Welcome back to the Creator Spotlight podcast. My guest today is Ernie Smith, a writer perhaps best known these days for his long-form newsletter, TDM, which he's been running since twenty fifteen.
TDM is a near decade-old newsletter covering, I quote you, "The boring side of the internet."
For example, back in twenty sixteen, you wrote eighteen hundred words about the invention of Cheese Curls, and, uh, today you have, I think, around twelve thousand subscribers. You send it out, I believe, twice a week.
Before we get into it, did I miss anything within all that? I've been kind of shaking it up a little bit. Sometimes it's three times a week nowadays. Uh, I'm doing less longer form stuff with the newsletter.
I'm still doing a long-form piece every week. I'm doing a couple of shorter pieces. It's just for sake of sanity, I guess. [laughs] Yeah. The sanity bit is, is hard.
Um, we'll get into that a little later when we talk about mid-range, I think.
But one of the pieces you shared with me before this that I really liked, uh, is from twenty twenty, and you were decrying the loss of the freedom to customize our spaces online.
Uh, and so I'm gonna read a paragraph from near the end that I think sums up the thesis really well.
So you said, "What we're left with, because we can't screw with the HTML or tweak settings in the design, are social networks in which engagement rather than individuality is valued above all else.
If you want to do truly creative, additive things, you may feel like you have to do them on other networks and simply mention them on Facebook or Twitter rather than letting that creativity happen on the platform itself."
Um, which I agree, and so, like, one way to do that is just to go to, right, a newsletter platform. But, uh, you have coded y-your entire newsletter.
Uh, you've kind of MacGyvered it together, the entire structure, I believe, and set up yourself. Um, so we'll go back to a bit of that customization bit in a second. But, um, tell me more about, like...
Like, I get why you coded your own thing, so you could have full ownership, and it becomes cheaper to access, like, the services on the back end to send emails, et cetera. Um, but how much work went into that?
Like, how long did it take you, and how much work does it take to, like, maintain something like that? I'm not a very technical person, so I, I just don't know.
[chuckles] I, I would say that one of the nice things about doing something like this is that when you build it, [chuckles] you know, for the most part, it stays in place.
Like, obviously you still need to, like, do your own upgrades and, like, do a little bit of maintenance here and there.
But I think that when it comes down to it, I built out, like, the view for, uh, pulling in my newsletter issue so that when I publish, the issue will actually run...
Now, will actually build, like, a full emailer-- email newsletter version, like, with the code already done, and I load up this view, and when I hit that page, like, all that work is done for me.
Whereas when I started, like, I think I used MailChimp very early on. Mm-hmm.
Like, I remember the hard part of doing all this was that I had to deal with those templates, like, these visual templates that were just, like, not set up for this. You know, I think a lot has improved since then.
Mm-hmm. But, like, I was just like, you know, I just wanna automate the thing so that I don't have to worry about it every five minutes, [chuckles] you know? Yeah.
And- Yeah, I mean, 'cause it, a, a whole newsletter, like a designed newsletter, that's quite a bit of HTML, right? Oh, yeah. Uh, I actually wrote an issue about this a lo- a while ago where I basically...
When Casey Newton was still on, uh, Substack, uh, he had an issue, a platform that I noticed, like, did a jump in HTML. And I'm just like, "This is something that, like, I've worked really hard on avoiding.
He's just letting it do it." And my, my thought on the matter was basically, "Well, why is, why is this?"
And so I, like, looked at the code of the issue, and I realized that the issue was not necessarily that what he was doing was, like, a really heavy code. Like, Substack's newsletter wasn't super heavy code.
It was that the links were just, like, massive, and because- Hmm... it was a newsletter that had links in it, like, he used a lot of them. And so it was very fascinating to me how, like,
you know, this broken system that we've been using for, like, the last thirty years to send emails is, like, kind of kneecapping us from, like, trying new stuff in the modern day. And- Mm-hmm...
I think that my solution has been, [chuckles] well, let's see what I can get away with. [laughs] Well, so I, I understand what you gain, right? In like the, the tweakability of, of every little bit.
Is there anything that, like, you sacri- not by, like, not using any particular platform that, like, is more no-code, but is there anything, like, in general you think you are sacrificing by, like, doing it DIY?
Or is it purely a gain for you?
Well, you know, I, I, I've mentioned this before, and I think that, like, you know, I don't really have any qualms with mentioning it here, but, like, back in late twenty seventeen, I was reached out to s- by Substack when they literally had Bill Bishop, and that was it.
[chuckles] And I think it was, like, Bill Bishop and one other person, and they're just like, "Come to Substack." And my, my thought was, "Well, I built this thing." [laughs] Yeah. It's like I have this- Your baby...
I, I built this design. This is, like, the thing that I care about, the, the having the really nice looking email, and telling me, "Oh, throw all that away for the chance to make money." [laughs] Yeah.
Who wants that money, you know? [laughs] Okay, moving on. I, I think... So four years ago you wrote that article I quoted from about, like, feeling limited on, on the web, right? Do you think...
I, I do- I don't think your view has changed because that's...
