A travel newsletter breakdown

Insideletter

Deel's free 2026 trends report cuts through all the hype and lays out what HR teams can really expect in 2026. You’ll learn about the shifts happening now, the skill gaps you can't ignore, and resilience strategies that aren't just buzzwords. Plus you’ll get a practical toolkit that helps you implement it all without another costly and time-consuming transformation project.

Get the free report today.

As a newsletter operator, I read a lot of newsletters. I always keep my eyes open because it is very easy for me to spot errors. The same goes for good things.

I appreciate the good stuff and take learnings from the bad ones.

So today, I am breaking down a travel newsletter called Freaking Nomad.

You know I love travelling a lot. That is why, to learn how travel newsletters are operated, I subscribed to a bunch of travel newsletters, and Freaking Nomad is one of them.

They have one of the biggest nomad communities in the world.

So I will talk about their copy, distribution, and more.

I have unsubscribed from many newsletters because they copy-paste content from GPT, and I hate that the most.

Newsletters are meant to be a closed-source 1-to-1 platform.

If you use AI copy-paste, it harms you more than it helps. Freaking Nomad is doing something similar. They are using heavy AI-written copy, which does not make much sense.

It is not like they are copy pasting the entire newsletter, but the copy is heavily AI-generated.

Another mistake I see many newsletters making is that they do not treat newsletters as newsletters, but as communities, meaning 1-to-many conversations.

If you look at the screenshot I mentioned above, you will see they start with ‘freaking nomads’, A basic rule of copywriting is to talk to one person, not many.

I have personally experienced that when you talk to many people, they take you for granted because it feels like you are not talking directly to them.

I checked their Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

On Instagram, they post once a month or even less. Facebook follows the same pattern, which makes sense because most people auto-post Instagram content to Facebook.

On LinkedIn, sometimes they post twice a week, sometimes once a week, and sometimes once a month.

Social media plays the main role in growing your newsletter organically.

They have added a poll at the end of their newsletter, which I also use, and I found it interesting. It could be more personalised or maybe include one more option.

The way they ask for sponsorship also looks fine. It is less overwhelming and more fruitful.

The newsletter feels too long. They are sharing blogs as resources that were already posted.

Instead of sharing everything, they could share only one resource and ask readers to check the blog page for the rest. Or they could share only the blog they published in the previous week.

Below this section, they also add remote job options. By this point, many readers may already feel exhausted and might not reach that section.

Do you want to see more such breakdowns? Let me know by replying to this email.

Thanks for checking today’s edition. See ya! See you on Saturday.

Anirban ‘breaking down a newsletter’ Das