What if you had discovered newsletter writing before it was popular? What if you had joined a network, gained thousands of followers, and built up your brand before the hordes of newsletter creators came pouring through?
Do you think you’d have more subscribers than you do now? Probably!
Indie writers find and discover awesome tools (such as Substack) before they become popular. And that means you can stay ahead of everyone else. They also develop tools for the problems they experience first-hand(NewsletterOS is one incredibly helpful example), which means writing a newsletter just got easier!.
In this article, we cover the toolstack of six indie newsletter creators to find out what works best.
BrainPint
There are definitely some tools you use in your newsletter journey to make your life easier or newsletter better!
Janel, creator of NewsletterOS.com and BrainPint.
BrainPint is a newsletter with interesting content about personal growth and tools to help you optimize your daily life.
BrainPint's tool-stack:
- •Notion
- •MailerLite
- •Mail-tester
- •Integromat (backups
- •Google Analytics
- •Figma
- •Fiverr
- •Carrd
- •Airtable
- •Google Forms
Creatively
Get deep into the world of productivity and learn what tools and techniques can shave hours off each day.
I am a sucker for productivity software and tools (one of the reasons I started Creatively) because I always try to boost my workflow. Therefore I love to try out new things, but at the core it is always a selection of tools like the ones above which stay within my workflow stack.
Philipp Temmel
Creatively's tool-stack:
The Slice
Entrepreneurship is the main focus of this newsletter. The Slice brings together all the clever ideas, tech, and tools out there to help you build better businesses.
Nic’s most underrated tool is Mail-tester; “It’s such an underrated tool! It’s definitely one of those ‘why is this even free’ tools!”
Check out this article if you're looking to compare the pros and cons of various mail services.
The Slice's tool-stack:
- •Carrd
- •EmailOctopus
- •VSCode (for when I make custom HTML)
- •Google Sheets
- •Combination of Notion/Bear
- •Google Postmaster
- •Google Analytics
- •Mail-tester
Scrappy MarTech
Subscribe to MarTech for bite-sized growth marketing hacks and tools that’ll get your audience growing fast!
Michele Hsu prefers AWeber to other ESPs because of its powerful editor, CSS access, Zapier integrations, RSS to email, and subscriber list management with single and double opt-in options. “[The] price to value ratio is awesome.”
Scrappy MarTech's tool-stack:
- •Webflow
- •AWeber
- •Google Tag Manager & Google Analytics
- •Hotjar
- •Notion
- •Newsletter OS
- •SwipeFiles
- •Zapier
Share a Coffee
Share a Coffee sends you interviews with other creators to learn how they do what they do. Added bonus of a monetization tool that lets your subscribers buy you a virtual coffee.
Curtis Cummings has been focusing on automation, “When the issue is published, I auto-post to Twitter. My stats and previous issues are pulled into my LP automatically using some code.”
Share a Coffee's tool-stack:
Looking for Wisdom
“When I set up a couple of months ago, I hesitated between Substack and Ghost for a long time, but I love the freedom that comes from self-hosting Ghost.”
Will Buckingham
My fellow thought-nerds and philosophy heads, this newsletter is for you. Looking for Wisdom is packed with interesting critical thought deep dives.
Looking for Wisdom's tool-stack:
- •Ghost
- •Mailgun
- •Digital Ocean
- •Cove
- •Plausible.io
- •Zapier
- •Google Docs
- •Notion
- •Huge piles of philosophy books. For research.
- •Coffee. For fuel.
- •Aslan the office cat. For occasional philosophical discussions.
A revenue tool for newsletter creators
You can bet the newsletters above are saying something worthwhile. Their audience’s are hyper engaged. And that’s valuable. It’s so valuable that advertisers are happy to spend thousands of dollars getting onto your newsletter.
