Bookmark: "Robin Rendle › Newsletters"

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Robin Rendle explores his love for email newsletters vs. his preference for publishing on the web (accessibility warning: scrolljacking; try “Reader view” in your browser).

The piece is really worth reading in its entirety, but two slides about half way summarize the key points:

Newsletters killed blogs because…

• They’re impossibly easy to publish.
• Your inbox is a notification stream.
• Writers can actually, ya know, get paid.

Alternatively, websites today…

• Are difficult to make.
• Can’t notify people of new work.
• Aren’t able to pay writers easily.

I, too, have been fascinated by personal newsletters (not the marketing crap) for a long time, both as reader and author. And I just as much would hope we could solve those problems – first and foremost the notification/subscription challenge.