Why I Killed the “Newsletter”
The standard advice for creators is simple. “Niche down.”
They tell you to pick one topic. Write about it every day. Become the “Excel Guy” or the “Keto Cooking Guy.”
For a business, this makes sense. It makes you easy to categorize. The algorithm loves categories.
But for a human being, it is a trap.
I am not a category. I am interested in AI, and I am interested in business, and I am interested in hardware. A lot of things!
The Retention Problem
The problem with a standard newsletter is that it is flat. Everyone gets everything.
If I send an email about high-level AI prompts on Tuesday, the tech crowd opens it.
But
if I send a philosophical essay on Thursday, the tech crowd gets annoyed. They didn’t sign up for feelings. They signed up for code.
Eventually, they unsubscribe.
This creates a cycle of churn. You constantly have to replace the readers you lost because you dared to talk about something different.
The Magazine Solution
I didn’t want to fragment my audience into five different websites. I wanted one home base.
So I killed the newsletter and built a Magazine.
By using Substack’s “Sections” feature, I have changed the architecture of the relationship.
Opt-Out vs. Unsubscribe: In a newsletter, if you hate a post, you unsubscribe from the creator. In this magazine, if you hate the Scale column, you just turn off notifications for that specific column. You stay subscribed to the rest.
Horizontal Scale: I can now attract different audiences. The AI people come for Sentient. The builders come for Scale. Eventually, they might cross-pollinate.
Burnout Protection: If I get bored of writing about AI for a week, I can write about Tech Tools in The Forge. I don’t feel trapped by my own content calendar.
This is a bet. I am betting that people follow personalities, not just topics.
But just in case they only want the topic, I built the architecture to handle it.
Venga!
Mark (VengaDragon)
P.S. I invite you to join me on this journey, where we’ll learn and enjoy the process together.
The Ask
Status Update: As of this morning (Nov 29), we are at 13 subscribers. (Yes, thirteen. We could all fit in a minivan).
The Mission: I have a wildly ambitious goal to hit 500 by January 1st.
I am building this in public, starting from zero. No ads, no tricks. Just this lab report.
The Ask: I don’t want your money today. I want your network. If you believe this project has legs, please forward this to just one person who would vibe with it.
If we double the minivan today, we fill a bus tomorrow.