Why the 'Death of Newsletters' is Greatly Exaggerated and What's Actually Happening
Are Newsletters Dead? Absolutely Not. Here's Why.
I've been watching this whole "newsletter bubble" debate unfold online and wanted to add my two cents.
People keep asking me if newsletters are dead. If you want the TL;DR: Nope. Not even close.
But there's more to the story, and I've got some thoughts.
We Don't Have a Newsletter Bubble. We Have a Quality Newsletter Problem
Let's get real for a second. Yes, there are more newsletters than ever. Beehiiv and Substack have made it super easy for anyone with opinions (and we all have those) to start blasting their thoughts into inboxes.
It reminds me of what happened with podcasts during the pandemic. Remember 2020? Suddenly everyone and their mother had a podcast. Your dentist had a podcast. Your kid's third-grade teacher had a podcast about sourdough starters.
And what happened? Most of them died. Not because podcasting was a bubble that burst, but because creating consistently good content is freaking hard.
The same thing's happening with newsletters. The bad ones won't make it. Either they won't get the readers they want, or more likely, the creator will get tired of shouting into the void every Tuesday morning. Natural selection is brutal but effective.
The cream always rises to the top. Always has, always will.
So What Makes a Newsletter Actually Good?
I've seen hundreds of newsletters come and go. The ones that stick around nail two things:
1. They Don't Suck
Mind-blowing insight, I know. But seriously, your newsletter needs to be genuinely useful or entertaining. Your readers should finish your email thinking, "That was worth my time" not "why am I still subscribed to this?"
Think about the newsletters you actually open. Why do you open them? Probably because you know they'll make you smarter, save you time, make you laugh, or give you something to talk about at happy hour.
If your newsletter doesn’t have content that actually helps me improve my business or life, why would I give you my inbox real estate?
2. They Show Up. Consistently.
I can't tell you how many people I've seen launch newsletters with grand ambitions, publish three issues, do a few campaigns to grow their email list, then ghost their subscribers.
Consistency builds trust. It creates habits. When your newsletter lands in my inbox every week, and it's consistently good, you become part of my routine.
Miss a few weeks, and suddenly I don't miss you anymore. I may even forget about who you are. thi is harsh, but true.
Will AI Kill Newsletters?
I've heard the doomsday predictions: "AI will create summaries of all your newsletters and no one will read the full thing anymore!"
Maybe. But I'm skeptical.
Here's the thing about attention. It's not just about information transfer. It's about relationship. When I trust you, when I value your perspective, I want the full experience. I don't want the CliffsNotes version.
Think about your favorite author or creator. Would you rather have AI summarize their latest work, or experience it as they intended? For the stuff we really care about, we make time.
AI will change the inbox experience, sure. It might even help filter out the garbage. But that just raises the bar on quality. It doesn't eliminate the need for newsletters.
When you have your reader's attention, real attention, not just another name on a list – you'll land in their inbox no matter what tech changes come our way.
Email is Still King
Despite every new platform that comes along promising to be the "email killer," email remains the most powerful channel for building audience relationships.
Let me break down why other channels don't quite measure up:
Podcasts: I love podcasts. They're intimate. Being in someone's ears for 30+ minutes creates a connection that's hard to match. But they're also harder to grow without an existing audience, and discovery is still a mess.
SMS: Great for "Hey, our webinar is starting in 5 minutes!" Terrible for actual content distribution. Nobody wants to read your 1,000-word think piece via text message. Trust me.
Social media: It's like building your house on rented land, then being shocked when the landlord changes the locks. You're at the mercy of algorithms that can change overnight. One platform update and poof, there goes your reach.
Communities: They can be amazing, but they're hard to scale. Communities actually have negative network effects, as they get bigger, they often become less valuable to individual members.
Email isn't perfect. But it's the only channel where you own the relationship, control the experience, and can reliably reach your audience at scale.
Don't Put All Your Eggs in the Newsletter Basket
While I love newsletters as a key strategy in your business, I'm not saying you should only have a newsletter.
The smartest creators I know are building across multiple channels:
Their newsletter drives revenue and deeper relationships
Their podcast or YouTube channel creates more intimate connections
Their website/blog captures search traffic
Their social accounts drive discovery and amplify their message
Their community connects their most engaged fans
Each platform strengthens the others. Your newsletter promotes your podcast, your podcast drives newsletter signups, your social media amplifies both, and so on.
It's not about being everywhere. It's about being strategic about where you show up and how those platforms work together.
The Newsletter Gold Rush Is Over
We've passed the phase where simply having a newsletter was enough to build an audience. The days when you could slap together some curated links, call it a "newsletter," and grow to 10,000 subscribers in six months are behind us.
And that's a good thing.
What we're seeing isn't the death of newsletters. It's the maturation of the medium. The market is getting more sophisticated, readers are becoming more selective, and creators are developing better business models.
Less noise. Higher standards. Better content. Who can complain about that?
Want to Survive? Be Indispensable.
The newsletters that thrive going forward will be the ones that become truly indispensable to their readers. They'll be the emails you'd notice if they stopped showing up.
So ask yourself: What makes your newsletter indispensable? Is it your expertise? Your voice? Your curation skills? Your analysis? Your storytelling?
If you can't answer that question, you might be in trouble.
But if you can, if you know exactly what value you provide that readers can't easily get elsewhere, then newsletters aren't dead for you. They're just getting started.
The future belongs to creators who put in the work to create something genuinely valuable. It's that simple, and that difficult.
Now go make something worth reading.
