The Story

Hello there,

We’ve completed a month of Knowledge•Day! Saw it coming? I didn’t. It still feels like it’s been a week or two at most. This sure has already beaten up my past records of writing anything…on my own.

So, This 10th issue is not a regular Knowledge•Day shots issue. Today I decided to sit back and discuss How(s), When(s), and Why(s).

Why out of the blue would I bring up posts and statuses about me starting a newsletter? Why a newsletter and not something else? What even ignited this? You’ve seen what it is in the past one month and if you’re up for a background story then please grab your chair.

Keep your curious

We all are. Always have been. It’s the thing that indirectly made you utter the first "mama" 👶 or so my guru said.

Curiosity sticks lifelong, adds experiences, builds perceptions, enables perspectives, and sometimes gives you electric shocks 🍴. I’m more into short reads, over videos and other mediums. Thanks to this habit, plenty of uncommon blogs must have my IP in their visit trackers.

But what could have triggered me to start off Knowledge•Day? Take a guess? Instagram! The photo-sharing platform which is mostly used to spread memes and flaunt images from your last year’s summer trip. Kinda ironic?

So, one day I was scratching my thumb over comments like usual and came across a small business called @nanco.nutrition. Got clues? It is about Hemp! Which was a completely new word for me. Well, it’s cannabis, why wouldn’t I want to know more. I headed off to google… Some 4-5 blogs later, it strikes me! The nation should know! It’s not important but I should get the information in more people's heads! After all who doesn’t like unimportant information?

Newsletter of course wasn’t my first target for Knowedge•Day, it was twitter but who uses twitter for anything non-controversial? No market scope for Knowledge there.

Then I thought about posting Instagram text stories……. That uncomforting feeling about a text on Insta. You feel it right? So did I and this was out too.

Nope, not Facebook, No!
I know what you’re thinking, a blog should’ve been the first thought. Well, blogs are not really conversational which is something I kind of wanted.

Newsle…uh…Blogletter

How many newsletters have you subscribed to? Not many probably. And if there are a few, most likely you registered on a website and got auto subscribed. Yeah, unsubscribe links are built for those guys.

I can't help with the crap in this space but what I can tell you is that diamonds are found in coal mines. We haven’t found the diamond yet, but it’s somewhere. What I really mean is there are plenty of genuine newsletter authors who do share quality content.

My eyes were pointed towards newsletters in a random telegram group chat by @Ben, who runs an IX group of…things. He runs a weekly newsletter which is all about the latest in tech, media, and businesses. It’s pretty cool one IMO. If you’re into the tech stuff and cat memes, you can go check his’ newsletter here-> Pulse newsletter

Really, a tiny discussion on telegram led to you guys reading this story to kill time. Happy stuff isn’t it. And while the newsletter is old stuff and losing traction today, it’s in no way going out. And people are still looking at this with interest. Another newsletter I follow – Entrepreneur musings had a recent issue talk about their story and learning gained over time to building a 4000 subscriber base newsletter. (here)

No, they did not ask me for this, I’m just sharing what’s relevant. Without consent.

The birth of Grit

You know my last few issues have been a bit different from the earlier issues design-wise. Also, the email ID is different. And there’s a reason for it. I started off earlier with Revue, which is an email platform designed specifically for newsletters. And no doubts, it’s a pretty decent platform.

Only I had a little issue. The very first mails landed into Spam for the majority of my tiny set of subscribers. I mean forget people getting bored, if a new newsletter wouldn’t even show up in the first place, how am I going to increase subs and get more feedback right? The messages of a few of my friends telling me they don’t get the newsletters is well sort of sad. And that was out of my control. People don’t make efforts of going and searching in the mailbox, which is okay, not an expectation anyway.

There are couple more reasons, the platform generated Inconsistent spacing, paragraphs shuffled, and the “Click here” out of nowhere in the end for two of my issues.

The Solution? Don’t post WhatsApp statuses and don’t check stats. That way, you’ll never know if people are getting the mails or not. 😉

Lol, no not exactly. But what I did lead to this^

I took it all in my hands! Email Grit, yet another email platform. The wins:

Email ID? Self-chosen.
Template? My rules. 
Analytics? Assumed.
Hotel? No. They could be infected.

So, Email Grit is currently in the early stages and for now only capable of generating and throwing emails with templates dynamically. There’s more to be done, analytics, social media integrations, and integrated online views to name a few. Things are in the queue, they will come, someday.

Other than analytics, did I fix the problems? Hell naw, I moved on to new ones. The email grit has its own problems, which I’m squashing slowly after each issue to make space for new ones. We will have smoother times. I will send an email early someday. We’ll get there.

Peas.

If you were a writer, what written and subscription platform would you have chosen?

• Blog alone
• Blog + Twitter/Insta/Facebook
• Newsletter
• A Book
• News paper/Magazine
• Something else ______

Comment here

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