Digital Marketing for Creatives

Your Newsletter is Your Survival Kit. Here’s Why:

Alright, settle down. I’m making coffee. You want some? It’s dark roast. It’s fine.

So I’m sitting here, in the office, and I’m thinking about panic. Specifically, the low-level, ambient panic I see in the eyes of every creative person I talk to right now. The writers, the painters, the comedians, the people who make stuff.

And the panic sounds like this: “Instagram changed the algorithm again and nobody saw my post.” “Twitter is… well, you know.” “TikTok is great for views but nobody knows my name, they just know the dance.” “My Patreon is down 20%.”

You are building your house on rented land. And the landlord is a meth addict with a remote control for the bulldozer. He might just get bored and level the place for the fun of it.

This is why, for the love of god, you need a newsletter. And not just a newsletter, but a tool like Beehiiv that treats your newsletter like the goddamn command center it should be.

The List is the Only Thing That’s Yours

Let’s get one thing straight. Your followers on social media? They’re not yours. They’re Meta’s. They’re Elon’s. They’re ByteDance’s. You are a tenant farmer working their soil. You can be evicted for any reason, or for no reason at all. Your account can be banned, shadow-banned, or just rendered invisible by an algorithm change that prioritizes dancing cats over your carefully crafted essay.

An email list? That’s yours.

You own those names. You own those addresses. That’s a direct line to someone who said, “Yes, I want to hear from you.” Not from the algorithm. Not from the platform. From you. It’s the digital equivalent of someone inviting you into their living room. You don’t knock that shit down and build a condominium.

This is what I try to drill into the head of every creative who crosses my path. You can have a million followers on Instagram, but if that platform goes under or decides you’re persona non grata, you have nothing. You have to start over. But if you have an email list of 5,000 people who actually give a damn, you have a career.

The Newsletter is the Operating System, Not Just an Output

So you get a newsletter tool. But which one? This is where Beehiiv comes in, and this is where I’ve had to re-evaluate my own cynicism about “tools.”

Most email platforms are just… pipes. You write something, you shove it into the pipe, it comes out the other end in someone’s inbox. That’s it. End of transaction.

Beehiiv looks at the newsletter differently. They see it as the hub. The central nervous system. And if you’re an artist or a writer, you need a nervous system, because you’re scattered all over the place.

Think about your week. You’re probably doing this:

1. You write a post on Substack (or Medium, or wherever).
2. You post a clip of your podcast on Spotify.
3. You sell your art prints on Big Cartel or Gumroad.
4. You promote a workshop on Eventbrite.
5. You try to drive traffic to all of it from Instagram.

That’s five platforms. Five logins. Five different ways your audience has to find you and pay you. It’s exhausting just typing it.

Now imagine this: Your newsletter is the home base. You write the essay in Beehiiv. You hit send. In that same ecosystem, you can also sell the print. You can also promote the workshop. You can also embed the podcast episode that lives on your Beehiiv-powered site .

It’s not just an email anymore. It’s your website. It’s your store. It’s your podcast host. It’s your link-in-bio tool. It’s all there, connected to the one thing you own: the list.

The “Discovery” Lie vs. The “Connection” Truth

People get addicted to the “discovery” of social media. The rush of a new like, a new follower, a notification. It’s a slot machine. But discovery is a lie if you can’t capitalize on it. What’s the point of 10,000 people seeing your video if they all scroll past and forget your name 3 seconds later?

A newsletter isn’t about discovery. It’s about connection. It’s about depth. It’s the long, slow, steady burn of building a relationship with someone who actually cares.

When someone opens your newsletter, they are giving you their attention. Not a distracted, scrolling-through-the-feed attention. But a focused, “I sat down to read this” attention. That’s gold. That’s the only currency that matters in a world drowning in noise.

You Are the Algorithm

And here’s the other thing. You know what the algorithm on Beehiiv is? It’s you. You decide who gets what. You can segment your list. You can send a special post to your paying subscribers. You can send a different one to new people who just signed up. You can see who’s actually opening your stuff and who’s just letting it rot in their spam folder .

It’s direct. It’s honest. It’s a relationship, not a broadcast.

I think that’s what scares some creatives. The algorithm is an excuse. “Oh, the algorithm didn’t show my work.” It’s a scapegoat. When you have a newsletter, the only person responsible for the connection is you. It’s vulnerable. It’s personal. It’s you, talking to another human, without a filter.

And yeah, that’s terrifying. But it’s also the only way to actually build something that lasts.

Look, I’m not saying delete your social media. Use it. It’s a good bullhorn. It’s a way to point people to the thing that actually matters. But the thing that matters is the list. The list is your career. The list is your safety net. The list is the proof that people actually want to hear what you have to say.

So stop renting. Start owning.

Get a newsletter. Make it your home. And for the love of god, use a tool that understands that it’s not just about sending emails, it’s about building a goddamn life raft.

Behiiv can be found here

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Every Tuesday I’ll post about a tool I found useful or interesting. I am never paid to promote these things, it is just my honest opinion. If you want to receive a notification when I post there is a magic box to pop your email address into. No spam and I only post on a Monday and Tuesday, because, there’s just too much other stuff to do. You know how it is.

You can also do me a solid and buy me a coffee for being in service to the creator community for over two years.

I genuinely noticed that Creatives can often struggle when it comes to marketing, primarily because they’d rather be creating. But you’ve got to sell to get some money, so you can carry on creating. Have you seen that guy, Sisyphus? So I’m here, part in service and in part because I enjoy it.

Now, go make your thing.