How long does it take you to write your newsletter?
Hi guys,
So, how long do you spend writing your newsletter, vs publishing and repurposing its content on different social media.
which one of them should take more time in your opinion?
Also, if you write original and high-quality newsletter issues, I can help you repurpose and publish your latest, and old newsletter issues on different social media, regularly and with minimal to no effort.
I am working on a SaaS that does just that, my goal is to free you as a newsletter writer to innovate and create new original content instead of keep posting about all that you have written on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send us ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
Probably over 50 hours per piece (divided over a month). I write https://whyyoushouldjoin.substack.com/ - we do deep dives (~5000 words) highlighting an exceptional early-stage startup worth joining once a month.
Between talking to VCs to figure out which early-stage companies are doing the best, doing my own market research/product research/competitive analysis for multiple companies before picking one, interviewing founders, and writing a bunch of drafts, it all quickly adds up haha
I enjoy it though :)
I like your content; it reminds me of Lenny's newsletter quality. Good job guys, keep it up.
As you mentioned you guys are putting in around 50 hours per piece, which is huge, so I would assume that you would appreciate little help to get the deserved exposure of that amount of work on social media, like LinkedIn and Twitter.
I would really like to invite you to be one of our early users of our SaaS. we basically automate content repurposing of your new and old newsletter issues and keep publishing about it on social media, so that you can focus on writing your new and original content, it is especially helpful when you have lots of evergreen content that deserves to be published over and over again.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - just drop your newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter and I will add it for you,
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
Also, I can give you a sample of our current demo about any newsletter issue of your choice, just DM me on twitter if u would like to see a basic demo of what we are doing.
My newsletter is fairly short, but to the point and usually based off of things I re-discover in my Second Brain.
Since I have a structure outlined ahead of time and can draw from previous newsletters as inspiration, creation of each issue takes around 45-60 minutes a week. BUT … the time it takes to compile the contents is much more. But I‘d spend that time anyway, so in a way I‘m just repurposing the content I have already and then add some.
aha, interesting. How much time do you spend repurposing your content and publishing it on social media? and how important is that in your opinion?
Currently don’t repurpose much on Social Media, but more in the newsletter. Will post more on social though going forward.
In regards of importance - social is basically a distribution channel and hence can be important. Question is what you want to use it for.
The goal defines the medium and format.
Totally agree with you, I am working on a SaaS that automatically repurposes your newsletter content for multiple social media platforms, my goal is to free you as a newsletter writer to innovate and create new original content instead of keep posting about all that you have written on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send us ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin , Also, if you send me the URL of your favorite newsletter issue, I can send u a twitter thread, and LinkedIn post of it from our current demo, until it is open for early access
Not sure how that would work exactly, but let’s give it a try.
To be fair I think there is a point in creating and repurposing content yourself or have it not fully automated, but I’m curious to check it out.
awesome, just DM me with the newsletter URL. ALso, would love to hear why you think it is important to write the social media content yourself.
Already signed up using GForms.
To your question: it's not that I think all social media content should be written yourself, but that I think it should not be fully automated. Probably best to have a combination of both.
I agree with you, that is why we enable editing before publishing unless you would like to automate the whole social production pipeline. But I believe that tools will be mature enough to be personalized to your writing style in specifically that you might get confused and say "Did I actually write that :D ?"
Looking forward to testing it out!
Hi Nil, contentstream is now live, and free at the moment, feel free to try it out contentstream.webflow.io , would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on it
I spend about 30-45 minutes writing my weekday newsletter, and then about 10 minutes reposting an old one to my Shopify blog.
I don't really have a social media presence, mostly because I don't think my target audience (employees of government contracting firms) are easily accessible via Twitter/FB or whatever in a targeted way.
I see, I hope you best of luck with your blog. In case you became interested into repurposing your blog, I can help you repurpose and publish your latest, and old content on different social media, regularly and with minimal to no effort.
I am working on a SaaS that does just that, my goal is to free you to innovate and create new original content instead of keep posting about all that you have written on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send us ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
It ranges from around 2 - 6 hours, depending on my mood/motivation.
When I'm writing https://www.thisisbuiltwith.ai/ I usually do a first draft on one day, then a final draft/edit the next to break it up. Some days it does get tedious, but those are the days where you see the most progress as you show up anyway.
A lot of the time is spent researching new AI products, and then having a play around to give a decent opinion.
I checked the site, I really had no idea that there are that much of amazing tools out there, it is very useful. I was surprised that the page is not very well known on Twitter.
