Cultural Reads by Thomas Plaatsman

"Explore your creativity. Don’t let fear hold you back. Just move forward slowly but steadily."

April 02, 2023

Newsletter Circle is the newsletter all about newsletters for indie creators.

👉 Every Sunday, you will read the unique journey of a different newsletter creator and learn more about how to start, grow and monetize your own newsletter.

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🎙CREATOR INTERVIEW

This week we are welcoming Thomas Plaatsman, who writes a bi-weekly newsletter called Cultural Reads, which can be defined as an easy way to discover book, movie, and music recommendations worldwide.

These recommendations by Cultural Reads serve for something big. It makes you meet other cultures, gets rid of prejudices, widens your horizon and enriches your soul and mind. As he says “On a deeper level, it’s a way to connect people.”

Let’s meet Thomas who created a newsletter and blog out of his passion for exploring the world and discover his journey together.

🏷 NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD

🛠 Tool Stack

👋 MEET THE CREATOR

Welcome Thomas. Let’s start with getting to know you.

Hey Everyone! I’m Thomas, the creator of Cultural Reads.

I always loved other cultures and lived in Spain, Ecuador, The Philippines, and Kenya.

Previously, I worked for the Red Cross and an Impact Investing company, and now I’m part of a reforestation project in Brazil.

I love working in international environments, and it’s a great way to collect and use the info on Cultural Reads.

🥁 START

What is Cultural Reads all about?

On the surface, Cultural Reads is an easy way to discover book, movie, and music recommendations worldwide. On a deeper level, it’s a way to connect people.

I’ll give you an example:

If you work for a European company and travel to Nigeria, you’ll get security training and feel a little nervous for your first trip to Africa. You’ll spend a lot of time in your hotel and meeting rooms and struggle with cultural differences. You’ll eventually come back feeling a little frustrated about the misunderstandings and difficulties in reaching agreements and probably didn’t learn much about the culture.

If instead you would’ve known about the wonderful world of Afrobeats beforehand and read a book by a famous Nigerian author, your mindset would’ve been completely different. Instead of being fearful, you would’ve been curious to explore the food, the music, and the culture. This curiosity leads to an attitude that’s more open, which people will notice. They’ll be more welcoming and would be happy to teach you more about their culture. The result: your trip was more fun and more successful.

"I hope that Cultural Reads can connect people around the world by planting the seed of cultural curiosity.

Why and how did you decide to start Cultural Reads in the first place?

Whenever I traveled abroad, I used to visit bookstores and would buy 1-2 books from local authors. Reading these helped me get so many insights into the culture, which led to plenty of fun conversations and connections.

I thought it’d be nice to share these tips with more people, so I asked all my international friends the following question: “If I want to learn about your country, what books/music/movies do I NEED to know?” The result was a giant list with recommendations, which was the basis for my blog.

A single list is obviously terrible for SEO, so I wrote blog posts to give more background information. I didn’t have any readers yet, though, and it was hard to stay motivated.

That’s when I thought: “Why not start a newsletter with recommendations like I’d recommend books, movies, and music to my friends?” That’s how it started.

Can you share a quick pro&con list for blog vs. newsletters based on your experience?

I’d say the major benefit of a blog is having your own platform. You own it and can send people there. However, it’s a lot of work and requires a domain name, design, SEO, constant content etc.

If you want to start out simpler with fast feedback, I’d go for a newsletter. You can always build a blog around it later. You can also start an Instagram account or a podcast. Find something you like and the most natural/effective way to share your message.

Can you take us through the process of building the first version of your newsletter?

I went on a road trip to Lapland with some friends from Finland. We spent a lot of time driving past reindeer (I’m not kidding) and pine trees, which gave me plenty of time to think. That’s when I came up with the idea to recommend 1 book, 1 movie, and 1 song every 2 weeks. On the flight back, I wrote the first 5 issues on my phone because I felt so motivated.

How did you gain your first 100 subscribers?

Family and friends. I’d say the journey is similar for a lot of people and really well summarized in this blog post. He describes how to go from 0-10, 10-50, 50,100, 100-250 etc.

🚀 GROWTH

Which growth channels do you mainly use?

I mainly use personal emails to other creators and cross-promotion platforms.

What are the most effective growth strategy & channels?

