12 Examples of The Best Newsletters: Subscribe Today!

Here’s a curated list of the best newsletters to subscribe to. Use them as inspiration for your own.

Email marketing seems like a straightforward and easy way to keep in touch with readers, customers, and clients. But the reality is most subscribers ignore, delete, or mark promotional emails as spam.

If you want to ensure your weekly newsletter hits the inbox of your subscribers and is opened and read, find what works well for your target audience.

And there are many high-quality newsletters across various niches, packed with great content. 

These newsletters have compelling design and copy. They also include quality content for a targeted group of potential customers and readers. So, which are the best newsletters to subscribe to this year? Let’s find out!

(Click the heading to visit each one)

1. Tim Ferris 5-Bullet Friday

Tim Ferris is the author of several best-selling books including the 4-Hour Work Week, Tribes of Mentors and Tools of Titans.

In this weekly newsletter, he shares five things that caught his attention. These include music, articles, books, products, news stories and content he shares on Twitter or Instagram. Ferriss also shares the latest episodes from his popular podcast.

It’s popular with entrepreneurs and listeners of his podcast.

2. James Clear‘s 3-2-1

This free weekly newsletter provides actionable advice about habits, learning and productivity.

Clear, the best-selling author of Atomic Habits, offers succinct self-improvement tips based on books he read and his own work and research. It’s also a great example of how to weave storytelling into content marketing.

Check out our interview with James Clear.

3. Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Ric

New Yorker Ramit Sethi wants to teach people how to live a rich life by starting an online business and taking charge of their finances.

A markter and a best-selling author, Sethi tells stories about his business and personal life and how they relate to setting up an online business. He also sometimes pitches his popular courses like Earnable.

It offers valuable insights into digital marketing, online business and financial news. Sethi also weaves in his quirky take on the world.

4. From the Desk of Austin Kleon

Austin Kleon, based in Ohio, is a writer who draws. In this weekly free newsletter, he provides “ten things worth sharing”.

These items relate to art, writing, creativity, music and poetry. Kleon combines extras from his own work with interesting articles, books and music. He also sometimes shares some of his drawings and blackout poetry.

He uses MailChimp to host and send this newsletter, which contains a distinctive design comprising of a powerful image and a formatted, scannable list.

5. Luke O’Neil – Welcome to Hell World

US Writer Luke O’Neill launched this free and paid newsletter in 2018 to convey his views and thoughts on the US political landscape.

O’Neil’s goal is to get his readers to move beyond the traditional news and examine political troubles that he sees is engulfing the world, particularly in the US. He uses Substack newsletter to get around the traditional media outlets.

O’Neill opts for a personal tone based on free writing and he interweaves tails from his personal life with current events.

Check out our interview with Luke.

6. Anne Codrea-Rado – The Professional Freelancer

This free and paid weekly newsletter is a good choice for freelance writers

Anne offers thoughts on how to thrive as a freelance writer today. Along with the newsletter, she highlights advice, work opportunities, a Slack group, and resources for increasing income. She also offers regular AMAs.

7. Flow State

This free and paid music newsletter goes out each weekday via Substack.

Subscribers get recommendations of music for their workday that will cultivate a state of flow, across Spotify, iTunes, Tidal, Amazon Music and YouTube. You also get a weekly two-hour mix of music based on these recommendations.

Typically, this music contains very little lyrics so you can concentrate more easily.

I listen to recommendations from this newsletter regularly while writing.

8. Anthony Pompliano-The Pomp Letter

This free and paid daily Substack newsletter goes out to over 35,000 people who want to understand and learn about Bitcoin, crypto, and other tech assets in a digital world. It includes audio, video and text content.

Along with a daily newsletter for investors, Pomp covers crypto industry trends and provides his own analysis. Subscribers get early access to podcasts, episode transcripts, and comprehensive show notes.

These notes allow the subscriber to read at their own pace and details crypto-related topics, ideas, and projects.

9. The Morning Brew

Founded by Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief, The Morning Brew is a free newsletter that sends you an email once a day at 6 AM EST about everything business and tech-related.

Being a freelance writer or entrepreneur, you want to stay up to date with the latest news and trends. But if you’re spending time checking blog posts, podcasts, and news outlets to stay up to date, here’s good news for you. The Morning Brew delivers everything you need to know straight in your inbox.

And all the information is presented in a fun and easy to consume manner. I like reading The Morning Brew while drinking my morning cup of coffee.

10. Next Draft By Dave Pell

What’s unique about Next Draft is that only one man is running the show behind the scenes. Dave Pell is the founder of Next Draft and he sits behind his computer every day and visits hundreds of websites to find content that’s worth his subscriber’s time.

His newsletter delivers your daily news in a funny, witty, and punchy tone.

Next Draft also has an app on the Apple App Store that updates daily so you don’t miss any important news. However, the app is exclusively available on the Apple App Store, so those of us with Android devices are out of luck.

11. The Skimm

The Skimm delivers everything you need to know right in your inbox every morning. And it doesn’t leave out any important information like who, why, and what since their newsletters dive deep into daily news.

In addition to beginning your day with important news, The Skimm recommends popular apps that you might want to download, new books you might be interested in, and new movies and television shows that are being released.

Another helpful feature that The Skimm has is that they’ll send you wholesome messages about people who’re going the extra mile to impact the world positively. This is a great way of starting your day on the right foot.

12. The Hustle

The team behind The Hustle aims to break the stereotypical routine of consuming unimportant news that most of us go through. We all hate spending time consuming news that doesn’t matter. This could be reading articles, watching the news on TV, or going through our email inbox first thing in the morning. 

But with The Hustle, you’ll only receive information that’s relevant to you.

The Hustle delivers the latest business and tech news every single morning in an authoritative and all-knowing tone. However, it remains understandable and readable so it makes for a great read when you’re traveling to work or getting ready for class.

The Best Newsletters: Final Thoughts

If you want to learn what a good newsletter consists of, subscribe to one of the newsletter examples above. Study them and learn what works.

Content marketing, via a newsletter, can help you build a better relationship with readers and would-be customers.

When you’re ready, check our guide How to Start a Newsletter and also our list of the best Substack newsletters. Consider starting one using a tool like ConvertKit (read our ConvertKit review) or Substack.

Our guide to the best newsletter software explains more.

Best Newsletters: FAQs