You probably would need to invest most of your time following the AI updates and new products in the market, studying them, and writing about them, but you would end up spending less and less time on social media repurposing that content.
If you would like, I am working on a tool that will share every interesting idea that you write about in your latest NL issue or even older ones. it will use your content, and ur style to repurpose your own content on multiple social media channels so that you can even write more original content.
think about it this way, the more issues u write, the more time u need to talk about it on social media, which means the less time u have to actually write new content. so that is not scalable.
what I am offering is a scalable solution that lets u do both, write more original NL issues, AND publish more about that content on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send me ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
20 minutes 💪
I write a weekly newsletter over at https://newsletter.dsebastien.net. It usually takes me half a day. Most of that time is spent doing my personal weekly review, summarizing my progress as a creator, preparing the text and cross-posting it.
Very nice Sebastien, how long and how frequently do you cross-posting about it? I think I can help you maximize the exposure of your newsletter by the way.
I am working on a SaaS whose goal is to free you as a newsletter writer to innovate and create new original content instead of keep posting about all that you have written on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send us ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
We have a bi-weekly newsletter (https://friendsofsaas.substack.com/), We usually write on weekends because put the focus on our businesses/ marketing and such stuff during the week. Usually we plan the first weekend for structure & research, and we write & create visual illustrations on the second weekend.
It depends on the subject and content, I would say it takes it 3 - 5 hours between writing and designing graphs. I won't count the research time cuz it really depends on the topic and how much personal experience we put in the article.
I really liked your newsletter, its topic are different and practical, keep it up.
How much time do you put on repurposing your new issues and old issues? and are you satisfied with the results on social media?
I've been writing a weekly newsletter (https://www.bentherebuildingthat.com/) for about a month now and I'd say the average post takes between 2-5 hours to write.
It depends on the topic, how much extra research I need to do, etc.
Just check it, I like the topics that you write about, by the way, keep up the good work. How much are you spending repurpsoing and reposting about your issues on all socialmedia, are you satisfied with the results?
That probably adds another two to three hours a week. Whenever people want to chat about something I've written (or leave comments, etc.) I make sure to respond and engage.
It's been slow growth so far but I'm starting from 0 (I had 60 twitter followers at the time of launching) and I've grown my twitter to >100 followers and the newsletter to ~70 subs so far. Not amazing, but not nothing either. Consistency is key!
No man, you are actually doing more than great, congrats on that progress.
Do you think you could have written more about your newsletter on social media?
I think I can help you repurpose and publish your latest, and old newsletter issues on different social media, regularly and with minimal to no effort. I am working on a SaaS that does just that, my goal is to free you as a newsletter writer to innovate and create new original content instead of keep posting about all that you have written on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - DM me on Twitter and I will consider you with us.
I've been pretty good about writing about it on socials, but definitely open to ways to make that easier! I'll hit you up.
I have a newsletter about AI (https://novice.media) and it takes me about a week, at least, to write each one. This is partially because this is a part-time project and I only do it when I've got a few spare minutes, but also partially because I am not a fan of newsletters that simply aggregate links.
If I am putting something in your mailbox, I want you to know that I've spend time making it, and thus it wouldn't be a total waste of time for you to read it. This might not be the best strategy for building the biggest newsletter, but that's not the goal; the goal is to deliver value and teach something to my subscribers.
Cool newsletter! Are you featuring AI tools on there as well?
Would love to get https://evoke-app.com/ featured, since it specifically helps devs building AI tools
Richard, can you tell me more about Evoke. I'd love to try, but what do you think is my best use case to use it right now?
The best use case would be to create an AI image generator. We have it on our roadmap soon to also integrate dreambooth and other models, so you'll be able to make AI avatar generators too.
Feel free to DM me on twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRealEtch
Or join the Evoke Discord
More than willing to answer questions
Kirill, your newsletter content quality is really good, Good work man. keep it up.
I am building a tool for folks like you who puts that much effort into writing something valuable, and usually, they don't have enough time to repurpose it and republish it every now and then on social media, Hence, they don't get the hype they deserve. If you would like to be part of our early-access that launches at most next month, kindly let me know, and I will include you.
I started one month ago and it takes roughly 2h to put it together (my newsletter is https://hybridhacker.email ). With that being said, majority of the work goes to collecting/reading all stuff I want to talk about in my newsletter. I use AI assistant to proofread and improve a bit my writings. I don't spend too much time repurposing content on social media.