I mean, it's a, it's like a pretty hard opinion, but do you think the web or, like, the platforms on the web have changed at all to, like, support more of that, like, individualism rather than, you know, engagement aggregation?I think in a lot of ways, I, I mean, to be, to be honest with you, I think depending on where you look, it may,
you know, it may be a little worse [laughs] to be honest. [laughs] I mean, I, you know, like I'm just thinking about like... I'm just thinking for example, like, okay, LinkedIn, which is like, you know, it's, you know...
Let's, let's call it what it is at this point, it's Tumblr for old people. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Um, you know, and i- and basically,
and, and basically with that, like you're, you're sort of encouraged into writing in this very specific shape, you know? Where, where like it has to be a certain length- Mm-hmm... for, for the algorithm to pick it up.
Everything's one line. Yep. And then, and then like you have to have an image. You can't link to anything in it or the algorithm's gonna, gonna just go nuts and like ignore you.
And then you have to like mention it in a comment. It's just like you're basically shaping everything that you're creating to the exact parameters of a, of an algorithm. Like- It's like literal the medium is the message.
Yeah. That's absolutely what it is. And I think that, you know, I think that one of the things that I find really interesting is, you know, I don't think...
You know, I think that, I don't know how much of your audience is on Mastodon these days. You know? Yeah.
I, I, I imagine that like it, you know, s- it's seen as a pretty niche thing, like people who tend to use- I'm not on it. I'm, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, but like
I, I basically, when I saw that like the trend was like moving that direction, I was actually already on it, but like I wasn't using it super heavy. Like, when
the trend seemed to be moving in that direction, I invested in it. I put time into it. And like, you know, I have like a pretty big follower base there, and like they're super engaged.
And that place doesn't have, have an algorithm. I can, I can do whatever I want- Mm-hmm... if I, if I, you know, if I really feel like it.
And I think that like that's, you know, that's kind of what we've been losing in sort of the commercial social media space, you know?
Where, where like everything kinda gets pushed in a certain direction, and you're just kinda stuck with, you know, whatever, you know, whatever they, they give you. And it's just like- Yeah...
you know, that, that totally goes against the idea of 2005, some, some 16-year-old excellent figures out you can put, you can put CSS into your MySpace account. And- Yeah...
all of a sudden it leads to this explosion of creativity. Like, that's- Yeah. It's such a loss. It is, absolutely. Yeah. I, I mean, I think of that too.
Like, when I was, you know, 11 or something, I was like playing RuneScape, um, the MMORPG, and I was like... I, I mean, I had my MySpace. I was like, you know, designing the web thing.
And then like RuneScape, I was like figuring out how to like make forum signatures and avatars in, in Photoshop and sell them for like in-game gold on online forums.
And it was like all this like, like finding these forums where like I could like engage in that way and... I don't know.
Even, I mean, that's not like the exact same thing we're talking about, but just like the internet that was like 20 years ago is s- that was so much more like naturally led me into these things.
And I feel like, this is kind of a tangent, but I feel like now it's less about that and more about like kids figuring out how to like drop ship.
It's more about monetization using these like no-code things than it is about like creating things. You're... I, I, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong. This is kind of just occurring to me as I say it, but like
do you agree that it's, it's less about like making the thing? Ma- like making the thing creatively, and more about like making money, period. I don't know. This was a theory I just made up.
You know, I, I think a lot about this, you know? It's, 'cause it's just like, you know, I'll, you know, I'll, I'll be straight up. You know?
Like I think, I think that like in a lot of ways, you know, my approach probably leaves a bit of money on the table. Like that's- Yeah...
you know, that's just me being straight up honest, and I'm sure it's totally different from what you usually get on a podcast like this. But, but- Which is why, why I decided to talk to you. [laughs] Yeah.
But the thing is, like I feel like, you know, there's a certain integrity to kind of doing things, you know, by the beat of your own drum. Mm-hmm.
And just hoping that like, and just hoping that like this cool thing that you're building, you know, has enough direction to it and ha- has enough like, you know, of a spark to it that like people will follow along with you.
And I think that- Well, wait. So wait, speaking of LinkedIn, this is kind of what you're saying. A, a couple weeks ago or so you had this post, uh, I just have this one quote from it, "Content isn't software.
It's not a machine to be optimized." That's kind of what you're saying, right? Yeah. I mean, I mean, don't get me wrong. There's, there is a tendency to want to opt- optimize content. I mean- Mm-hmm...
there's this whole thing called search engine optimization, which is literally that. [laughs] Yeah. But, but I think that like what, what ends up happening, you know, very often is that
this optimization, you know, comes at the cost of the spirit of the thing that you're creating. Mm-hmm. It's, it's always, you know, it's always about like the keywords versus the voice.
And I think that like my argument is essentially, okay, knowing that there is a sort of need to like hit the marks, so to say- Mm-hmm... to like, to like build reach on the internet,
you know, is there room to like still have the, you know, the experience of creating, you know, creating with the canvas and just hoping that like the cool thing that you make is, is seen as cool by other people?
I think that like- Yeah... you know, you look at stuff like Patreon, for example, and that kind of experience is-Of a piece of that.
But like, it's also like, you know, at what point is it just like I'm, you know, I'm getting into drawing so I can sell prints on Patreon, you know? [laughs] Yeah.
