You’ve got mail I


Producing newsletters can raise income and bring you closer to readers, says Jem Collins


n October, London Playbook sent out a newsletter about the Brexit process to its tens of thousands of subscribers. Nothing unusual there. However, this edition also contained a reference to an obscure type of animal, a zebu.


What’s a zebu? you ask. “Look it up,” wrote reporter Charlie Cooper, almost in anticipation of the question. And look it up they did, with Google recording a 100 per cent rise in the usual number of searches for zebus by 1pm. It’s an incredible engagement statistic, especially when some reports estimate readers spend as little as 30 seconds reading articles online. However, it is less surprising when you think about the reason newsletters have endured. “They’re a very engaged medium,” explains Gavin Allen, a


lecturer in digital journalism at Cardiff University. “They’re self-selecting. The chances are, if you sign up for a newsletter, you’re going to use that newsletter.” However, while newsletters have long been an engagement tool for publishers, freelance journalists have been using them in recent years for their own original reporting – and charging readers directly. Substack, a start-up that helps journalists do just that, now


facilitates thousands of writers, with more than 50,000 people subscribing to a Substack publication. Similarly, Ko-fi, a site that allows fans to pay creators for their


work, say more money is changing hands than ever before. “We hit a milestone in September of a million dollars in a


single month being earned,” says Simon Ellington, one of the site’s founders. “That’s the first time we’ve crossed that kind of chasm.” For Eve Livingston, a journalist based in Scotland, a paid-for


newsletter was the perfect way to combine nuanced, specialist writing with a steady stream of income. No Offence, her monthly mailing about free speech, contains two original pieces of reporting, analysis of a topical issue, and links to related reading elsewhere. “I wanted to write about these topics,” she tells The Journalist,


“but the arguments I wanted to make were quite nuanced and theoretical, and obviously places don’t always want to go for that.” Finances were a key consideration, with a subscription


newsletter offering “something sustainable and steady”. “It doesn’t make me loads of money but it does pay about a day rate,” she says. Similarly, Frankie Totora, who runs Doing It For The Kids


(DIFTK), says it was about making a ‘side project of epic proportions’ sustainable.


10 | theJournalist $1m


Amount earned in one month at Ko-fi


Since DIFTK’s launch three years ago, it has grown into an all-encompassing support group for freelances with children. As well as organising events, Frankie produces a podcast and newsletter, and runs social media groups where freelances bond over the “utter ridiculousness of trying to take a client call with a toddler gnawing at your ankle”. “Until a couple of months ago, it was something I did


completely for the love,” she explains. In September, though, as well as exploring sponsorship, she “took a leap of faith” and asked the community itself to lend their financial support. “While I’d been slowly building up a generic newsletter list, I could never justify the time and headspace to send anything to it,” she says. While she still keeps a free list for general DIFTK updates, she feels a premium monthly offering gives both the justification and head space to create something ‘really useful for people’, which also acts as a small thank you. Financial rewards aside, newsletters can be a lifeline for other reasons. New York-based writer Sonia Weiser runs Opportunities of the Week, a mailout made up of a scarily comprehensive list of calls for pitches and freelance work across the globe. Launched a little more than a year ago, it now has more than 1,000 subscribers on Patreon alone, all parting with between one and 10 dollars a month. “It was an extension of my obsessive night-time job searches that I had been doing for years,” Weiser explains. “Jumping from retweeting opportunities to compiling them into an email wasn’t that much of an imaginative leap. “I was at a point in my life where I felt completely


useless. The Harvey Weinstein news and its immediate fallout pushed me to an edge not only in terms of my personal experience with men but also because I saw how much journalism could do. And, with that, how little I was doing as a writer to make any kind of positive change.” It was originally a free weekly newsletter – “people grabbed onto it quickly” – and it became vital for Weiser too. “It became something that I could work on when I was too depressed to do anything beyond typing keywords into Twitter and, being someone with chronic depression, my other work often got sidelined for this kind of menial labour.” A few months later, Weiser began to charge for the service – she was now spending eight to 10 hours a week on it, and it was limiting her own ability to write. Now with a recommended price of $3 a month, it covers her main expenses. “Not having to think about making rent has opened up space in my brain which was otherwise occupied by financial


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