So You Want to Start a Shopping Newsletter
8 Rules from a ShopMy Millionaire and Substack Bestseller
People on this platform copy me. Shamelessly, sometimes, and with a specificity that crosses from flattery into plagiarism. I see my outfit collages restaged. I see my market work lifted almost whole. I see the structure of my newsletters reproduced, my phrases repeated back to me without attribution, my voice mimicked with an uncanniness that stops being charming, my ideas and archetypes blatantly stolen, the exact colors I use in my graphic design showing up in somebody else’s template two weeks after I’ve used them. I see editors from larger publications lifting my ideas, and voices on other platforms riffing on my work, without attribution. Woof.
Am I annoyed? Yes! I would be lying if I said I wasn’t. I have spent twenty years developing this point of view, and it is, at minimum, mildly insulting to watch it get Xeroxed in real time by women who have put in twenty months, and by publications that should, frankly, know better.
But! I have decided that if people are going to copy me anyway, I might as well save them a step and tell them how the whole thing actually works.
So here is the shopping newsletter playbook. I wrote it, and I dare you to do it better.
Let’s be clear: I am first and foremost a writer and an editor. Not an editor in the grammatical sense; an editor in the way a magazine has an editor — someone whose job is POV. This is the part most people building in this space get wrong, and it is the part I want to begin with, because everything else I say in this letter follows from it.
I did not set out to build “an affiliate business” (ick). I did not set out to build a media company (oops). I set out to write and to edit.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the anonymous fashion Substacker and the $275K that scandalized the internet. It got shared! It got quoted! It got the kind of comment section that made me love my readers more than I already did.
But the response I wasn’t expecting, and the one I want to answer today, came into my inbox.
It came from dozens of women. Writers, mostly, some with small newsletters, some with none yet, all of them asking some version of the same question.
How did you actually do this? Would you tell me? Would you help?
Yes, I will help! That is what this letter is.
The earlier piece was about my right to be paid for the work. This piece is about the work itself, and how you can do yours. There is no formula, and I would not trust anyone who told you there was.
But there are things I know now that I wish I had known at the beginning. And if you’re going to copy me, at least do it with the full instructions. But mostly, this is just here for anyone who wants to dip their toe into this world — there’s a feast happening in real time, so pull up a chair and join me.
1. Your newsletter is Bergdorf Goodman. Or is it The Gap? Decide.
The reader who opens a newsletter is not being interrupted. She is not scrolling past you on her way to something else. She chose to read. That is the most valuable permission on the internet, and almost nobody talks about it that way.
Treat the inbox like the storefront it is. Merchandise beautifully. Know what’s on the floor. Help people think about how these objects will integrate into their lives. Speak to their function and care. Present a great experience, whether or not anyone makes a purchase.
Respect those who came in. Don’t waste their time. Write something worth their attention, in the voice they subscribed to, and the rest follows.