So I think that, I think that there's like this tendency to wanna create, not for the art of it, but for the, you know, but because they saw some YouTuber that like they really like, and they figured out how to, how to make money like, you know- Mm-hmm...
taking apart a phone or, you know, or blowing something up. Not for the art of it, but for the capital of it. [laughs] Yeah, pretty much. [laughs] Yeah, yeah. So how many people...
Like I don't need to hear the full story of how you've grown your subscriber base, but I think like part of it is just being around for so long.
Like TDM, a decade, and then there was the five years of Shortformblog before that. I imagine some of those subscribers came there. So I guess, I, I guess what I'm getting at is like, to be an, y- you're...
If you choose to participate in like a, an Instagram, a TikTok, Substack, whatever, then you're being the Uber driver for posts, where you're like beholden to the system, but maybe you're like accruing an audience quickly.
But I feel like what you've done is like you stand outside that a- and you have accrued an audience, but it's been slower partially because you've stood outside that, right? Yeah.
And one of the things I'll say is like the audience sometimes comes from other places. Mm.
And I, I will say that like, um, one of the things that like I've noticed recently is, okay, y- you said, you said earlier I have around 12,000 subscribers. I think that's where I'm at right now, so I agree with you.
[laughs] Mm-hmm. Um, but, but one of the things that I, I, I found recently is I have, you know, I, I have an RSS like service- Mm... called FeedPress that I subscribe to with, that I, I use to sort of manage my feeds.
And over there I have like 6,000 s- you know, RSS readers, which is like... So, so basically 50% of the audience that I'm sending through email is like reading it through RSS. Yeah.
And then like I have, then like I have a lot of web readers as well.
I sort of am in the situation where like, okay, email is the thing that like I say that I do, but then I have this audience that like reads me not through email. Yeah. And I think that like I've not been...
I, I, I think that like I've sort of been pretty laissez-faire about it, y- you know? Like I'm not necessarily like, "You have to subscribe to like read this." And- Mm-hmm...
I think that like- What matters is that people just care enough to read it. Exactly. And I think that like that's, th- that is a really good mindset to, to have with a lot of this, at least from my perspective. You know?
Mm-hmm. You sort of lose out on the, you know, exclusivity factor of it, but at the same time it's like, okay, you know, if you want to do something that like,
you know, you care about that like has the potential to drive a discussion that like, you know, is outside, you know, is outside of your little bubble, like that, that seems like a great way to do it, you know?
I, you know, and I guess, uh, if, if you'd like, I can mention, I can, I can mention my whole thing with Google over the last couple of months here. [laughs] Oh, yeah. Uh, well, so UDM-14, right? Yeah. UDM-14.
Um, I had done this, uh, I had done this blog post, um, you know, this newsletter issue. You know, I call it blog post- [laughs]... I'm less It's, it's really, it's really interchangeable.
I f- I mean, I feel like newsletters are like what blogs were, which are what newsletters were, which are what, uh, paper newsletters were, which I wanna get into that in a second too. You've written about that.
But okay, anyways, UDM-14, a blog post, newsletter- Yeah... you did a couple months ago. Yeah.
So, so basically Google made this change to a search, and the search is, you know, infuriating because you're like, all of a sudden the first thing you read is not like result from the website you actually wanna go to, but the search thing that just tells you through AI- Mm-hmm...
what Google thinks you were looking for. And I'm just like, "Oh man, this is awful. I need to get rid of this."
[laughs] So the, the first thing I, I did was I like looked at the URL structure and like found the tag that like, that, that like made it so you can go to this web mode
that like removes like pretty much all knowledge panels, including AI. Mm-hmm. So it's literally just the list of links. It's just like the 10 links- And-... per page, like, like Google used to back in the good old days.
[laughs] Exactly. And, and so I f- I find this thing, I write a post about it. The post, the post starts going viral outside of my usual reach,
and it's just like- I think I read about it in like Neiman Lab or 404 Media's newsletter or something. It was, yeah, that's how I found it. Yeah. A- and so, and so like I end up,
you know, I end up seeing how this thing is going and I kind of make the realization like, okay, there's an audience of people that like there's, they see this, but they're never going to wanna do this because it requires them to go in the settings of their browser, and they're gonna be too lazy to wanna do it, but they hate- That was me.
[laughs]... they hate the AI thing. Yeah. So I need to figure out a way to like very quickly get these people on the on-ramp to search without AI. So I put together this site called UDM-14.
I threw the thing together in like an hour. I put, I put it on a domain. UDM14.com was somehow open, despite the fact it's a five-character domain.
[laughs] And then I, I put it online, and within about 10 minutes there's like 300 different users, and it's like gets 50,000 views in the first 24 hours. Wow. That's crazy.
Yeah.So you, what, so how were people getting to it? Had you just updated the link in the blog, in your original blog post that then other people had been linking to, or how did that happen?
I, I basically, I basically just shared it on, shared on Mastodon, Blue Sky, and that site they call Twitter. Mm-hmm.
And I basically put it there, and surprisingly, of the three, Twitter was by far the most popular, and it like drove a lot of- People retweeting it and such, yeah. Yep, exactly.
So, so like, so, so like it was a very traditional single-serving site that like did its job, it served the single thing it was serving, and, you know, it's been pretty consistently drawing like people in ever since.
Yeah. Um, okay, I wanna talk about a couple of your other side projects. Specifically, I wanna, I wanna, wanna start with, uh, Midrange, which I think you did 2021 to 2023.
