How many hours a week do you spend on your newsletter?
I'll kick off.
We send out one issue a week - and doing so for the last 4 years.
All in, takes about 6-8 hours, including writing, designing and pondering what to say.
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My newsletter is a curated roundup of resources and my process is well-honed, so I spend 2-3 hours a week.
Great to hear you have the process well honed. That's key 🙂
As I'm just getting set up with https://www.lookingforwisdom.com (tagline: Philosophy for the insatiably curious!) there's quite a lot of behind-the-scenes work in terms of sorting out the tech and design sides of things.
In terms of writing, it takes probably 4 to hours to write one of the weekly Philosophy Files that goes out to free subscribers, and 4 hours to write a weekly philosophy lesson for paying members. But I'm terrible at calculating these things, because I start to read something for research, and get immersed, and hours pass, and it no longer feels like work so I don't count it as work... Fortunately, I also tend to write lots of content in advance, so I have 6 months' worth of weekly Philosopher Files already drafted, and this allows me to have periods of down-time.
On top of that, there's promotion and distribution, as it's very early days (I launched the paid tier only yesterday). And keeping on top of what's going on over on Twitter. And a hundred other things.
I'm hoping that when I've got everything working exactly as I want it, there will be more writing/thinking time, and less time on the tech/design side of things.
Thanks for sharing the insight. True, that there's a lot more hours involved when we think about it. Good idea having lots of drafts to go, especially handy when you're stuck for inspiration 🙂 Best of luck with the paid version.
Thanks!
15-20 minutes here per newsletter. We have our process well honed.
Good job 👏
Right now, for my weekly curated newsletters, it takes me about 3-4 hours to read thru articles and create the newsletter for Tuesday delivery. For my longer format articles that come out twice a month, those have been about roughly 5-7 hours of work considering researching, drafting, and finalizing for a Thursday delivery.
I then spend time marketing the content, which is still not as much as I'd like.
I'm only about 6 weeks in to it, so I still don't have a process that I'm comfortable with yet because this time doesn't take into account the random notes that I take throughout the day.
Good work, keep it up 👏
I publish once a week and it takes me anywhere from 3 - 6 hours of work. Some weeks are easier than others.
Good job 🙂
I'm not reading any newsletters
I write a weekly newsletter so I spend about 3/4 hours a week on it depending on the topic. I also run a very active twitter account where I tweet daily about investing and use this as a method to drive followers to my newsletter. I could spend 2/3 hours a day on Twitter
Good job,love the name too, got from it immediately what you do 🙂
About 4hrs a day Mon-Fri and an hour on Sunday. So 21hrs depending on the complexity of my essays.
This one took probably around 100 hours, which is why I didn't publish daily that month, On Building The Future — And How to Think About "Vision"
Lots of good work there. Nice site and offering too 🙂
Glad you enjoyed it!
I usually spend 1-2 hours a week for Virtual Mojito
From research to edit to design and launch.
Good job, nice niche there too 🙂
I curate. I read 100 articles a week. Not counting the reading I spend 2 hours making the newsletter itself. I spend 8 to 10 hours a week promoting the newsletter.
The first time I edited, issue 1, took me 12 hours.
Wow, great work ethic 🙂 I know reading a 100 articles a week would take me a serious amount of time.
I think you'd be surprised at how quickly you can get through articles. I read 4-8 articles on a single topic, seeking the best one or the most informative one. Sometimes I read a brief part, find out it's about another article, click through or search for it. . Sometimes it's abstracts or just short summaries, or sometimes you can skim it if it's the 5th article on the exact same topic.
Most articles also can be read within 2-3 minutes max. I'm not reading 100 10-minute reads. But I am taking a good half hour when there's deep reports, or surveys (every couple of weeks). Even good reports have lots of visuals so I can skim through them.
Interesting, you have a great process on place 🙂
I would say around 3-to-5 hours for each newsletter sent. I send out twice a week for my newsletter (thelazynba.com) so I would double that time each week.
One thing about sports: I wish I could write mine in advance for the send out days. So much happens each day in the NBA that you could write about a player one day, and then the next, he's traded away for example haha.
Good job and twice a week too, well done 🙂
For The Leaf Node, I consume 1 to 2 hours of long-form high quality content and then share my key takeaways and insights from personal experience, etc. Which takes 1 hour. I also do one original article and that takes 2 hours. All in all 4 to 5 hours.
Hm..not doing much in terms of distribution atm. Except sharing it in communities if the topics that I write about naturally come up. Need to do this more explicitly.
Nice job, keep up the good work 🙂
So I usually start my newsletter the same day it comes out which is great for continuity.
I spend:
Good plan 🙂
So I share cooking tips and lessons I'm learning in my newsletter so I've also got some research time. So I would say:
Great idea for a newsletter 🙂
Thank you I’m glad you think so
It usually takes less than one hour to write and send an email to an audience. I do, however, take my time with making sure all links work and double-check my grammar and use of words for better conversion and to increase engagement.
Wow, that's fast, I wish I could write mine in an hour 🙂 as I keep amending what I'm trying to say.
I've been writing on our blog for almost two years, which makes it a bit easier. What I'm mostly working on is using a much better language with my audience and make them engage more. I think there's room to grow there. I've also recently moved from Mailchimp to ConvertKit and the design of the email templates are very similar to a simple peer to peer email would be (no special formatting or design).
Here is what I do for https://saasmanual.com. I started with a weekly email but now am zooming in on an email every other week which references more in depth posts which I publish whenever they are ready:
Great domain name, describes exactly what's it about 🙂 Same here, time preparing content can vary.
Thanks, @HelpStay - it's definitely a journey for me, so this might change again 🙈
Started recently with one post out and next one coming out on Monday. It takes about 4 - 6 hours for me to get the post ready.
Your early days 🙂 good job. Best of luck with Mondays edition.
Thank you and hope folks like it.
3-4 hours including distribution, which is often the part that people forget to do!
That's so true, distribution is very important 🙂
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Nice site and proposition :) Keep up the good work :)