Our newsletter @TheHustle recently passed 2 million subs.

How'd we get there?

A short 🧵 1/ We perfected the art of curation.

Many media companies stuff their newsletters full of their own writers' stories, even if those stories aren't worth sharing.

We find the best stories and synthesize them, saving readers time.

(We also make cool GIFs h/t @zzcrockett)

Want to be a great interviewer?

This🧵will show you how... 1/ Great interviews have a few things in common:

1. An inviting forum, encouraging subjects to open up
2. Smart, simple questions
3. Insightful, surprising answers

One key to high open rates?

Write killer subject lines.

What I’ve learned writing and editing 750+ email subject lines @TheHustle.

🧵... 1/ Experiment often.

We A/B test 4 different subject lines every day.

We study what works/doesn’t work and make adjustments constantly.

In the newsletter game, niches make riches.

But how do you find niches?

Here are 3 examples of small newsletters making bank (h/t @damn_ethan).

Let's go ⬇️ 1/ Ferrari Market Letter

Niche: Ferrari superfans

Subscribers: 5k

Revenue: $2m

We interviewed @SubstackInc cofounder @hamishmckenzie about the future of newsletters.

Here are a few highlights.

🧵... 1/ Why ads suck.

“We spent the last 30 years innovating in the media around this really old model that...is falling apart at the seams. Google and Facebook have totally won that game and built the most powerful machines for advertising that could ever be imagined.”

One of @TheHustle’s best writers @zzcrockett, whose features get zillions of hits, shared a few lessons w/our team this week on how he finds his stories. Here are a few takeaways... Patience pays. For every story he writes, Zack looks into ~20 that don’t make the cut. He keeps his discarded ideas in a file called his “story graveyard,” which he sometimes revisits.

.@TheHustle just had an opening for a staff writer. Hundreds of people applied.

I wrote up a few takeaways on the search, including:

- what we look for in writers
- how you can make yourself stand out
- who we settled on and why Let me start by saying: If you’re out of work right now, I feel for you. I was unemployed last year and it sucks. I hope this little thread gives you a few pointers that can help.

This spring I flew to Texas to write a story about a boys’ high school soccer team. I’ve profiled lots of amazing people in my life, but this team might be my favorite. Many of the players have come from difficult places. One grew up in a Honduran orphanage. Another spent time in an immigration camp in Florida. They’ve all landed in San Antonio, where many still live in poverty.

I get asked all the time about @TheHustle's distinctive voice and style.

I thought I'd share a little insight into how we think about the writing process (h/t @theSamParr, @LimbsySquid and others who've written for us over the years, whose collected wisdom I tapped…) The most important sentence of an article is the first one. If it doesn’t entice the reader to read the second one, you’re dead. So make it sharp and snappy.