Uh, the kinda subtitle was Hot Takes in 30 Minutes or Less, which is, which is a great joke, uh, already. But I think the conceit was you'd sit down, set a 30-minute timer, and write.
And if you couldn't finish it in 30 minutes, you just wouldn't send it. Is that, th- those are the details, right? I basically would, I basically would tell on myself if the, if I- Hmm...
if I passed the 30 minutes, so I basically would have to be like, I, I basically would have to like admit that like, "Oh, no, I took 35 minutes for this one." Yeah.
And you know, like it put a little tension on me because it was just sort of like every morning I had to like hit this, I had to hit this goal.
And you know, like hopefully I could tell a good story in that period of time. Were you read- But- Were you doing this like concurrently with TDM-... it was, it was a very fascinating-... with, with your day job?
Like w- was this, this was like one of like five things you would do every day, I imagine, right? Yeah, pretty much. I, like at the ti- at the time, I had a full-time job.
I was also doing TDM twice a week, and then the other three days I was doing this because- Mm-hmm... you know, who needs a, who needs a life, you know? Yeah.
[laughs] Have you, have you heard of the, uh, Japanese artist On Kawara? I have not. Uh, please tell me. [laughs] Yeah, so I, uh, he's one of my favorite artists, and so this really reminded me of him. So he,
he was like a minimalist artist. Like, if you know that museum Dia Beacon, uh, just upstate New York, he has some work there.
Um, and he's most known for the series The Date Paintings, where he did this for I think like 20, 30 years, where every day he would make a painting that was just like, there's like three different sizes.
Most of them are like this big, like, I don't know, like 12 by nine inches or something like that.
But, uh, he would paint the date, um, and it would be in the format of the country where he w- where he was, so it'd be like, it could be like Jan dot date, whatever, the order, wherever that country was.
Um, and that's in white letters, and then the background is like a black, a blue, or a gray or a red.
Um, and then he would make a box, uh, that he would store each one in that was lined with newspapers from that day, from that place. And if he didn't finish it that day, he would destroy it.
Uh, so I, as soon as I read this I was like, I was like, "Ernie's just doing On Kawara Date Paintings, but as a newsletter."
Um, so that's, that's crazy you hadn't heard of it, 'cause, uh, it was just like, to me it was the exact same concept. Um, but yeah. So you should look him up. It's good stuff.
But I think one of your last posts about, um, on the, from the Midrange series, uh, again, I'm gonna paraphrase here, but you wrote about the limits of rhythm with regards to creativity.
Um, basically paraphrasing, you said that when you don't have a distinct deadline, i.e. finish, finish this thing sometimes this month, uh, it's really overwhelming. Too much white space.
But also, when you have a consistent distinct deadline, i.e. spend 30 minutes every day trying to write this newsletter, that also suffocates you.
Um, I think neither one sufficiently, reliably produces good creative work was the point. Uh, and I, I agree. I've experienced both those things. Um,
do you think there's actually a sweet spot for like creativity, for finding that creative rhythm, or is it just like, you know, that biological constant struggle for equilibrium?
You know, I, I think that like over the years I've tried different things.
Like, I've, I've had lots of different weird formats, like, you know, people who were subscribing to TDM in 2015 know that like they were getting a newsletter at 3:00 in the morning because I thought it was fine.
[laughs] Um, you know, I, I think that, you know, I, I think that that said, you know, in terms of trying to find like the perfect rhythm or the perfect schedule, like, you know, I think a lot about how,
you know, things ended with Shortform Quad, which w- which was essentially that I'd spent like all this time, literal years, like- Mm-hmm...
writing 10 posts in the morning, you know, before I like stepped into my day job. Like every single day. And like, and these 10 posts were like very short. Like, it was like, literally it's in the name. And, uh, it was,
you know, it was this rhythm that I had caught myself in that like I, I found to be, I found to work for a while, but eventually, but eventually things started to shift and like I got older, you know, it was a little harder to stay up a little later.
Mm-hmm. It was, it was, you know, not as, it was not as consistently, you know, possible to do. And I think that like
when I started Midrange, I was sort of like, "Okay, I'm in this spirit where like I've gotten really flat with my writing because I like write really long pieces for a couple times a week." Yeah.
"So like let's see if I can find that without like losing the spirit of the other thing." Forced brevity. And, exactly. And so I, I basically, you know, I, I think I found that the answer was, you know,
ultimate- ultimately trying to force yourself into a specific shape, it, it's good for a while, but then-But, but then if you are too strict about it, it, like, leads you into a situation where, like, you're just, like, throwing stuff on a page because
you need to throw stuff- You said you would... on the page. Yep. Yeah. So I th- you have a couple other side projects going on right now, and then, yeah, short form, TDM, Midrange, all these things.
I, I was struck by the fact that, like, maybe it's just looking at, you know,
all this stuff over the past 10, 15 years, but you are somebody who seems to be, just seems to know when to start projects and when to abandon them, and I think that's something that's hard, something I've struggled with, where it's like, okay, you can have a million ideas, but which one's actually worth starting?
Or like y- this thing, you know, you've been doing this thing and this one rhythm and this groove for however many years, and you're starting to feel burnt out. Like, how do you know when to stop?
