d0
• The Book Bub – https://sparklp.co/p/3bcef5f1d4
• The Stacked Marketer – https://sparklp.co/p/5c2039bc2c

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

Using Newsletters as a Monetization Technique – Newsletter Marketing

Now that we discussed how newsletters are changing the information transmission game, let us look at another aspect of it.

Newsletter Monetization!!

Did you know that most top creators are using a Newsletter as one of their biggest monetization method?

Justin Welsh, Josh Spector, Katelyn Bourgoin, Chenell Basilio and many more such creators.

You can easily get sponsorships for your newsletter if you have about 10000 subscribers for it.

In addition to that, you could even use your newsletter to promote products and services for affiliate commissions.

And the best of all, you can even start a paid newsletter and make money from it.

So if you are:

• A podcaster – start a newsletter that aligns with your show topic. You can provide additional value in your newsletter by maybe sharing behind the scenes, snippets from your episode or, share an upgrade of the information that you already shared in your podcast
• A blogger – a newsletter is a natural extension of a blog and is the easiest to run, if you are blogging regularly. Use it to share your latest blog posts and provide upgrades so that your subscribers open your emails and read them regularly.
• A social media influencer – a newsletter is the natural way to move your followers from your social media profiles to an email list. You can provide additional tips, share more value through articles or, even share behind the scenes with your audience.

A newsletter is the most profitable and in demand strategy that is being used by a lot of creators out there. If you are not using it, then you are missing out on the trend.

Final Thoughts

Newsletters are a valuable resource in today’s world.

They offer curated, digestible content. By managing them effectively and making them a part of your routine, you can unlock a world of knowledge.

And if you are still unsure about how to build your list and make money from your creator business, then starting a newsletter is the answer.

Start reading newsletters today. You’ll be glad you did!

And start a newsletter today. You’ll absolutely be glad you did!

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://theloudspeakeronline.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

Reading has been slow and I am still continuing with the Boron Letters.

A bad flu and a few off days, didn’t help and I missed my target. I guess I will take another week before I will be able to finish it.

In the meantime, I am curating a list of all the books that I have read. You can check it out on my Amazon store.

Go ahead and check it out!

The Last week on the Podcast

Continuing with my republishing experiment, I republished one of my oldest episodes that spoke about Video podcasts Vs Audio podcasts.

The discussion is relevant even now.

There are a few more things that I would add to it because a lot of the dynamics have changed since YouTube entered the fray.

But still, I wouldn’t really recommend video podcasts if you don’t have the resources to do it.

Listen to that episode below:

Episode – 148 : Audio Podcast or, Video Podcast

And if you have any questions, just drop me a note and I will respond to your questions.

That’s it for this week!

Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.

If you have a question or, simply enjoy reading this, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. You can use this link to do that.

If you are comfortable writing a review for the newsletter, you can do that here. Your support would be sincerely appreciated.