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Summary

Claire Venus and Erin Shetron from FREQUENT CRIERS CLUB discuss the realities of building a sustainable newsletter practice on Substack, emphasizing depth over frequency, authentic audience connection, and giving creative work space to breathe.

The conversation covers;

* practical growth strategies

* monetization approaches

* SEO optimization

* and the importance of honoring your own creative energy cycles rather than following prescribed publishing schedules.

Key Quotes

On Publishing Frequency:

“I really feel like it’s okay to slow down your publishing cadence if you are going deeper... your relationship with your audience is all that matters. And they don’t really mind too much how often it’s not about the frequency I don’t think it’s much more about the depth.”

On Growth as a Process:

“It feels like literally building an igloo to like live inside and you like got your torch... it’s all exactly the same. And then all of a sudden you’re nearly there. And then once you get there, it’s like, woohoo, we’re down slopes, we’re skiing.”

On Creative Energy:

“I don’t worry about running out of ideas. I worry about energy dips... I’ve run out of the aligned energy to deliver them.”

On Platform Evolution:

“I cannot be so enmeshed and entangled with a platform because I don’t work for the platform and the platform is going to platform.”

On Authenticity in 2026:

“With how unstable everything feels and how fake everything feels... it could really come down to the voice. If we all did our voice memos for each newsletter... it really gives it that human quality.”

On Monetization Strategy:

“When you start paywalling things or start offering discounts... it’s a no-brainer to do them together. So say you run a three-day flash sale... At the end of that sale day, on the last day, you want to run a really valuable, high-value, juicy, paywalled piece.”

On AI-Generated Content:

“People don’t use chat GPT to write your Substack notes... We can tell. We can tell when your notes are written by chat.”

On Creative Practice:

“The people who block out [external input] the best, write the best newsletters... their voices aren’t weighed down by everything else that they’re reading. They don’t feel that they’re in competition with people.”

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