So, um, yeah, I guess first question, how do you know when it's time to abandon a project, as somebody who, who seems to have done so quite healthily multiple times over the years? Um, I think that, you know, for me,
you know, in terms of knowing when to stop, and I think, I think in the case of Short Form Blog, I probably should have stopped that about a year before I actually did. A year before? Not to say...
Yeah, not to say that, like, I didn't do good work in 2014, but it was just, like, a situation where, you know, it was very clear that, like, you know, life was changing, s- things were stressful. Yeah.
And I think that I was, I was really in a spot where, like, I needed to, you know, I needed to take stock and, like, reassess.
But what, you know, I think in the case of, I think in the case of Midrange, it was very much a situation where, you know, I, I found myself, like, running into the same, same mousetrap.
You know, where like, because I was, like, in this position where I had to write something every single day, like, inevitably it would, like, be the obvious thing. Like, it would be...
And because in, because we're talking about late 2022, early 2023, that obvious thing was Elon Musk buying Twitter. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And it was just like, I think that, like, ultimately what this ended up turning into was
I took the spirit of Midrange and moved it into the TDM project, where I do a couple of shorter issues. I do not give myself a specific timeline when they need to be posted.
I basically, you know, if I, if I feel like writing at 10:00 at night on a Monday, I'm on it. Yeah.
If I feel like, if, if I feel like writing at, uh, 3:00 in the afternoon on a Thursday, you know, I guess you're getting an issue. I think that like- Yeah... you know, it's sort of a, you know- Wait, do, excuse...
Do you just write them and send them out? You don't, like, schedule them? You like, "Oh, I'm done writing, time to send it"? Yeah, pretty much. Uh, like I- [laughs]...
I, I think that, like, there's, I, I think that in some ways there's, there's something really fascinating about having that kind of approach because it's just like, you know, you know, there's,
you know, this is, this is blogging. Like, you wanna, you wanna- Yeah... you wanna embrace the, the blogness to the form, I guess. [laughs] Mm-hmm. Yeah. But- With the, the spontaneity, yeah. Yeah.
And I think that, you know, I, I think as well, like, just kind of getting, you know, kind of getting to your point, like, there was one time that I had actually tried to do a...
I'd actually tried to do something, a, a side project that was planned to be a side project, and I was going to like- Are you talking about Next Guest? [laughs] No, no, I was... Like, that was something I had- Oh, sorry.
I said it wrong. [laughs] I've had a lot of... I've tried a lot of things. Yeah. I've tried a lot of things over the years.
And like, you know, the thing that you just mentioned is, what I said my next thing was for Midrange, which obviously I didn't do because- I couldn't find the trace. [laughs] Yeah.
But, but, like, I'd actually built out a template, but then, like, I- Mm-hmm... I started to realize like, hey, you know, this is, this is not where I'm at right now. Mm-hmm.
And the thing I ended up actually building was, uh, a thing I called Lesser TDM, which was a, uh, [laughs] you know, which was a short version of TDM that ran on Substack to, like- Oh...
leverage the fact that they had just added, like, the social, the social network so I could, like, convince people to join the thing that was off T- off Substack. Yeah. And I did it for three months.
I, I, I, like, made it very short. I made it very sweet. It was an experiment to see if, like, people would be more interested in short issues of TDM rather than long issues.
I found that, I, I found that the answer was no, the long issues are fine. And after three months exactly, I shut the dang- that dang thing down. [laughs] Yeah.
Well, okay, so that brings up a good point, like brevity in newsletters, because that's kind of one of the laws of newslettering, I feel like.
Um, and I mean, you, like I mentioned earlier, you'd written this, this article two years ago about the pre-digital newsletter history, and you pulled out, um, like nine lessons or points from this book this guy Howard Penn Hudson wrote, uh, who, this guy also back in, what, the '80s, was writing a newsletter called The Newsletter on Newsletters, which is everything new is old again, everything old is new again, whatever.
Yep. Um, anyways, brevity was the name of the game, was one of the points that you included there. Uh, and you write a long newsletter, I also write a long newsletter.
Um, and it's obviously common sense, common knowledge that that is not what you wanna do.
Um, so I guess, I think, I think one thing there too is like with brevity, brevity doesn't just mean short, it means, like, condensed and, like, well edited, I think.
It, it does mean short, but I think that's part of it. Uh, so question is, when is it okay for newsletters to be long? I think it's when the expectation is set that you can go long. You know? Mm-hmm.
I, I think when people subscribe to TDM, I, like, say it like right in it. It's very clear. [laughs] We go long. [laughs] Yeah.
I send a, I, I, I send a list to people, like, telling people what they should expect from this thing that, like, is, you know, like-Be- because like you, you wanna set expectations, but- Mm-hmm...
you know, I think at the same time, like, you also wanna be sure that, like, you know, what you're doing is, you know, sustainable and fun and, you know, is, you know, is creatively fulfilling. And I think that
if you, if you just switch up one day and decide that your short newsletter is going to be a very long newsletter, you know, that's a problem. But- You're gonna get some churn. Yeah. But you, you know, if you write...
