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Hey folks! Today I’m answering questions from readers. If you have a question you want me to answer in a future newsletter, leave it in this thread.

How to build an effective content production schedule

Let’s start with two related questions:

From George Aliferis

I'm working on aligning / streamlining / optimizing my content across various platforms (tiktok, Yt, podcast, newsletter). How can publishers optimize their workflow across platforms?

From Modupe Oloruntoba

Hello :) I guess my question is operational: Do you have a [standard operating procedure] for all your newsletter related tasks (including the actual writing) and if so, how did you build it? How did you go from experimenting at the start to standardising your process (but still leaving room to update/improve it without it being a time suck chore each time)? … I am already finding the time management and organising aspect really challenging alongside freelance writing and consulting work. I think I need to cut the weekly guesswork down to a minimum and apart from the content calendar I already have, I think an SOP is a way to do that. Thoughts?

I think one of the greatest hurdles for aspiring creators is achieving content consistency. They go all gung-ho into a new project — whether it’s a newsletter, podcast, or YouTube channel — and then fall off the bandwagon a few weeks later as their content production peters out. 

One of the major reasons creators fail to maintain consistency is a lack of production schedule. You have to think logistically about all the various components that go into creating, editing, and promoting a single piece of content and then set aside ample amounts of time to complete all those tasks. Instead, so many creators approach their content production in an ad hoc manner, and it doesn’t take long for them to start missing deadlines. Suddenly, your weekly YouTube series is only coming out twice a month, then once a month, and then not at all.

If you talk to a professional creator, you’ll often find that their work weeks are incredibly consistent in terms of how they schedule tasks. Let’s start with mine. For simplicity’s sake, I won’t include phone calls and podcast interviews, since those are somewhat of a moving target based on the other person’s availability.

Sunday night

1. Catch up on email

2. Form my to-do list for the week

Monday

8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: 

1. Answer emails

2. Check in with sponsors to update them on past ad performance and/or solicit their ad copy. 

3. Update a spreadsheet that includes all my audience stats

4. Schedule out tweets to my evergreen content

5. Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels

1 p.m. to 10 p.m.: 

1. Research and write that week’s main newsletter

Tuesday

8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: 

1. Answer emails

2. Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels

1 p.m. to 10 p.m.: 

1. Edit the audio and video versions of my podcast

2. Publish podcast

Wednesday

8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: 

1. Answer emails

2. Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels

1 p.m. to 10 p.m.: 

1. Edit and publish my main newsletter

2. Catch up on miscellaneous tasks that have piled up.

3. (I purposefully keep my Wednesday afternoon pretty open for reasons I’ll explain below)

Thursday

8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: 

1. Answer emails

2. Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels

1 p.m. to 10 p.m.: 

1. This one varies somewhat. For weeks I’m hosting an Office Hours Zoom call with subscribers, I’ll host the call and then spend the remainder of the day editing the video recording of the call.

2. On alternating weeks when I publish my Q&A newsletters, this is that day I spend responding to reader questions. So I wrote this newsletter you’re reading right now on a Thursday.

Friday

8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: 

1. Answer emails

2. Read industry news and share the most interesting items to social media channels

1 p.m. to 6 p.m.: 

1. Edit/publish my Q&A newsletter OR send out the Office Hours video recording to subscribers

2. Schedule weekend tweets to my evergreen content

3. I then devote the rest of the afternoon to a longterm project. Right now I’m pulling together my first online video course that I plan to start selling in January.

(I should issue a quick caveat that I don’t literally work from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. I have lots of built-in breaks for things like lunch, exercise, and dinner.)

I stay pretty regimented with this schedule. If I finish my newsletter on Monday, I don’t immediately jump into editing my podcast. I take the rest of the day easy and am therefore rewarded for my productivity. I also try to put in some extra padding time to allow for interruptions like travel and doctor appointments. By keeping my Wednesday afternoons relatively task free, for instance, it allows me to shift my newsletter writing and podcast editing over by a day with relatively little consequence. 

This sort of approach can be applied to just about any kind of content. Let’s say your medium of choice is video. You need to segment out tasks that include scripting, shooting, editing, producing, and promoting your content, and you’ll probably want some built-in rest periods between these tasks. 

A production schedule’s success is largely dependent on how realistic you are about your free time and productivity. I know I’m a slow writer. I also know that my chronic Crohn’s disease is going to mean I have bad days where I’m not going to be very motivated. So if you really want to maintain content consistency over a long period of time, it starts with being incredibly honest with yourself about your own limitations.

Two quick updates about sponsorships

So I have two updates regarding sponsorships to this newsletter:

1. I’ve sold out all of my advertising inventory for 2022

2. I’m probably going to double my sponsorship rates starting in January 2023. When I originally set those rates, I had 4,000 subscribers, and by January I’ll likely be up to 8,000.

Why does this matter to you? Well, if you were even contemplating the idea of buying an ad, now is the best time to do so, because my ad rates are significantly underpriced. You’ll probably never get this type of opportunity again. Go here for details on how to book an ad.

Quick hits

Anonymous Gimlet staffers dish on what happened after Spotify acquired the company. [The Squeeze]

This experiment ran the same video ad across YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Pinterest. The YouTube Shorts ad significantly outperformed all the other platforms. [Creatopy]

"The Times overall pays well by journalism standards, but that breaks down if you’re one of the very tippy-top of your field. The pay scale is very compressed, with virtually every writer making in the $100,000, but very few over $200,000.” [Puck]

Max Read's Twitter account had 50,000 followers when he deleted it. He then tried to build a successful newsletter business. Here are his reflections on growing an audience without the help of Twitter. [Read Max]

Comics are experiencing a surprising renaissance right now. And no, it doesn't seem to be driven by Marvel. [Publishers Weekly]

When is it too early to launch a subscription paywall?

The next question comes from Ben Sprague

Is it worth converting a newsletter with a relatively low number of subscribers (i.e. <1,500) to a paid version, or is it better to stay patient and keep building the free list. On a related point, is it worth offering paid subscriptions but still keeping all content free? Otherwise the downside of converting a newsletter to a paid version with few subscribers is that you would go from writing for, say, 1,000 free readers to writing for maybe 50-70 paid readers, and that doesn't feel great.

I think there are three questions here. Let’s go through each of them:

Is it too early to launch a paid subscription product?

For solo creators, the problem with launching paywalls is that you immediately need to start creating content that will go behind that paywall. And every moment spent creating paywalled content is a moment not spent growing your audience. You’re essentially tying your arm behind your back...