Of the 570 people on the waitlist for my upcoming Magnetic Emails course, 48% are yet to start a newsletter.

The most common reason? They don’t know what to write.

It’s funny because you see the email marketing experts pump out effortless daily emails yet many of us struggle to rub two ideas together for one per week.

So instead of doing what’s important—getting good at writing and building relationships with your audience—you end up freezing like a deer in headlights. Except in this case, you’re perpetually stuck creating content for social media. Which is fine to begin your business, but not a viable long-term strategy.

Why?

Because you don’t own your audience, nor do you get to express yourself like in emails.

A newsletter is great because you can share stories, interesting ideas, and your philosophy without worrying about ‘what the algorithm wants’.

This helps you grow as a writer much faster.

But deciding what to send can be overwhelming, so here are the 4 newsletter archetypes to help.

1. The curator

A curator gathers interesting things for his or her audience.

This might be current topics like the news, or rare and interesting finds. You save your audience valuable time and effort by doing the leg work for them. The better you are at discovering gems, the more popular your newsletter becomes.

Example: Josh Spector’s For the Interested

2. The reporter

Whilst curators focus on finding, reporters focus on analysing.

Some go deep in one topic, others report broadly on many. Can be a great way to demonstrate authority, particularly if you enjoy research.

Example: Chennel Basilio’s Growth In Reverse

3. The thought leader

This is for experts with specific knowledge.

People read these newsletters to extract wisdom: ideas from experience.

A great thought leader focuses on storytelling, opinions, predictions, and problem-solving (or, problem highlighting—your products do the solving).

Example: John Bejakovic’s fantastic daily emails

4. The explorer

This is where most of you will start.

The explorer uses their newsletter to share what they are learning, doing, and thinking.

This ‘guide-not-guru’ approach attracts an engaged audience as you build. The more results you get, the better stories you tell, and the more your business grows. The cool part about being an explorer is that you accelerate your authority by building in public.

Example: Me 😄

Which archetype do you think suits you best?

Pick a lane, set constraints, and start hitting send.

You won’t regret it.

Hope this helps,

Kieran