How to Start a Cult in 90 Days

I was recently speaking with someone who shared that they wanted to start a newsletter. They have a service-based business and tons of information and topics in mind but felt confused about where to start. Where do you host a newsletter? Do you write your newsletter and send it from the same place? What do you write about? Does everything need to be original or can I curate links? Do I need to tell the owner of the links that I’m including them in my email? So let’s jump into a quick start guide for how to start a cult community in 90 days.

Where do you send your newsletter? I recently wrote a post comparing Substack and beehiiv that you can read here: What’s the best platform for newsletter writers?. In this article, I also mention other newsletter hosting platforms to consider. The only one I didn’t add was Kajabi. It’s a little expensive up front, but if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform for course creation, digital products, and newsletter writing, it might be a good option.

How did you design your newsletter? Did you use a template? Substack was super minimal, so I didn’t do a lot of designing there. They also don’t have templates, but they do allow you to duplicate previous posts if you want to use/repeat a similar format. I would duplicate previous posts that had elements, formats, or sections I wanted to use. I liked the simplicity early on because it allowed me to focus on the content/writing rather than endlessly tweaking the design. Kit and beehiiv make creating templates much easier. Kit does come with built-in template options, and Palladio is a place where you can buy templates for Kit if you want something a bit fancier. beehiiv doesn’t have built-in templates, but you can create and save your own, making it easier to use different formats. This is one of my most used features. I took inspiration from some beehiiv newsletter designs, and here are a few you might like: Creator Spotlight, Big Desk Energy, Creator Economy NYC.

How do you let people know about your newsletter? I’m starting a second newsletter from scratch, and my biggest question was how to find an audience for women’s sports fans. Here’s what I recommend for new writers:

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