Nice, thanks a lot for your detailed answer. How are you bringing readers to your newsletter if you don't spend too much time repurposing it? and why don't u spend that much time repurposing your content?
That's a good question. First of all I just started and I did it mostly because writing more was one of my 2023 new year resolutions, so for now I'm focusing more on building a good structure for the newsletter. I'm repurposing it mostly on Linkedin, but I see the algorithm doesn't give too much weight to that kind of content and that's why I'm here, I'm starting to search some good ways to promote it 🙂
first, congratulations on putting writing as one of your 2023 goals, that is definitely a good decision.
2nd, good decision to choose Indie hacker, it is a really good place, but the same as Linkedin, however, you would probably need to put more effort into Linkedin since the competition is quite stronger there.
3rd, I think I can help you repurpose and publish your newsletter issues on different social media, regularly and with minimal effort. I am working on a SaaS that helps in that part. If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - DM me on twitter and I will consider you with us.
for sure I want to be part of that! I'll DM you on Twitter!
It really depens on the length and complexity. Normally I guess 2 hours if the content is available.
do u enjoy writing it, or do u prefer using AI assistant to help and focus more time publishing about it on all socialmedia
First of all it depends, what kind of newsletter you are writing.
how was your experience about it?
It takes me roughly ~30 min to put together each edition of https://www.workspaces.xyz/
(+ more time with the interview beforehand and repurposing the content after)
Interesting. which part do you enjoy the most? writing the newsletter or repurposing it every now and then on multiple social media channels?
Both have their pros and cons 🤷♂️
totally agree with you
It all depends on my feature article for my Growth Currency ⚡ newsletter. If I write it, the article alone can take a few hours. If I get a guest post or recycle an older article, then it's only an hour or so to put the rest of the newsletter together.
Interesting, but, do u think it is important to spend some time talking about the content of each issue on various social media channels?
Oh yes sorry, I missed the second part of your question 🙈
I think it should be at least a 1:1 ratio of time spent to promotion/republishing/distribution.
If your newsletter takes you an hour to create, you should spend at minimum 1 hour promoting it that week. The more the better though :) There's little point in publishing a newsletter if you're not putting in the work to get more readers.
I see, I agree with you. I would even say that sometimes you need to spend more time repurposing your content and republishing it every now and then, and that can take really long time.
what is your opinion about tools that help you write ur newsletter using AI?
I feel that this will saturate the internet with an unoriginal newsletters, but it will also allow for exceptional writers to stand out among the noise, would love to know your thoughts
Great question. I will use AI to maybe generate ideas or outlines, but to actually write the content for me? No thanks. The best written content is one from personal experience, trials and errors, surprising hacks, contrarian takes. AI can't do that. Yet...
Related question, what platforms do you all repurpose your newsletter content on? I don't want to spend a long time writing a newsletter only to have a single channel. Any tips on how/where to distribute the same content?
Excellent question Boyang, I have actually built a tool, launching in two weeks to help you focus on writing new and original newsletters, while it will automatically repurpose each issue you write into multiple pieces that fit various social media channels. This means you focus on writing, and we focus on building an audience for u.
If u would like to get early access to it, DM me on my Twitter https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
It takes me a couple of hours to write my newsletter each week.
If it is a complicated topic sometimes it can take up to 10 hours.
https://mythicalai.substack.com/
I like ur newsletter a lot. I also write on twitter about AI, keep up the good work.
How long do u spend on social media to promote your newsletter and build an audience for it?
Thanks! I probably post one Tweet a day about it. Replying to someone else most of the time.
It takes me two weeks to write a blog post on my newsletter:
one to two hours each day + weekends.
What i usually do is i have brainstorming session every two months, and for every blog post i do one week research and one week writing.
I would advise anyone to come up with a schedule, it will make your life easier.
But for me it is kind of easy because i always try to the stuff alone before writing about them.
How much do you spend talking about your newsletter on social media in order to build audience for it?
I actually tracked my time yesterday and it took me 66 minutes to write the Newsletter. Before, and after that, I am engaging on Twitter for the rest of the day.
So I think just like for every other product, you should focus your time on Marketing.
I agree with @AvaAI
These days the amount of time needed to write an article should be revisited compared to the time needed to get it noticed is even more important.
