Your newsletter is gaining momentum

Do you ever worry that your content isn’t good enough?

Sometimes you publish to a silent audience. Making you wonder if it’s even worth it.

Please don’t quit!

This week I asked on X: What makes a newsletter unsuccessful?​

Here are a few replies that stood out:

Two things that determine the success of your newsletter are:

• Consistency
• Your ability to listen

Let’s look closer at each.

Be relentlessly consistent

It’s really hard to keep showing up to what might feel like an empty room. I was in that place when I started this newsletter, but I kept publishing.

This is issue 19 of Creator Glue. That means for the past 19 weeks I’ve been publishing, often with very little to show for the time I’ve put into each issue.

So why keep doing it?

That’s the question so many creators ask themselves. And sadly many of them either quit altogether or pivot to something different, resetting their progress.

Consistency is about more than your publishing schedule. It includes:

• The topic of your newsletter
• The format of your newsletter
• Your publishing schedule

The best thing you can do for your newsletter is to stick with one thing for a long period of time. Focus on what’s resonating your subscribers and do more of it.

Become a strong listener

Publishing to a silent audience is the worst. Do they even like what they’re reading?

You can find out in a few ways:

• Look at open and click rates for signs of increased interest.
• Share ideas from your issues on social to see what resonates the most.
• Frequently ask for replies so you can hear from your subscribers.

Take in feedback, help with struggles, and take notes.

Not only will you be helpful, you’ll learn a lot about how you can improve and what your subscribers really want to see more of.

Bonus: Use words your subscribers use

Sometimes there are multiple ways to say things. For example, I could say:

• Email list
• Subscribers
• Newsletter

All have a similar meaning, but one might connect more with my readers.

Pay attention to replies to your newsletter, social media posts, and DMs. Watch for how people talk about the topics related to you newsletter and what goals they have.

Use that to read minds in your future content.

Your next step

Create processes to collect data about your newsletter.

Here are a few that I use:

• Replies to emails are given a label in gmail so I can go read them.
• Positive responses to my emails are given an additional label.
• Each week, data about the previous week’s newsletter is collected in my Notion database so I can see what resonated the most.
• Top social posts are noted and used to create future issues of the newsletter.

Your early work is a lot of guesses, but you’ll slowly find patterns if you look for them.