How to Write Your First 10 Newsletters on Substack

Cole presents the “10 Magical Ways” framework for generating newsletter content, with detailed examples of how to expand any topic into a series of valuable issues.

Key Ideas

Three rules before starting: (1) Nothing is a marriage decision — you will always iterate. (2) Sequence does not matter — readers buy into the niche, not the order. (3) Do not obsess over perfection — the goal is good enough, then publish to learn.

The 10 Magical Ways to Expand Any Piece of Writing: Tips, Stats, Steps, Lessons, Benefits, Reasons, Mistakes, Examples, Questions, Personal Stories. Your first 10 newsletters should each use one of these formats with 3-7 items. Works for any niche — demonstrated with a bookkeeping example generating 10 distinct newsletter topics from a single subject.

Quality comes from specificity: the value of a newsletter is proportional to (a) how many of the 10 Magical Ways are stacked together, and (b) how specific and unique each example is. Bad: “Are you any good?” Better: “Have you worked with any company in our same industry? Are you familiar with our accounting standards?” The quality of the specific items dictates the newsletter’s value, not the prose between them.

Stacking technique: use the 10 Magical Ways inside each section. Under one question, add reasons why it matters, then the mistake people make by not asking it. Three formats stacked in one tiny section creates dense perceived value.

RDCO Relevance

The 10 Magical Ways framework is a practical content generation tool for Sanity Check planning. The stacking technique for increasing per-section value is directly applicable to our newsletter writing. The specificity principle reinforces our existing editorial standards. AIWS and Substack Starter Sprint promoted.