How I started a newsletter with Mailbrew in 30 minutes

After 6 months of doubt I took the plunge this week and went all-in for Notion. I've had an account for quite some time but I never really committed myself to use it. The way I used Evernote for the last 10 years. Unfortunately, this app has become too sluggish and slow for me to actually work with on a day to day basis. I ping-ponged between Roam Research and Notion for the last months, but I cit the bullet and went for Notion. It's interface, possibilities with databases and external content and the mobile app did it for me.

Learn by newsletters

When I start (anew) with an app I want to learn a lot about it. Find the hacks, the best practices and interesting people from whi I can learn to master the app. What better way to do this on a recurring basis then a newsletter? For this project I decided to give Mailbrew a try.

Mailbrew is a great service to create automated newsletters. It's built by Indiehackers @linuz90 and @frankdilo.

Mailbrew collects from various sources like Youtube channels, Twitter lists and RSS feeds. I use a few private Mailbrew newsletters to stay up to date on specific Twitter lists and it works great for me. Besides private newsletters, they also offer public newsletters, to which you can subscribe. Mailbrew is an easy service to get started with so I made a Notion Newsletter for all to subscribe to. At this moment it gets the latest tweets and blogposts from Notion engineers, consultants and other ambassadors, it takes the latest Reddit posts from the Notion subreddit and I link to various Youtube channels.

If you are a Notion user, you can subscribe to my newsletter for free. It's sent every day at 9 AM CET when there are new posts, tweets or videos.

How to build a curated newsletter in 30 minutes

If you want to know more how I made this Mailbrew newsletter in 9 steps and 30 minutes, read on!

Mailbrew is really easy to start with. Once you've signed up with your Twitter account you can build your first newsletter right away. Here are my 9 steps for a new curated newsletter

1. Build a Twitter list. I always start with a Twitter list. I make a new list on a subject and start adding people I know to this list. The Twitter search algorithm looks at the title and description of your list to suggest accounts with a similar username or text in the bio.
2. The interface of the Twitter list shows the bio. When there are URL's in this, I open these in the background in new tabs for later inspection.
3. I add as many accounts as I like and save the list. Now it's time to build the newsletter.
4. In Mailbrew I add the new Twitter list. I always use the option "Most popular" which is based on likes and retweets. This ensures I get relevant tweets in the newsletter. Based on the length of the final newsletter I play around with the max number of tweets and max tweets per user.
5. Next up I add relevant Subreddits. I want to keep this Notion newsletter as clean as possible, so I just add the Notion subreddit. I could go for productivity or notetaking subreddits but I figured this would fill up the newsletter with to much noise instead of valid signals.
6. I check the open tabs on the websites from the Twitter bio's to see if there are RSS feeds I can add. I have to say, in this particular space it is a missed opportunity. There are not a lot of feeds on the sites. RSS is still out there and it doesn't take much weight to your site to add one. It can bring extra traffic without extra costs.
7. Next up are Youtube videos. I knew Notion users are avid explainers on Youtube so it didn't take long to find a couple of the biggest channels who also post regularly. I added 5 channels for now. It feels a bit much to me, so I will just have to monitor this how it plays out in the newsletter itself. If the Youtube videos outbalance the other news sources I have to review it and perhaps change the number of Youtube feeds.
8. Last step, I add today's date and a small introduction for the newsletter.
9. I send a preview to myself to see how it looks, save the configuration and I'm done!
10. There is no step 10!

You can subscribe to my Notion newsletter or get started with Mailbrew yourself (Aff. link). Please let me know how I can improve this flow with better feeds and sources.