Are You a Publisher or Dabbling? Pick One.

Having a newsletter makes you a publisher. Becoming one is the part too many people skip.

You don’t need to be printing ink on dead trees to be a publisher.

If you have a newsletter, you’re a publisher. If you’re using content to market your business, you’re a publisher.

Act like one.

Or don’t. Be a hobbyist. Dabble. Dip your toes in the newsletter waters and never go deeper. That’s fine — no judgment. If you’re doing this for fun, for shits and giggles, have a blast. I run a just-for-fun newsletter (Absolutely Useless). I’d like to get it on a schedule eventually. Maybe it turns into something. Probably not. Either way, it’s the last thing on my list because it’s a pleasant diversion for me.

This — Simply Useful Marketing — is my business.

Publishing here isn’t optional. It’s the support beam for everything I’m doing. And I haven’t treated it that way, at least not with action, even though I know better.

Act Like a Publisher — What Does That Even Mean?

Here’s something I didn’t know until a few minutes ago: “publish” comes from the Latin publicare — to make public. That’s it. To publish is to take something private and put it where people can see it. A deliberate act, not an accident.

If you’re using an online platform to share information with an audience in pursuit of income (directly from paid subscriptions or indirectly from leads), that’s a business. Want it to make money? Be a business.

That means —

1. Have a schedule. There’s no hard and fast rule for how often you have to publish to succeed. My goal right now is two to three posts a week. Once I hold that for a few months, I’ll evaluate. Can I sustain it? Should I vary the topics and lengths? Are the calls to action working? And of course — more subscribers, more leads, more customers?

2. Stick to the schedule. You won’t hit a wall by publishing a day early or a day late. You will fall off a cliff and disappear if you’re not visible regularly.

3. Ask for what you want. Put calls to action everywhere. Subscribe buttons, sure — but point to your products and services too. Make the sale.

4. This isn’t for fun. It might BE fun — I usually enjoy stringing words together until they say what I mean. But take it seriously.

Know you should publish on a schedule but can’t make it stick? That’s what my Newsletter-in-a-Box service is for — I build it so you can’t fall off the cliff.

Publish or Perish — Not Just for Academics

The data backs the potential peril. One analysis of more than a million email campaigns found that sending on an irregular schedule pushed the unsubscribe rate 125% higher than sending consistently. Not sending more — sending predictably. The rhythm itself is the variable.

Orbit Media’s annual blogger survey says the same thing from the other side: the bloggers who report strong results are overwhelmingly the consistent ones, not the occasional ones — and the more they publish, and the deeper they go, the better those results get. Meanwhile, 92% of marketers in HubSpot’s latest blogging report say it still drives measurable traffic and leads.

There’s no magic number for everyone. There is one for you. It’s the behavior here that’s important to pay attention to: show up, on a schedule, on purpose.

The Mental Part Matters

There’s science behind this. I don’t know the mechanism. What I do know: when you treat something as important, you’re far more likely to act like it’s important.

There’s a dismissive attitude around publishing content — at least among people who don’t do it for a living — that it’s “just writing.” Not that hard. And who needs to write anymore with generative AI, right? (NO. But that’s a diatribe for another day.)

Buy into that mentality and your newsletter drifts. It never arrives anywhere except by accident.

You can do better.

So do it.

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P.S. Still got “newsletter” filed under the last thing on your list? My Newsletter-in-a-Box services moves it to the top.