❤️ How I Finally Started this Newsletter?
I ❤️ Markdown, like a lot!
I started using this format 5 years ago and never looked back.
Now I try to write everything in Markdown, including personal notes, blog posts (meta much?), presentations, GitHub READMEs, and other stuff.
I like the declarative format. In a way, it allows a separation of concerns between my intent and the actual design. For example, I can choose to style my H2 headings from a Markdown document differently for a presentation vs a blog post.
It's one of those things I'd be really sad without!
Coming to this newsletter, I've always wanted to start one but didn't find a platform which suited my needs. I used Mailchimp for devSwag.io's newsletter but found it very clunky.
What I needed from a newsletter service (in order of priority)?
- Markdown editor
- Minimalistic interface (no fuss)
- Built-in Analytics (you can't improve what you don't measure)
- No lock-ins (easy to export)
- API support (maybe I'd like to backup everything in future - more on that later)
- Easy pricing
Buttondown seems to fulfill all of these criteria, along with supporting embeds for a lot of services as well as an auto-saving (savior) feature. It's free for the first 1000 subscribers, which if I cross next year will be a good problem to have! Let's see how it goes. 🤞
Oh, and this song is stuck in my head right now:
I've been playing it (and its covers and remixes 🤪) on loop for hours now!
Until We Meet Again...
🖖 swap