Gina Bianchini of Mighty Networks talks to Nathan Barry about what makes communities succeed.

💥 Communities that die out are often too generic.
💥 Advice shuts a community down, but sharing stories, experiences, and ideas expands a community.
💥 The top success factor for a community is how much members are talking to each other. You need to help facilitate relationships between members.
💥 The best communities tend to serve people in a transition and then deliver their best year ever.
💥 Monthly themes, weekly calendars and daily polls and questions keep the community interesting.

Why this matters: Communities can be a great business model for creators but they can be hard to get started and maintain. Most communities fizzle out.

Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop have a great list of ways to improve your newsletter.

Why this matters:
Systematically improving all these parts of your newsletter will help you get and keep more subscribers. This should be a 30-day newsletter challenge.

Here are the ideas:

💥 Have a focused landing page with no distractions.
💥 Use an "almost there" page to drive people to confirm their emails.
💥 Your "thank you" page can be a good place to upsell.
💥 Your welcome email can be a great place to showcase your personality. They share a good example.
💥 Ask for a reply in your welcome email. 💥 The power of an invite only newsletter and personally adding subscribers.
💥 Add a context block to your emails to remind people why they subscribed.
💥 Send custom Loom videos to each subscriber in the beginning to build trust.
💥 Send a reminder email 4 hours later to get people to download the lead magnet.
💥 Referral programs are a great way to get extra subscribers without much extra work.
💥 Create a cross promotion system to facilitation promotions with other newsletters.
💥 Do free cross promotions on recommendation widgets with other newsletters.
💥 Offer super cheap sponsor slots to make it easy to sell your inventory and generate demand.
💥 Analyze your subject lines to try to find the best one.
💥 After 30 days, send a bonus to subscribers.
💥 Study your favorite creators and learn from their onboarding emails.

Mike Romaine shares examples of different creators and their Flagship Offers.

"A Flagship Offer is much like your Brand Identity. It should be an offer you want to be known for. The thing you want people to go around talking about when they're referring to you."

Why this matters:
There are some great examples to learn from with advice on how to niche down to make more money and get known for a particular solution.

via @joshspector

Why this matters:
"The biggest wins aren't coming from building new things - they're coming from reimagining what already works."

This can apply to any business you do. Don't try to be innovative and new. Look for a boring, established business and just do it a little better with AI and upgraded marketing.

Why this matters:
You can build a business off of a newsletter, but more importantly, it can be an opportunity engine. 

"The coolest part about a newsletter isn’t the money you can make. It’s the accountability it creates. Readers will depend on you to show up. That builds an unstoppable writing habit. A writing habit will change your life in 52 weeks or less.

Maybe it’ll be the newsletter that creates your future success. Or perhaps a newsletter becomes the seed of your success.

A newsletter allows you to be around what you’re passionate about. It’s forced learning. It involves free networking as part of the process.

A writing habit can change your life. Get leverage."