In partnership with
Insideletter
Introducing the first AI-native CRM
Connect your email, and you’ll instantly get a CRM with enriched customer insights and a platform that grows with your business.
With AI at the core, Attio lets you:
Prospect and route leads with research agents
Get real-time insights during customer calls
Build powerful automations for your complex workflows
Join industry leaders like Granola, Taskrabbit, Flatfile and more.
Hi 👋🏻
We can count this as the final week of 2025.
I’m experiencing a lot of emotions. I had so many plans to fulfil, but I couldn’t achieve most of them.
But the time is gone. The past is past. 2026 is around the corner. We should focus on welcoming it with everything.
So, in order to make 2026 better, you need to work on a lot of things, but the newsletter should always be your #1 priority. Newsletters alone won’t help. If you want to be your own boss, you need to tap into the entire media business.
But the media is constantly changing, so let me tell you about the future of media and which one you should be working on.
#1 Newsletter
It goes without saying that the newsletter will be the anchor of your media business.
Everything will revolve around newsletters. (You’re here to learn everything about newsletters, haha!)
Why do I emphasise the newsletter so much?
You build your ‘owned’ audience
It’s a direct communication channel
You can make money from sponsors, your own courses, or any offers
On social media, the algorithm decides everything, and here you decide everything
Newsletters are in trend, and they help you build a business around them. Top newsletters make 6-7 figures just from the newsletter business.
So the newsletter is non-negotiable, and everything will revolve around newsletters.
#2 YouTube
Back in 2019, I used to upload gaming videos on YouTube. Mostly PUBG and Clash Royale.
At that time, I had no idea how powerful YouTube actually was. Even today, I feel like I have not fully tapped into it.
When I started Insideletter, I focused heavily on Instagram, X, and LinkedIn, and completely ignored YouTube.
Instagram eventually gave me a reality check. My account got banned.
A few days before the ban, I had already started my newsletter podcast on YouTube. That timing changed how I looked at the platform.
Right now, LinkedIn is my primary focus, but YouTube is a different beast altogether.
YouTube makes it easy for the right audience to find your content.
Your content lives for years, not hours.
SEO plays a massive role in consistent discovery.
And the distribution is unmatched.
You cannot skip YouTube in 2026 if you are building a media brand.
It is also one of the strongest discovery channels for your newsletter.
#3 Communities
Before you give me a stare, wait. Listen to me, please.
A community is not a traditional media platform.
But in modern media business terms, it can function like one. At its core, media is simple. Create content and distribute it to an audience.
For many brands today, the community itself becomes a primary place where people consume content.
Think about indie creators running Discord servers. They release content directly to paying members.
That is exactly why I started the Insideletter community as part of my one-person media brand.
Why is it not a classic media platform?
Traditional media platforms like YouTube, newsletters, TV, and newspapers push content to a broad audience.
Communities are different.
They are closed, participatory, and membership-based, not discovery-driven.
Communities work as retention and monetisation layers. They are not the engine for building a mass media brand from scratch.
But you cannot ignore them.
If you care about trust, loyalty, and long-term value, communities are essential.
Join the Insideletter community
I’d love to invite you to join the Insideletter community, where I help you build a 1-person newsletter business.
You can join here.
Thanks for checking today’s edition. Hope you’ll be working on YT and community alongside your newsletter.
Anirban ‘helping you grow your media brand’ Das
