The Golden Age of Newsletters is Upon Us
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The Golden Age of Newsletters is Upon Us
It’s taken over
Move over, Gutenberg, there’s a new player in town — email newsletters!
We are living in the renaissance era of newsletters. Finally, a platform where every random thought, half-baked idea, and proclamation we make can be distributed to thousands of inboxes around the world.
Instantly. And for free in many cases.
It all started innocently enough with writers wanting to connect directly with their readers, without the pesky editors or publishers meddling with their brilliant words.
But soon, the newsletter gold rush was on.
Mere mortals everywhere realized if they could capture just a fraction of their word genius and distribute it via newsletter, they too could build an audience, get supporters, and quit their day jobs.
Ka-ching 🤑
Before long, every social media influencer, lifestyle blogger, and middle manager with a social media account realized they needed a newsletter stat.
Expertise in a topic? Optional. Witty prose? Not required. Ability to say something meaningful? Overrated.
But darn it, they have OPINIONS and those opinions need to be shared!
Now we are inundated with more newsletters than we could read in 10 lifetimes.
Some popular examples:
There’s the ex-BuzzFeed writer regurgitating the same listicles, but now with a $5 price tag.
The mommy blogger sharing groundbreaking thoughts like “Here’s 10 ways I get my kids to eat vegetables!”
The wanna-be Tim Ferriss types spewing productivity porn.
And who could forget the endless crypto-bro newsletters analyzing coin charts and prices to the nanosecond.
Revolutionary stuff.
Lest we forget, even the robots have joined the newsletter craze. Why pay a human writer when AI can churn out mountains of content for a fraction of the cost?
Who cares if there’s no original insight, wit, or soul? The AI brains have come for newsletter domination.
But not all is lost. We must wade through the torrential downpour of newsletters overflowing our inboxes in search of a few precious gems.
Buried amongst the rehashed drivel are genuinely interesting writers sharing ideas and building communities. With a little luck and a very good spam filter, we may just make it to the other side with our sanity intact!
But for now, let’s not kid ourselves… the era of the newsletter is upon us.
Obviously, there’s some heavy sarcasm and humor involved here. I love newsletters. I run multiple. And this golden age is a beautiful thing. That being said, it doesn’t hurt to have a laugh about it once in a while.