Your first issue, end to end

A first issue takes eight things, in this order: confirm your email address, create the newsletter, get a few readers onto the list, collect some links, write the issue around them, look at it, send it, and read the report afterwards.

Setting sending up is not on that list, and neither is anything to do with DNS. Sending works from the moment the newsletter exists, and a custom domain can wait until the day you want one.

Register and confirm your address

Registering asks for your name, your email address and a password, and takes no card. Issue Mint emails you a link, and confirming it opens the dashboard.

Your trial starts at registration rather than at first send, so there is no advantage in registering early and coming back. The trial covers what it includes and the two ceilings on how much a trial can send.

Create the newsletter

Start setup asks what you are publishing: a name, a web address, an optional description, a timezone and how often you plan to publish. It is the only required part of setup, and everything after it can be skipped and picked up later.

Your website is live as soon as that form is submitted, on a free {slug}.issuemint.com address, and it stays live whether or not you ever add a domain of your own. Onboarding walks through the four steps that follow.

Get a few readers onto the list

You need at least one reader before an issue reaches anybody, and there are three ways to arrange that. Upload a CSV of a list you already have, paste your subscribe form into a site you already run, or add people by hand, which is the sensible option for yourself and two colleagues.

Adding yourself first is worth doing regardless. A first issue that lands in your own inbox alongside everybody else’s is the only check that really counts.

Collect the links

The library is where links wait for an issue, and it fills up through the week rather than on send day. Three routes lead into it: the Chrome extension for whatever you are reading, pasting a URL and letting Issue Mint read the page for you, and reader submissions from your own website.

Whichever route a link takes, Issue Mint pulls the title, the description and the preview image off the page so the fields are filled in before you start typing. You fix the title when the original is bad, and write your own sentence or two underneath. The library is the fuller version of all of this.

Write the issue

An issue is a subject line, an optional introduction, and sections with links inside them. Sections belong to the newsletter rather than to one issue, so yours start as News, Tools, Articles and Sponsored, and renaming or reordering them applies from then on. A section with nothing in it does not appear in the issue at all.

Links come in from the library or straight into the issue, and dragging is how they move between sections. Under each one goes your take, which is the reason anybody subscribed and the one thing Issue Mint never rewrites, shortens or offers to improve. The composer explains why it is shaped this way, and adding links to an issue covers the mechanics.

An issue cannot be sent without a subject line and at least one link. The composer lists anything missing rather than greying the button out and leaving you to guess.

Check it before it goes

Two checks are worth doing on every issue. Flick between the email and the web version in the preview, which is the real thing rather than an impression of it, then send a test to yourself.

A test send goes out exactly as your readers will get it, through the same sending path, so it doubles as proof that sending works on your account before the issue that counts. Test sends do not count towards a trial’s email total.

Send it, or schedule it

Send now starts the send immediately and cannot be undone. Scheduling picks a date and time in your newsletter’s timezone instead, and a scheduled issue stays editable and can be pulled back to a draft at any point before it starts sending.

What happens after you press send

The issue starts sending in batches, appears on your website and in your RSS feed, and gains a report that fills in as delivery events arrive. Nothing about the send happens in your browser, so you can close the tab.

What happens when you send covers the sequence in order, and the issue report is where delivery, opens and clicks per link end up. The most useful thing in it, on a first issue, is which links people actually clicked, because that is what tells you what the next issue should have more of.