What I’m hearing most is that cross-promos with other creators are the most efficient. I’d say just try many different things and see what works for you. In the long-run SEO and social media can have a lot of benefits I think.

How did your growth strategy evolve in parallel to your subscriber list growth?

My advice would be to start out with friends & family and share your project a few times on social media (even though it’s scary)—that where I started.

After that, I signed up for cross-promo newsletters like The Sample, Meco, Refind etc. I’m a huge fan of The Sample because it’s free, it’s an easy way to discover newsletters, and you can always go for the paid route where you only pay per new subscriber, and you can set the price yourself.

I also did a few paid ads in other newsletters. It cost me $50-$200 per ad but it added 50-100 subscribers each time.

And focus on building relationships with other creators. I’d say a good strategy is to provide value. Share something useful with them 5 times before you ask for 1 thing. Do it regardless of whether you actually need something from them. It’s nice to meet people with similar interests; it’s not just about the money. On the other hand, a simple email asking for a cross-promo can also work really well.

It’s important to mention that I’m at ~800 subscribers, so I can’t say I’ve already cracked the code.

How is the blog’s performance?

I have around 2-3k monthly page visits. The majority comes from sharing content on my personal Instagram and LinkedIn. I have very little organic traffic through SEO though. Many skills (website design, SEO) are new to me, so I’m still learning. I want to focus more on SEO and building backlinks.

Regarding growth efforts, what would you do differently if you had a chance to start over?

I think it’s very difficult to grow really fast unless you have a large budget or are really good at marketing. I read that even really good posts take at least 1-2 years to rank on the first page of Google. In general, success takes time and effort. That’s why my advice would be to focus on defining what you really want to be doing every day. If you enjoy writing the newsletter, it doesn’t have to boom fast. I also realized from my interviews that even if you’re super successful in the eyes of others, you still have to sit down and do the work. If you don’t enjoy doing that, no amount of money will make you happy.

How do you plan to continue growing?

I want to continue collaborating with newsletter creators with similar interests, focus on SEO, and eventually create an Instagram page. I feel my content would work very well in a more visual manner.

💸 MONETIZATION

Do you make money with your newsletter currently?

I don’t make any money from Cultural Reads right now but I would love to do so in the future. The more resources I have, the more I can improve and expand the platform.

I also find it important to take a long-term view. My 1st priority was never to make money, so if I monetize it, I want to make sure it fits well with the overall mission of the site. I don’t want to sell out and get stuck in a short-term “I need to make money now” mode.

How do you plan to earn your first dollar?

I recently experimented a little with affiliate links. Last week, I was happy to see I made $3.59 from these links. However, when I checked the products that were sold, I realized these were different from the ones I promoted, so it was probably an error. I still have to send an email to Amazon to tell them haha.

📩 E-MAIL SERVICE PROVIDER

Why did you choose Mailchimp? Pros and cons?

Someone recommended Mailchimp because it’s free for up to 1,000 subscribers and easy to use.

That’s still the case, but I feel the paid upgrade doesn’t offer much additional value.

Because I want to post my newsletters on my own website, I prefer a newsletter service that doesn’t post my newsletters on their platform. If you only write a newsletter, this would be beneficial, as it generates more exposure.

🧩 SYSTEM & PRODUCTIVITY

What is your system to explore and curate new content continuously?

In my personal life, I have a really organized system. I take podcast notes with Snipd, and article notes with Instapaper, and I integrated these apps and my Kindle with Readwise and Notion. I’m planning to do a post about this soon for those who’re interested.

For the newsletter, however, I simply focus on what energizes me. If I find an exciting book, or someone recommends a great playlist, I’ll save those for the newsletter. Finding content has actually been the easiest part.

What is your typical weekly process from creating to releasing a new issue?

I write a post each week and a newsletter every 2 weeks. That’s 6 posts per month.

I collect recommendations during those two weeks for the newsletter and put them in Notion or Mailchimp. When I feel motivated, I’ll write the newsletter.

I hire local freelancers for the posts to give me their best recommendations. This helps remove my personal cultural bias. I then edit the content and publish the post. In some cases, the writers are great and I don’t have to do that much. In other cases, I have the recommendations but still need to do the majority of the writing process.

What is your weekly newsletter content distribution plan/system?

