Field notes from a newsletter operator
Lessons from sending 600 million+ emails.
For eight years my team and I have built and run newsletters for online publishers: more than 20 brands, all profitable, together driving millions of dollars in revenue.
This is where I write down what actually works. No theory, no vendor spin, just the lessons, written for people who run newsletters for a living.
- emails sent
- 600M+
- profitable newsletters built
- 20+
- working with online publishers
- 8 yrs
- in newsletter revenue
- $M+
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Deliverability course
Getting into the inbox and staying there: authentication, reputation, warm-up, and what to do when it all goes wrong. Long-form and interactive.
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Calculators
Do the maths on your list: click-to-open rate, subscriber lifetime value and more, with what the numbers actually mean.
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Glossary
Every newsletter term in plain English, from SPF to sunset policies, written by someone who's had to explain them to clients.
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Latest notes
All 37 articles-
CTOR calculator (click-to-open rate)
Work out your click-to-open rate from unique opens and clicks. Formula, worked examples, and why Apple MPP inflates opens and drags CTOR down.
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How to Stop Repurposed Newsletter Content Being Flagged as Duplicate Content
How to republish newsletter content on your blog without duplicate content problems: what Google actually does, noindexing archives, and canonical tags.
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How Nathan Barry Uses ConvertKit
How ConvertKit CEO Nathan Barry uses his own product: the automations behind his $149 paid newsletter, ConvertKit Commerce, and a 15,000-subscriber local side project.
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Top Newsletter Directories to Grow Your List (2026)
Get your newsletter discovered — and build inbound links for SEO — by adding it to the top newsletter directories. Includes the info to prepare before you start.
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Email Marketing Benchmarks For Online Publishers (2024)
Here are the email marketing benchmarks for online publishers vs. all other industries (and what to do if yours are falling short)
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Why Your ESP Might Not Provide an SPF TXT Record
Why many ESPs no longer ask you to add an SPF TXT record, how a custom return-path handles SPF instead, and what that means for DMARC alignment.
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A Dive into Bot Eat Brain's Newsletter Success (Podcast Notes)
Dive into the incredible path of Bot Eat Brain with Anthony Castrio on SparkLoop's podcast! Discover how a simple newsletter idea transformed into a $50K …
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Is Email Marketing an Inbound or an Outbound Strategy?
Explore the dual nature of email marketing as both an inbound and outbound strategy, and understand how to leverage it effectively for your business growth.
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10+ Proven Email Marketing Best Practices to Boost Success
The email marketing best practices that actually move results: personalization, segmentation, clean lists, testing, and meeting Gmail and Yahoo's rules.
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Choosing the Right Email Newsletter Software: 9 Questions to Ask
Nine questions to ask before choosing email newsletter software, from cost and integrations to deliverability, authentication and getting your data out.