What Is A Newsletter?
Yes, what is a newsletter? It is something you receive in your email inbox. You don’t have to go to the newsletter: It comes to you.
I remember when I first read about things coming to you rather than you going to them. The system was described as being built on ‘push’ notifications. It might still be.
The idea that you could pester people rather than waiting for them to come to you are your website, seemed risqué and interesting. Of course, it’s not new to WordPress.com because you can sign up to a website, and one of the options is to be alerted by email when a new post is published.
A website like that is almost a newsletter, isn’t it?
Really the only distinguishing feature between a newsletter and a website is that with a website there is somewhere to go and read whatever is there – whatever you want to call it.
With a ‘proper’ newsletter, there simply is nowhere to go. You either get the newsletter and read it, or there is nowhere else you can read it. It’s doesn’t have a home you can visit.
In the olden days, there would be a website – and a button so you could sign up to a newsletter. So if there is no website, how do you find the newsletter in the first place? How do you learn that it exists?
And what do you find when you get there, beyond a sign-up button?
And that brings me to December 2022 and this post on WordPress.com, and if you fancy following it and creating a newsletter you will find it is in reality nothing more nor less than blog posts without a blog, which is not to say it might not yet be useful for you.
… but this Substack thing seems to be both, right‽ I both get the newsletter and there’s a place to go.