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CJ Chilvers

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What should your personal newsletter include?

This is another common question I get about both blogs and newsletters, and it’s not easy to answer, because most newsletters must conform to their audience. Personal publishing is different. With personal newsletters, you should ask yourself, “What delights me about the personal newsletters I like?” Here’s a

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How to Measure Your Newsletter’s Success

The best metric in email newsletters isn’t opens or clicks, but how many replies you received. The reply is the greatest advantage the small-timer has. It may also be the greatest fear of large organizations. Building relationships is what it’s all about, no matter what the medium. When

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RIP Email Again

Dan Oshinsky is back with his monthly look at email newsletters, Not a Newsletter [https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1pySiYQ_5OMsj1U4r5XXLPru0NtiVg2FVaO5INBlNffk/mobilebasic] , a terrific resource if you’re not already subscribed. This month, he writes about how he’s expecting another round of articles proclaiming the death

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Have you ever met Eddie Van Halen?

I get this question about once a week, because I wrote this book [https://www.cjchilvers.com/the-van-halen-encyclopedia], so this will be the link I send everyone to in the future. Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yeah, kind of. Once. Here’s the photo. I’m the one Alex Van

Have you ever met Eddie Van Halen?
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Experiment 2: New Newsletter

Two days, two new experiments. I moved my newsletter [https://www.cjchilvers.com/subscribe] over to my personal site at Squarespace and away from Mailchimp. Yesterday, I sent out my first new issue, which was as easy as posting a new blog post and clicking one more button to send

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Experiment 1: Sivers Style

The reason I moved my personal site was to start some experiments — to see what I liked to publish and what my readers liked too. The first experiment was to implement the same idea Derek Sivers had last year with his books. I think it’s genius. The idea he

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Default Apps for Productivity

What you choose as your default tools for your projects should employ the same amount of constraints as the tools you use for creativity: just enough to spur results and not enough to let stuff slip. Everyone’s brain is different. Everyone’s job is a little different. This is

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“You’re Wrong About…”

Is easy. Is often the first comment on any piece of content. Is often under-researched and over-confident. Is a lower form of content. Is a popular form of content. Is way less power than “I was wrong about...”

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Unexpected Design Playgrounds

After getting a few positive responses about my (lack) of design on this site, and how that ties in with my partscaster [https://www.cjchilvers.com/25-years-of-creativity-for-200/] post, I thought I could add an aside about one of my favorite design playgrounds. In addition to apps, pens, websites and newsletters,

Unexpected Design Playgrounds
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Welcome to my kinda meh personal site.

This is my new personal site. It has significant changes under the hood, but you’d never know it from the drab design. That will change over time. The important thing is that I have 20+ years of content under one domain (some not visible yet), and a process to