How to Start a Newsletter: The Steps I Would Follow Again

Key takeaways

• Write a one-sentence promise first: who the newsletter is for, what they get, and how often. Everything else follows from it.
• Pick the platform by business model, not by features. Substack, beehiiv, Ghost and Kit all work for creators; product newsletters have different needs.
• Set up email authentication and a welcome email before your first send, not after.
• Start with a cadence you can hold for three months. Weekly is plenty.
• Judge early progress by replies and clicks, not open rates.

Step 1: Write the promise before anything else

Most newsletters that stall do so because nobody, including the writer, can say what they are for. Before you pick a name or a platform, finish this sentence: "Every [week], I send [specific reader] [specific thing] so they can [specific result]."

My own newsletter, The Efficient Entrepreneur, is about AI workflows and building small products. That is narrow on purpose. A reader knows what they will get, and I know what to leave out. "Tips for entrepreneurs" would have been easier to write on day one and much harder to write on week ten, because a vague promise gives you nothing to push against.

A quick test: list ten edition ideas in ten minutes. If you cannot, the topic is either too narrow or you do not know it well enough yet. If you list forty and they cover five unrelated subjects, it is too broad.

Step 2: Study newsletters in your space, properly

Reading other newsletters is the cheapest research you will ever do. I keep a burner email address used only for subscribing to competitors. The reason is simple: the welcome sequence tells you more about someone's marketing than their homepage does. Some send a thoughtful welcome email, a "best of" archive and a question that invites a reply. Others send nothing at all until the next edition lands a week later. Both tell you how seriously that writer treats a new subscriber.

When you subscribe, note:

• What the sign-up page promises, and whether the first edition keeps that promise.
• Whether there is a welcome email, and what it asks you to do.
• The subject line style, the length, and how many links each edition carries.
• Where the sponsor or pitch sits, and how it is labeled.

Our curated lists are a good place to find people worth studying: the best startup newsletters, the best AI newsletters and the best business newsletters each include what an issue actually contains, so you can pick formats close to what you want to make.

Step 3: Choose a platform by business model

Every popular platform can send an email. The real differences are who owns the audience relationship, how you get paid, and how much of the growth work the platform does for you.

If you are a writer building an audience from zero, Substack, beehiiv, Ghost or Kit will be simpler, and I would start there. If the newsletter belongs to a software product, where the same list also gets onboarding emails, feature announcements and emails triggered by what users do in the app, a tool like Meisa makes more sense, because it combines behavior-triggered sequences with broadcasts on infrastructure you own.

What I learned moving from beehiiv to Substack

The Efficient Entrepreneur started on beehiiv. Two things surprised me there. First, after only two or three editions, advertising offers started arriving through beehiiv's ad network. One of them was Nike, which I did not expect for a newsletter that young. Second, beehiiv Boosts let me earn by recommending other newsletters, which is a useful early income stream when you have no sponsors of your own.

In September 2026 I moved the newsletter to a weekly Substack. The trade-off is real: Substack has no posting API, so I publish through the browser. If you plan to automate publishing from your own tools, check the platform's API before you commit. If you just want to write and hit send, it matters less.

The lesson is that your first platform is not a life sentence. Most platforms let you export your subscriber list. What you cannot easily move is sender reputation and habits, so pick something you will actually open every week.

Step 4: Set up the boring parts before your first send

These take an afternoon and save you from the most common early failure: emails landing in spam.

1. Use your own domain if you can. Sending from a domain you own builds reputation that belongs to you, not to a shared platform address.
2. Authenticate it. Gmail requires all senders to set up SPF or DKIM, and senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts must also set up DMARC and support one-click unsubscribe. Yahoo has similar rules and asks bulk senders to honor unsubscribes within 2 days. If these acronyms are new, Meisa's plain-English explainer on SPF, DKIM and DMARC walks through each record.
3. Keep complaints low. Both Gmail and Yahoo ask senders to keep spam complaint rates below 0.3%. The easiest way is to only email people who asked for it and make unsubscribing obvious.
4. Add a postal address and an unsubscribe link. In the US, CAN-SPAM requires a valid physical postal address and a working opt-out that you honor within 10 business days. Most platforms add both to the footer for you. Check that they did.
5. Write the welcome email. Say what they will get, when, and ask one question they can answer by hitting reply. Replies are a good early signal that you are reaching real inboxes.
6. Write a clear sign-up page. The promise from Step 1, one sample edition, the cadence. That is enough.

Step 5: Pick a cadence you can keep

When I moved to Substack I started at one edition a week. Weekly is frequent enough that readers remember you and slow enough that each edition can have one real idea in it. Daily is a staffing decision, not a writing decision.

Whatever you pick, pick a day too, and hold it for at least three months before you judge anything. Readers forgive a short edition far more easily than a missing one.

Step 6: Write the first edition

Your first edition is mostly read by friends and early supporters, so use it to show the format rather than to make a grand statement. A simple structure works:

• One opening paragraph that says what this edition is about and why now.
• The main piece: one idea, explained with a specific example.
• Two or three short extras, each with a sentence on why it is worth the click.
• A sign-off that asks for a reply.

Our guide on how to write a newsletter covers structure and editing in detail, and the guide to newsletter subject lines covers the one line that decides whether any of it gets read. Before you hit send, run the subject line through our free subject line tester to check length, mobile truncation and spam-style wording.

Step 7: Get your first subscribers

There is no trick here, only places to show up consistently:

• People you already know. Tell them personally, one message at a time, what the newsletter is and who it is for. Do not import contacts who never opted in.
• Where your readers already are. Post a useful piece of each edition on LinkedIn, X or a community you belong to, with the sign-up link.
• Your own site and email signature. Every page you control should have a sign-up form.
• Recommendations. Substack recommendations and beehiiv Boosts let newsletters send readers to each other. They work best between newsletters with overlapping readers.

Step 8: Decide how it will make money, then wait

The main options are sponsorships and ad networks, paid subscriptions, recommendation programs such as Boosts, affiliate links, and selling your own product or service. My own experience is that ad offers can arrive earlier than you expect on a platform with an ad network. That does not mean you should accept all of them. Take sponsors your readers would recognize as relevant, label them clearly, and keep them out of the main piece.

If you plan a paid tier, decide early what stays free. Readers are more willing to pay once they have seen weeks of free editions they valued.

Step 9: Measure what matters

Open rates are the number every dashboard shows first, and they are less reliable than they look. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from seeing whether a message was opened, which is why many reported opens are machine-generated rather than human. Early on, watch these instead:

• Replies to the welcome email and to each edition.
• Clicks on the links that matter.
• Unsubscribes and spam complaints after each send.
• Where new subscribers came from.

Three months of consistent editions plus these four numbers will tell you more than any benchmark.

Launch checklist

1. One-sentence promise written and on the sign-up page.
2. Five competitor newsletters subscribed to from a separate address.
3. Platform chosen for your business model.
4. Domain authenticated (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
5. Welcome email live and tested with your own address.
6. Postal address and unsubscribe link in the footer.
7. Cadence and send day decided.
8. First edition drafted and subject line checked.
9. Ten people personally invited.

FAQ

Sources

1. Google: Email sender guidelines
2. Yahoo Sender Hub: Sender best practices
3. FTC: CAN-SPAM Act compliance guide for business
4. Substack: Going paid
5. Ghost pricing
6. Kit pricing
7. Apple Support: Use Mail Privacy Protection on iPhone