Most newsletters today are, at their core, a blog with distribution. Delivered through all-in-one tools like Substack or beehiiv.
Meanwhile, the not-so-shiny but incredibly powerful tool WordPress has been powering bloggers for over 20 years. And because it’s my world, I’ve always known how to blend the two:
- A blog + a distribution engine.
- Mailchimp’s old-school RSS-to-email feature.
- Plugins that auto-send your posts the moment you publish.
The same outcome on a platform you own, built quietly into the open web for decades.
This is not a dunk on newsletters. They’re crazy powerful for an individual creator – a chunk of your audience that wanted to get a little more intimate. Bundled with the right offer or when used for lead-gen, they can be extremely profitable, too.
But I keep seeing people (millennials, mostly millennials) say: “Bring back blogging” and “I miss the old internet”.
But blogging never left. It just moved to the inbox.
The real difference is distribution. The world got smart and realized that relying on bookmarks, RSS readers, and luck wasn’t enough to keep your stuff top of mind.
People didn’t hate the blog, they want fewer places to lose them.
So if you’re thinking about blogging, asking “Should I start a blog or a newsletter?” Instead, ask yourself: is it really one or the other?
It isn’t. Do both.