Though I run a very small weekly roundup of data breaches https://blog.xposedornot.com, the interactions I get from Twitter, and LinkedIn is far more interesting :)
These interactions give you reach and connection, and that is the greatest advantage in publishing such content for our respective audiences.
totally agree, In fact, this is actually what I am launching in early March, it is a tool that will share every interesting idea that you write about in your latest NL issue or even older ones. it will use your content, ur style to repurpose your own content on multiple social media channels so that you can even write more original content.
think about it this way, the more issues u write, the more time u need to talk about it on social media, which means the less time u have to actually write new content. so that is not scalable.
what I am offering is a scalable solution that lets u do both, write more original NL issues, AND publish more about that content on social media.
If you would like to be part of the early-access round - starting at most next month - send us ur newsletter URL and email here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin
True!
The best Newsletter won't be seen if you don't engage on Socials or do paid ads 😅
WOW, that is awesome. please post your newsletter, interested to know about your content. I see that you write about AI, I also write and cover AI on my Twitter.
I have a question, if you had the choice, would you prefer spending more time writing more newsletters or engaging on social media?
I mean, do you wish if only you could focus more on writing and building the promoting your newsletter somehow automatically on social media?
Good question...
Since I am already publishing daily from Monday to Friday I would choose more engagement on Social Media. Even if it took me 2-3 hours per day to get my Newsletter ready I would still use the rest of the day to promote it 😅
But It would be amazing if a tool could repurpose my Content for me and automatically post it on social media. This would help me a lot.
This is my Newsletter:
https://ava.beehiiv.com/
Ava, your dream just became true, this is exactly what I am doing. I am launching a tool in early March, that will repurpose your content (new and old) and automatically post it on social media for you, regularly, and forever so that you can always put your efforts into writing new high-quality original content
If you would like to be part of our closed beta, drop me ur email and newsletter URL here https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or just hit me on Twitter https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin and I will consider you with us
I'm building one right now but haven't launched yet, so I don't know how long it'll take (rippedrich.com)
What's your experience?
nice topic by the way.
for me, it takes me between 8 and 20 hours to write a decent average-length article. then it takes me a few hours every week to publish that to social media so that I can bring the audience to the newsletter.
In my opinion, I should be focusing more on writing and not wasting time on repurposing. the time needed to publish on social media grows as I write more, which means, the more I write, the harder it is to publish about it on social media and the harder it is to write more.
I know wealthy folks who only do video or podcast content and then agencies or editors turn that into written posts, tweets, tiktok shorts, etc.
Any idea how much it cost?
nope. building an agency that does that is good biz idea too
yep
Don't you mean: how long does it take chatGPT to write my newsletter?
Is it how people write their newsletter nowadays :D
It does seem like that! They key, I gather, is that you have to edit it to make it more "human" afterwards. I guess we'll have to wait and see how these tools impact this space in the future.
Personally, I think it'd be great if we could revert, to a degree, and go back to when people wrote for the sake of writing instead of focusing on SEO, number of words, perfection, etc. to drive traffic.
We are two people working on the newsletter and it usually takes us about a day (12 to 16 hours). We write a blog post that is linked into the newsletter during that process. We also right in both English and French.
interesting, and how is it performing? is one blog post doing the job? and how about the old newsletter versions? do u write about it only once?
Hard to say regarding the performance, we don't track anything and we just started. It's a monthly newsletter and tomorrow will be the third issue. Each issue has a theme. The blog post goes deeply into one of the aspects of the theme and a preview of the post is shared in the newsletter. We only have one blog post per newsletter and we don't reuse them in other newsletters (so far). We decided to start a newsletter to bring people to our website and to generate brand awareness. If you are interested in the format, our next issue will be out tomorrow, you can subscribe here: https://codebards.io/newsletter
Awesome work Carl, If you are interested, I am working on a AI tool that repurposes your newsletter issues into multiple social media posts on regular basis, so if you are interested we are opening early access by March, if you want to join just drop the newsletter URL in this link https://forms.gle/YH7Ed5zPG2Ffn3bv8 or DM me on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Belal_M_Amin , Also, I can show you a preview of social media posts if u send me one of ur newsletter issues that you are interested to talk about on social media, just DM me on twitter with the issue URL
Honest question - how many people pay for these paid newsletters? Would love some stats.
I have plans to pay for Lenny's newsletter once I finish studying all his free content. So basically, I believe, many many people pay for really good newsletters, this is why substack is winning and expanding
For the same amount of time it takes to create a great newsletter, you can create a podcast. I don't think people spend more than :30 seconds skimming a newsletter.
In my opinion, it depends on the newsletter. for some newsletters, I would spend an hour or a bit less reading it, I don't mind, as long as it deserves that much attention
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.