If you kinda take this approach that like, "Okay, you know, I'm gonna do it this way. It's kind of anything goes. Like, I'm, I'm going to intentionally make...
you know, write subject lines that are obtuse so you don't know exactly what you're getting until you click the, you, you click the thing in the email." Like- Yeah... it, it forces, it forces you to like, you know,
not necessarily- Lean in a bit. Yeah, lean in a, in a bit. Accept that, like, this guy's gonna take you somewhere, you know? Mm-hmm.
And, and that somewhere may just be, like, a 3,000-word piece about, you know, how, you know, how the safety button works on your jar of salsa.
[laughs] Which, you know, is, is an issue I actually wrote at some point, you know? [laughs] Yeah. I believe it. [laughs] Um, okay.
The creator economy and this concept I've been hearing more about, the taste economy, right? They both kind of exist within the larger attention e- economy, let's say.
Um, and this is on my mind because somebody on Twitter the other day had made some point about like, they're like, "Why isn't anybody building the tool for, for distribution?"
Um, you know, and I, I, I'd replied, I was like, "I don't, I don't think you can solve that. Like, if there's a tool that solves for distribution, it's s- defeated itself because you can't have...
You can't, like, not everybody can d- like if you want distribution, if you wanna solve for distribution, go text your friend, that's the solve for distribution, one-to-one distribution.
But, like, the m- the one-to-many distribution, I'm skeptical that it can be solved." Um, and ba- basically, my reply was some version of that, and then this guy said, uh, "Well, I don't think it's a zero-sum game."
I disagree. I think it is a zero-sum game, and I'm curious to hear what you think. Because I think like, let's say with newsletters, right? Like, um, which are only one... Like, the...
There's only so much attention anybody can give any s- time, any type of informational, any type of media in their day-to-day. Uh, and let's say with newsletters specifically, most...
It- I think it's like if, let's say if you're writing an English language newsletter, your market is people with, who speak the English language, who are online, who have an email account.
Um, and more specifically, they're probably somebody who has to use email for work, otherwise you're probably not checking it that much.
Um, and then those people, on average, probably have enough time for one newsletter a day. Um, so I guess the question is like, do you think it is a zero-sum game or not in the, the attention economy?
I think one thing that I'll... Yeah, I have a couple thoughts about this. Yeah. One, to kind of touch on the point that you were making about, like, whether distribution is a, is a nut that can be cracked, um,
I would recommend taking a good look right now at, um, yeah, at what was happening around ActivityPub. It's a, uh- Mm-hmm... it's a distribution- Fediverse, right? Yeah, Fediverse distribution mechanism.
There's some work that's being done on this front.
Um, you know, uh, I will, I will admit it's by Ghost, you know, that like, you know, is, is definitely, you know, is definitely worth keeping an eye on because it's- Mm...
sort of working on the specific kind of problem in terms of, like, making it so that when somebody posts something, it gets distributed. You can follow people, you know, that are distributing in this method.
It's, you know, it's very, you know, it's very interesting to see what's going on with that. Mm-hmm. You know, does it solve the problem?
I'm hopeful that, like, maybe it does something, but you know, [laughs] we've, we've seen a lot of this before. Let's- Yeah... you know what, you know, on that point, um- Well, that's...
Well, so that's- I'm terrible- Sorry. R- to, to... Before we move on to the next point, I think that's kind of my thing though is that, like, any new
platform or new solution does solve it, but within a matter of months to years, people find a way to dominate that with like, with, with how...
You know, whatever marketing techniques, and then it becomes they kind of crowd out the other people who don't have the time or money to like spend on like, you know, uh, pushing out volume or like whatever on that channel.
So and it's like that's, that's kind of my, where I was landing is like, you can solve for it, but only for a short period of time with a new platform. And may- maybe you're right with like ActivityPub. That's...
I need to look more into it. It's like something I keep hearing about but haven't looked into. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think that that, you know, that's a fair point. And, you know- Mm-hmm...
one thing that I'll say in that the d- in the decade that I've been doing this, so almost, almost a full decade- Mm... um, is that there's just been
a tendency to, you know, as more people get into this, like they get better at, they, they get better at different things than you, that, than you're good at. Like, okay. Yeah.
I got into this as a writer a- and journalist and creative person who wanted to like write and journalist- Yeah... and create. And, um, I run a, I run a newsletter group. Yes. And, uh, and it's called Newsletter Nerds.
It's, uh- On Facebook... it's on Facebook. It's, it's not really, it's not really super active these days because Facebook is terrible, but- One post in the past month. That's pretty much- I've done my research.
[laughs] You've done your research. Good job. Um, I... But, but there's a point where like somebody tried to post like some growth hacking scheme- Mm-hmm...
on it, and-It was, it was very, very aggressive and very obvious what they were trying to do. Um, somebody, somebody, you know, somebody pretty well-known in the newsletter space actually, um, and
a blocked person and then somebody else that they knew posted it again. And it was just like, oh. So, so like what's ultimately happening here is like people who are really good at growth- And shitification...
are going to start crowding out people that are, you know, are just trying to do this because they enjoy doing it. And- Yeah... I'm not, I'm not necessarily saying that that's everybody.
I'm not necessarily like trying to name names or like criticize anybody about it. I just think that like,
that zero sum game point that you're getting to, you know, that is the version of it that I think that I've seen in this space over the last decade. And
I'm sort of, [laughs] I'm sort of this guy like waving the tiny little flag for like, for, for like just being creative and trying to do it- Yeah... in, in a way that like isn't about like results over all else. But
that said, it would be nice, it, it would be nice if, uh, I had a couple more people on my corner on that front, you know? Like- Yeah... I, I know that they're out there. I've, I've, I've talked to plenty of them.
