Build a newsletter that builds your business.
I've written a daily newsletter for 16 years, and it now reaches more than 50,000 people. This guide is how I'd start one today as a business of one — live in a weekend, with AI helping on the slow parts.
$39 · one-time purchase
Hit SendHow to build your own newsletter
The playbook from 16 years of writing a daily newsletter.
Written by someone who does this every day.
I'm Dan Lewis. I've written Now I Know every weekday for 16 years. More recently I started The Comms Stack for communications leaders — a much smaller list, and it's brought me work I'd never have found otherwise. This guide is what I've learned, cut down to what a one-person business needs.
Now I Know
A daily newsletter: one fun fact and the story behind it, every weekday.
The Comms Stack
A weekly newsletter for communications leaders on how AI is changing their work.
The playbook: what works, what doesn't, and the mistakes I've already made so you don't have to.
Speed on the slow parts: research, outlines, edits, subject lines. The voice stays yours.
You already know you should have a newsletter.
That feeling has been there a while. What's missing is a reason clear enough to make it worth the effort, and a path that makes it doable. Three things usually stop a solo operator cold:
No time
You're the whole business. A newsletter sounds like one more thing you can't fit, so it stays on the someday list.
The blank page
Even when you carve out an hour, you stare at an empty screen. What do I write? Who's it for? That stall is where most people quit.
“Will it even get me clients?”
You need it to bring in work, and no one has shown you how a newsletter does that for a business of one.
A short, designed guide that gets you all the way to “sent.”
How to Build Your Own Newsletter is a page-through guide for people who run the whole show: eleven short parts that walk you from an empty screen to a live newsletter with a weekly rhythm you can keep.
It takes a weekend to launch. The harder part is showing up every week after that, so the guide gives you a simple weekly routine for it.
The inbox is where business actually happens.
Social is where people scroll and relax. The inbox is where they work, decide, and hire. A newsletter puts you there every week with something useful.
300 of the right subscribers beat tens of thousands of the wrong ones.
Eleven short parts.
It starts with the step most people skip: who your newsletter is for, and why you're the one to write it. Then each part ends with a concrete next step.
Real examples, not theory.
The guide uses my own newsletter to show what good looks like — like this issue, labeled so you can borrow the shape.
What you get.
- The full designed guide — 11 parts, real examples, FAQ, and printable templates
- Covers Substack, beehiiv, Kit, and Mailchimp
- A simple weekly routine to keep it going
- Step-by-step setup, so you can launch in a weekend
What people ask before they buy.
Do I need to be technical?
No. If you can send an email, you can do everything here. Setup is click-by-click, and the guide includes AI prompts to help with the writing.
Which platform — and can I switch later?
The guide covers Substack, beehiiv, Kit, and Mailchimp with honest pros and cons, plus a “pick by your goal” guide. It also shows you how to keep your list portable, so you're never stuck.
How much time does it really take?
A weekend to launch. After that, a good issue is a few focused hours. The weekly-workflow section shows you how.
Won't AI make it sound generic?
Only if you let it write the whole thing. The guide is clear about where AI stops: research, outlining, editing, and at most a first draft. The thinking and the voice stay yours.
What if I don't have a niche or an audience yet?
That's exactly who this is for. Part 1 helps you find your angle; Part 6 is the playbook for your first 100 subscribers with no following.
Start this weekend.
A weekend to set it up, then a few hours a week. The guide walks you through both.
One-time $39 · Yours to keep