Curated is a minimalist editorial newsletter publishing tool, not capable of email marketing. Think of Substack, Revue, TinyLetters,* Buttondown or Audienceful.
*Both got axed recently. There’s a newsletter tool serial killer out there.
After my positive experience with the refreshingly clean minimalist approach of Audienceful and Buttondown of late, I wanted to test another weirdly overpriced* newsletter editorial tool, Curated.
* I have a huge comparison database of most email tools and their entire pricing. Have to chisel it a bit, then I’ll make it available on isit.
Now, let’s get to the tool.
Different – than…usable tools?
After a painless reg, my sigup is already created, and I can make any number of newsletters. That’s neat.
Speaking of an ugly gift, I hope I can edit this.
Made for Collectors…Curators
Curated is built around one single process.
- collect a bunch of links – thoughts of other, smarter people who can write and think
- send it out to your
fellow consumerssubscribers who also - hope for sponsored links and paying subs to monetize
The menu bar describes this process fairly well.
Collect stuff – send (issues) – collect subs – try to monetize to cover the monthly price for all this.
Think of Curated like your publishing company of cheap magazines sent by email. You write your issues and they are automatically published periodically one after another.
Let’s get into the Settings, we’ll learn more.
Settings are…
quite detailed for such a rigidly limited tool
The Settings tab is surprisingly crowded. You can only make simple tweaks tho. Just to give you a feel for it, here is a screenshot at a 33% zoom.
Fonts, scheduling time, title format, welcome and double optin messages….there are quite a few fonts, that’s nice.
Tracking pixels, form embed…
Oh…similarly to a printed magazine, there are 2 ways to monetize. You can charge your subs via Stripe, or contact sponsors.
It’s nice that Curated built these in.
Sponsorship (as in a magazine) are link placements advertised and sold on your hosted Curated site. You see…full business model in one chewed, torn package.
Similarly, you can set up paid subscriptions once you conneced Curated to your Stripe account. (I won’t bother about that now)
Let’s go to the Editor. No high hopes.
wetting your (T)Issue
After you collected what to share like a cheap DJ, you will want to go to the editor.
This summary page welcomes you … think of it like the sweaty room for the morning meetings at a newspaper publisher?
“No collected links? Are you f*cking with me, Dan?“
The Issue is already scheduled a week ahead. I can see the value in it. Forces you to work, keep the schedule or you are fired.
The editor? It’s freakin awful.
You have this ‘form’ … this dry, unwelcoming, creativity-murdering chicken-cage of an editor, where you can add your link (“Where is my f*cking link, Dan?”) than add your thoughts.
Not too much – yours are not worthy for more space, remember.
Hmm.. up there there is a new link, new text item button.
They open up the same ugly form. And the categories (that you can’t edit here) will place them one below the other.
(“F*uck your creative freedom, Dan! You’ll write about the same sh*t every week.”)
I’ll add a few dummies and send out just so you can see the end result. Ok, this is how it looks in my inbox:
Just these blocks, with or without a link, few notes below.
You can also add images, and I guess the sponsorship links show up at the bottom.
But who would pay for this. I’m really curious, because this is such a low value of an newsletter to get. Just curated links sent to you. You can get GPT to throw around a bunch with footnotes. “Dan, you’re fired.”
Maybe that’s the idea. That you can set up the whole business with the first 60 issues in a day.
In my experience tho, lazy shit doesn’t work. You have to do more, be more to make a newsletter of any kind popular. I know, I helped built a 900k large direct response business span to 7 countries, and managed a dozen high-performing email marketing systems of all sizes.
This is not enough. This is too restrictive, repetitive … and for all that it is mind-f*kcingly overpriced.
The Cost is ludicrous
I know you want to jump on this marvel already, but I want to make another selling point.
Curated costs more that the – also expensive – but lovely Audienceful or Buttondown. Both are way better than this.
Above a 5k list, it costs more than Convertkit.
Curated is a complete no go, there was not a single thing I liked about it.