It's always good to g- get a couple more. Well, so no, so this is great. I think like one of, one of my other, you know, theories of what is a creator is that like they're all...
There's, there's, it's a Venn diagram, right? And there's like, like so a creator, to be successful as a creator online, it's a mix of the creative skills and the business skills or the marketing skills. And I think like
you, the way you're describing yourself is very much in the creative skills bucket, right?
But I think, um, be- when it becomes more crowded, these things, and more people are doing like growth hacky stuff, whatever, um, you, like somebody like you maybe who's just starting out, who like the, the version of you who's like launched TDM today, right?
Like you are then forced to like either learn some of those more marketing business skills or, um, or partner with somebody who has. Yeah.
And I think like both of these things have become oversaturated, but then it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with like the, the kid who's trying to make money instead of make the thing for art's sake, right?
So I think like more people maybe get interested in purely the monetization side rather than the creative side.
And maybe it's a thing where like that continues happening until there's a, a, you know, just kind of a, a crash a, a, or a, a course correction because like there's not enough quality.
And then the quality kind of just starts rising to the cro- rising to the top because like it's just so, like there's so much low quality stuff. I don't know.
That, which is kind of just an obvious, I think kind of, you know, it's a p- the pendulum swings and the pendulum swings back kind of thing, but I don't know. Yeah.
You know, I think so, so much of that is, is really true. You know, like- Mm-hmm... I think that, you know, when I started doing this, it was like,
you know, there are a couple newsletters that I still know are very active that like were around back then, but they're, they're very small parts of the overall pie.
Like, a lot of those people like from that era are still kind of around, but- Mm-hmm... it's tough like when you're getting into it.
Like, it's, it's sorta like people who start like a YouTube channel now to talk about video games. Yeah. There are so many YouTube channels about video games that like it's impossible to stand out unless like you,
like you, you hit all the levers, you like talk about like the very buzziest of buzzy things, you have a lot of money to throw at the problem, and, you know, you're, you're willing to like take other creators down in the process.
Yeah. We haven't gotten to the crea- take other creators down part [laughs] in the newsletter space, I don't think. The hostile takeovers, as it were. Yeah.
But I do think that like we're sort of in the situation where there's so many people that like wanna get into the space that maybe aren't starting with the same motivations that- Yeah... I did, you know?
Or, or- Mm-hmm... you know, people who started in, in 2015 or 2016 or even 2017 did. And I think that that's not necessarily healthy for the space. Yeah.
But at the same time, I understand it because, you know, like you said, it's, you know, it's sort of a situation where, you know, as things become more saturated, like, you know, the sponge can only hold so much.
[laughs] Yeah. Exactly. So what is one thing that you're very optimistic about in the newsletter world, and one thing you're pessimistic about? Um, I think in terms of what I'm optimistic about,
I think I'm optimistic that, you know, there will be, there'll be creators like that
come, you know, that come after me, that come after, you know, what we currently have that are doing, that are doing really embedded things that like will
keep pushing the space forward, where it won't necessarily just be like, you know, the same three types of newsletters for everything, where it'll be like something that like,
you know, builds and creates like another, you know, another form of, you know, ano- another for- another form of the medium.
Like, I think that like there's plenty of room to do that because we have better tools than we did in 2015 when I started.You know, like,
you know, fact of the matter, like the fact that there's, you know, there are so many options to send a newsletter now, you know, Beehiiv being one of them.
Uh, you know, I think that is, you know, it's, it's really, you know, it really opens up the space to a lot of different types of creators. Um, I think the thing that I'm pessimistic about is,
you know, there's always the risk of like, you know, the trend chasers that you- Mm-hmm... sort of see online, like exploiting what is a good thing for a lot of people in the community for
sort of their own personal sake. Which is not to say that like I'm, I'm necessarily criticizing anybody for that. I'm just more like thinking about, okay, well, you know,
there's a lot of- Well, it, it sounds like you're saying the same thing for both, that the good thing and the bad thing are both the higher level of access. Yeah. I mean, it, it is kind of that.
You know, like the thing is there is a higher level access.
It like makes it so that it democratizes it, but then there's also the situation where because there's more democracy and because it's easier to like build a thing, like
it leads to, it, it, it leads to people that are like, oh, you know, subscribe to my Web3 newsletter, you know?
And, and like they just build up the biggest list and like once the next thing shows up, like they move that list to the, to the AI newsletter. You know? Like it's- Mm-hmm. Lack of integrity. It's not... Yeah.
I think that that's sort of... And you know, I, I realize that like, you know, it's, it's not really a great, [laughs] you know, great creative growth storyline to be like, you know, knock that off. But- Yeah...
[laughs] you know, I think at the same time though, like there is a, there is a need to like keep in mind that integrity does matter in this space because people need to, need to know that like the people that they read, you know, do, you know, they do understand that like- Yeah...
this is not just like, you know, this is not just like a, a game for them.
Like they, they wanna ensure that like, you know, it's, you know, they're getting a quality product and it's, you know, like they're not just, you know, they're not being thrown under, thrown under the bus for the sake of like an easy buck, you know?