I save tips on Notion. It’s a board with four categories: books, music, movies, and others. If I lack inspiration, I’ll review the board to see what could be interesting for that week’s newsletter.

🎢 NEWSLETTER EXPERIENCE

How did writing Cultural Reads contribute to your life professionally & personally?

It helps me build new skills, it’s a creative outlet, but most importantly, it led me to meet many like-minded and inspiring people. A personal highlight was when Derek Sivers emailed me to let me know he liked my blog. We’re still in touch.

What is the biggest AHA moment along this journey?

I’m quite open-minded and usually don’t have a strong opinion. Because of that, I never considered myself a leader. Now that I’m building a website, that’s changing.

I realized that if you follow your “calling” and put yourself out there, you’ll eventually become a leader because you’re developing a vision on a subset of topics.

Ultimately, everything starts as a thought, and those thoughts become a reality through action. If you take action, you help shape the world we live in, and if you don’t, you end up living in a world created by others.

What is the most challenging part of writing a newsletter and how do you handle it?

For me, it’s the pressure I put on myself to deliver a certain quality and quantity.

What helps me is to realize that I don’t have to do it all by myself, and it doesn’t all have to happen now.

I try to focus on what I enjoy working on and how I want to add value to others and outsource some of the other tasks.

I have a full-time job, so although I have limited time, I do have a salary that I can use for this purpose.

Can you tell us one mistake you made during your newsletter journey?

Nothing big comes to mind now. I do remember sharing a world map of dreams in newsletter 18. People loved it, but I forgot to add the link. It was funny to see how many readers reached out. (You can find the link in the introduction of newsletter 19).

🎯 FUTURE

What is next on your newsletter journey?

I just launched a new version of the Cultural Reads Website that I’m very proud of. The most exciting feature is a page per country.

My next step will be trying out the podcast format for the Cultural Reads interviews. I struggle to write the interviews, and that is what’s currently holding me back. A podcast might be easier and the stories are probably more powerful if shared by the person who lived through it.

As I mentioned earlier, an Instagram account with reels, videos, music, movie clips etc., could be really nice too

What is your ultimate dream about Cultural Reads?

I think there are two parts to that question: (1) what it will contribute, and (2) how it will change my life.

In terms of contribution, it’d be amazing if Cultural Reads could incentivize many people around the globe to be more interested in other countries and cultures. Hopefully, that’ll lead to connections, friendships, and more appreciation and respect for each other. I’d love to interview cultural leaders to have them reach a much wider audience. I also want to offer courses from a cultural angle. For example, a cooking course with 10 chefs from different countries who all cook a signature dish and explain the cultural context in addition to the recipe. But it could also be an origami workshop from Japan, a cacao ceremony from Nicaragua, or cultural preparation training for work in addition to traditional security training.

Personally, I’d love to make a living from this, have the freedom to only work on projects that truly interest me, meet many inspiring people, and have more attention and money flowing to people living in countries that don’t offer the same opportunities I had.

📌 RECOMMENDATIONS

What would it be if you had the right to give one piece of advice to aspiring newsletter creators?

Do something you enjoy and lifts you up.

What are your favorite newsletters that you can’t wait for the next issue?

My all-time favorite is Recomendo, written by Kevin Kelly & co (Tim Ferris calls him the most interesting person in the world). He also wrote 1,000 true fans, which became the magic number for most newsletter creators.

👋 FINAL WORDS

There are so many things I’d still like to say, but I’ll keep it to these 3:

(1) Explore your creativity. Don’t let fear hold you back. Just move forward slowly but steadily.

(2) “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Although I don’t think Einstein said this, it’s a great quote. The easiest way to start doing things differently is to change your environment. A great first step, in my opinion, is to start reading unusual books. So look for some countries you’re unfamiliar with on Cultural Reads and get started.

(3) Be kind and realize that many people have it worse than you. You don’t owe anyone anything, but it’s amazing to be able to give back because you want to, not because you have to.

Last but not least;

"Please share the best book/music/movie recommendation from your country with me! You can DM me on Instagram"

Thank you so much, Thomas. Looking forward to discovering different parts of the world we live in with Cultural Reads.

🔗 Where to find Thomas Plaatsman

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading.

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See you next week.

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