– Brad, side hustle kinda creator who wants to be better
Blogs and newsletters are both writing, and there are two types of written content:
- Evergreen: Will be relevant months or even years from now
- Timely: Related to trends, news, or current events (and will soon be irrelevant)
For timely newsletters, I don't see much upside in making the extra effort to publish them on your website. Some tools (Ghost, Substack, Beehiiv) make it simple to publish a web and newsletter version simultaneously. But for timely content, there's unlikely to be any long-tail benefit to publishing that writing on your website.
For evergreen writing, though, I highly recommend publishing on your website.
Great evergreen writing leaves an impression. Therefore, it's worth sharing and revisiting. But, as time passes, it may be difficult to remember certain key details about the writing (including the title!).
If someone remembers something you wrote and wants to share or revisit it, what will they do? They'll either Google the details they remember, or if they remember your name, they may search your website.
I can't tell you how often I've referenced articles by Ben Thompson, Kevin Kelly, or Paul Graham. But when I'm trying to quickly revisit their writing to get an exact quote or link to share with a friend, I Google it.
This is reader behavior that you want to support! I want you to be able to find some of my best writing quickly. So, I take care in not only publishing to my website but also adding some meta data to make it more easily searchable.
Over time, your website becomes a repository for your growing body of work.
A living shrine to your best thinking.
When someone stumbles upon some of your writing, they can go down your rabbit hole. On my website, I've created a literal rabbit hole and often add recommended next essays to let you swing from essay to essay like a jungle gym.
There's also a good argument to be made about the SEO benefits of this strategy. If people can easily link to your writing or search engines recommend your writing as a great resource for some search queries, you build your domain reputation (and make your website a more valuable asset).
But unless you know SEO (or plan to learn), you should consider this a happy accident that may happen and not something that will magically become a major traffic source for you.
The question is, once you've written something great on your website, how do you get people to read it?
That's where your newsletter comes in.
Your newsletter is how you distribute your writing.
Sure, people could subscribe to your blog via RSS, but that behavior mostly doesn't exist anymore. In a noisy, competitive world, you need a way to tell YOUR people that you've written something new.
I send my newsletter using ConvertKit. This website is built on Ghost, which has a native newsletter capability, but for my money, ConvertKit is the best-in-class tool for all things email for creators.
Ghost, Beehiiv, and Substack are a little easier to manage this blog and newsletter strategy, but they are weaker tools for full-stack email marketing.
A related question I sometimes get is:
I've experimented with this both ways, and both have benefits.
Publishing the whole essay in a newsletter means more people will probably read more of the writing (less friction, fewer steps).
Using the newsletter to drive people to the website means more clicks in the newsletter (higher email CTR) and more website visitors (which is beneficial if you have on-page segmentation as I do).
Ultimately, I think about what I prefer as a reader myself. If I can read the whole thing in the email I opened in the first place, that's a slightly better user experience. Providing a "read in your browser" link also provides optionality for folks who prefer that experience.
Sometimes, though, the writing is too long or utilizes embeds that don't work in email, in which case I'll direct people to my website.
This strategy does take a little extra effort (I write on my website, then pull that same writing into a Broadcast in ConvertKit) but it ultimately has more long-term upside for evergreen writing.
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