Yeah. No, that's, that's good. I, and I agree with that. I think integrity is something that gets, that, that gets thrown under the bus itself a lot. Yeah. Um, okay, last question then is like what's,
what's on your mind for the next, you know, couple years, year or two? You're, you're about to hit a decade, uh, come January. Um, is, TDM will then have survived twice as long as Shortform Blog. Do you have like,
you know, ambitious new project plans, or are you kinda just, you're happy where you're at and you're continuing a pace?
You know, I think that like one, one thing that I'm, I'm kind of thinking about, and I'm not necessarily saying that like I have anything like firmly set in plans, but I, I think that like a lot of the strategy that I've learned over the last decade, like
I would like to be able to take that to, you know, to like a more niche approach. Like basically, uh, you know, try to, try to target a more niche audience that like it makes sense for.
Um, you know, and maybe, maybe do more of the monetization stuff for that to like make it like, you know- Mm-hmm... a viable, you know, a viable thing that doesn't have to like,
you know, lean on, you know, random viral-ness or, you know, like- Yeah... luck of the draw. Is it what... Wait, is it... As, as a business, is it like sustaining itself plus a little bit right now, or is it like,
are, are you breaking even on your time, do you feel? Is it sustainable for you right now, is the question, I guess. I, I mean, I think it's, you know...
I, I would say that it's breaking even in terms of like, I make a profit off of it- Mm... and it's, you know, like I, I, I think that like it's not like the main thing. It's not like the main thing that I, I do.
Like I have a, I have a freelance journalism career. Yeah. And in many ways it's like a great inroad to like- It's a calling card... be- It's a business card. It's a call... Yeah.
It's a, it's a great calling card to be like, you know, "Hey, I've done this thing that's been featured in all these places, and, you know, like I've had a lot of success with it." You know?
But I think, I think at the same time, like I, I'm not trying to like turn it into this like, you know, $10 million business. I'm just trying to like make it something that like is a successful thing creatively.
It's also- You're not trying to build a media empire, you're just trying to sustain a column on the newsletter internet. Exactly. And that's, you know, maybe, maybe that doesn't make me ambitious enough.
Maybe, maybe it makes me look a bit old school, but whatever, you know? It's- Well, I think... No, I think that's, I think for most people, that's the move, honestly.
Like I, I was talking to Kate Lindsey from Embedded a couple weeks ago, um, and sh- just kind of the same for her. She was very upfront.
She was like, "Look, I'll tell you, I ha- I make 1,500 to $3,000 a month through subscription revenue," but it's like, this is more about something that is consistent, and then I have my freelance journalism career.
I think the more I think about...
Like I, I'm interested in this idea of the newsletter internet and everybody being a columnist on it, whether or not you're like doing it fully independently as you are, whether or not you're like paying for software to do it, whether that's Beehiiv or Ghost or Mailchimp, or if it's Substack.
And Substack is like, I feel like with Substack it's like, it's fully a media company where they just, you know, they take a cut. Um, anyways, my point being, I think it's like,
I think it's good to be a columnist on the newsletter internet, which just sounds- Yeah... like what you're doing. I, I think that that's, that's very much what I'm trying to do.
And I think the other thing that I'll say though is like, you know-One thing I think a lot about, you know, kind of going back to, you know, the forebearers of this industry, you know, Mr. Howard Penn Hudson.
One of the things that I found really interesting about, you know, reading his book and then doing research on him was
while he was clearly waiting for a different medium, like his, you know, his thought ab- his thought process around it is very similar to what you see today.
You know, like it's, you know, a lot of, you know, find the right niche, you know- Mm-hmm... try to, you know, try to engage those people. Like, build, build a model.
Build things that, like, support that model, you know? And I think that, like, I love, you know... I, I kinda like the idea that, like, okay, I built this thing that is just, like, sort of amorphous and weird and fun.
But I also think that, like, it would also be interesting at some point to, to build something that's tightly focused- Yeah... and does, you know, does specific storytelling that is beneficial to,
you know, a very narrow and specific audience. I think that that, like, is something I'd like to look into at some point. I'm not saying it's gonna be like, you know, I have a launch coming in a month, you know?
It's- It's not your Q3 goal. Yeah. It's not my Q3 goal, but I think that, like... But I think if I, I do that, I don't wanna, like, just do it, like, with, you know, you know, with a random newsletter.
I wanna, like- Mm-hmm... put the same mindset I've put into, put into TDM. That being, like, the willingness to, like, do the work to build up to that versus, you know, versus just trying to build this thing that's like,
uh, you know, I started an account. Like, I now have a newsletter, you know? Like, there has to be more strategy- Yeah... to it than that, you know? Yeah. Planning. A real editorial point of view. Yeah. Um, cool.
Well, I think that's a great place to end it. Where should people go to find you and your work? Uh, you can find me at tdm.co. I've, uh, you know, I've been doing it for a long time.
Uh, I have a lot of side projects I- I'm sure you've heard. But that said, the place where you're gonna find me mostly is TDM. [laughs] That's the place to go. All right. Uh, this has been the Creator Spotlight Podcast.
Ernie Smith has been our guest today, and I have been your host, Francislier. I will see you next week. [outro music]