What Jacqui did in RSS’ absence is always helpful: letting other people filter popular news sites for you.
I've been hearing this back from a lot of my subscribers (I run weekly JavaScript, Ruby, and HTML5 newsletters). They've gotten sick of the deluge that accompanies RSS feeds and the lack of discrimination that sometimes occurs on Twitter and they trust me to curate that info for them. Of course, the next step is to expand into some slightly bigger niches ;-)
Of course, there's the "why aren't you doing this with RSS" crowd too, but with 25k subscribers and growing, I'm finding it pays to focus on those who actually want the e-mails!
To be honest, I do have RSS feeds of the newsletters that I don't promote (unless people specifically ask). I haven't put much effort into them for two reasons: 1) I'm trying to get the e-mail side of things 100% right rather than spread myself too thin, and 2) e-mail is a lot easier to monetize nowadays (think mid/high double digit CPMs rather than the $5 or so I make on my Web properties).
I can attest to the effectiveness of the Cooper mailings as they pretty much reflect the important stuff that is or could be very useful to the reader. It also helps to listen to the Javascript show as well as knowing where Mr. Cooper is getting some of his information from, as he in turn takes the time to vet and confirm something of interest.
Like the author, I too had dozens of feeds coming in and about a month ago I paired them down to under thirty or so and now I probably receive a couple dozen items a day versus hundreds previously, many of which you all know were duplicates or Techcrunch-like filler blurbs. I knew it was bad when people suggested that I needed infinite scroll for my reader, but there was always something about possessing information as it happened in real time* versus having the community discover it for you.
Now if I could only stop copying stuff to Everlater and actually do something with it.
I'm a subscriber to your javascript and html5 newsletters and I must admit you're doing a great job. every week i get the best of the news, carefully picked with short descriptions so I don't have to look any further if something doesn't interest me. i wished there was newsletters like yours for more of the topics that interest me!
I'm always open to suggestions! :-) There are a couple more on the way but it's reached a bit of a "crunch" time where I decide if there's a business in it or not. Interesting times.
I've been hearing this back from a lot of my subscribers (I run weekly JavaScript, Ruby, and HTML5 newsletters). They've gotten sick of the deluge that accompanies RSS feeds and the lack of discrimination that sometimes occurs on Twitter and they trust me to curate that info for them. Of course, the next step is to expand into some slightly bigger niches ;-)
Of course, there's the "why aren't you doing this with RSS" crowd too, but with 25k subscribers and growing, I'm finding it pays to focus on those who actually want the e-mails!