
Kill the newsletter: Convert newsletters into RSS feeds - ProfDreamer
https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/
======
olivierlacan
While going back to RSS sounds like the virtuous move, the reason I believe
most people are going back to newsletters is that email is an inbox people
_have to_ check and the likelihood of them viewing and acting on content that
is delivered to their email inbox vs their RSS reader inbox is much higher.

With no data to back this up I'd wager conversion rates (read x and click to
see y linked within x) are at least double that of RSS. Possibly even much
more.

I've been an RSS user for years and I use it to subscribe to blogs mostly.
Despite this, I would never subscribe to the RSS feeds of some of the most
popular email newsletters I know and receive.

With Google giving up on the Google Reader years ago, the market for well-
designed, easily accessible, and free RSS readers sort of dried up overnight.
I use Reeder for macOS, which is a paid (but cheap) app and I know full well
this is a power user situation.

I would never expect the overwhelming majority of users to get back on the RSS
bandwagon unless browsers made it a first-class feature with a noticeable
call-to-action on sites with available RSS feeds, an inbox letting me know new
content has been published since I last checked, and a clean reading interface
that mirrors what Readability, Instapaper, and others used to provide.

~~~
jobigoud
> an inbox letting me know new content has been published since I last checked

I'm super happy with RSS and don't want to clutter my inbox.

One difference with e-mail is that sometimes we don't care about some
articles, especially on the high volume sites. In an RSS reader it will be
bold as unread and this cause anxiety and make it harder to distinguish a
newly arrived article vs the most recent unread article.

I feel that for RSS we need three levels of flags: new, unread, read. Or
"unread, read title, read article". In an e-mail inbox you will make sure
everything is in the read status. In an RSS reader that amounts to too many
janitor clicks.

------
mike-cardwell
I prefer to use my email clients to read my news. Means I don't have to run an
additional application. I have a script which monitors RSS feeds and turns
them into emails. I filter them into a "News" mail folder. I run K-9 Mail,
Mutt and Webmail depending on what device I'm using. Thanks to IMAP my "news
readers" stay in sync due to the "\Seen" IMAP flag, and the ability to delete
messages. Thanks to IMAP PUSH I don't have to poll for new RSS items on my
various client devices. Thanks to IMAPs subscribe I don't get News on devices
I don't want it on.

[edit] I use sieve to filter real newsletters into the same "News" folder, so
it's a mixture of content from RSS feeds and newsletters.

~~~
hackuser
> I prefer to use my email clients to read my news.

Many email clients also handle RSS directly. Thunderbird, for example, is the
most responsive RSS reader I've used.

~~~
mike-cardwell
That's fine if you only use a single email client and that email client is
Thunderbird. Does Thunderbird sync RSS feed contents and state of those feeds
with other clients on other platforms? Does it even do it with other instances
of Thunderbird?

------
tomislav
Just a heads up that almost all Mailchimp newsletters (and many others) have
RSS feeds. Just put the archive link into your RSS reader and it will
autodiscover it.

But this is great for those that don't. Great work.

~~~
justinator
Yup, Dada Mail too (example: [http://dadamailproject.com/cgi-
bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive_rss...](http://dadamailproject.com/cgi-
bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive_rss/dada_announce/)) but only for the last, I dunno,
12 or so years.

------
iagooar
Kudos for making the source code available and allowing to self-host the
service.

If you are thinking about making some money with it, maybe one twist would be
to be to offer a SaaS "proxy" between the newsletter and the subscriber, where
subscribers enter their real email and search for newsletters they are
interested in and convert them into a feed? Although TBH I'm not sure there is
money in RSS readers...

~~~
tedmiston
Also a few tweaks

\- make the UI easier to use on mobile

\- make feed title and feed URL fields appear together at the same time

\- send a test post to each newly created feed so I can confirm it's working

That said, I'm not sure if OP is actually the author based on taking a glance
at commit dates in the repo.

~~~
leafac
Hi tedmiston,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. First, thank you for your suggestions :)

> \- make the UI easier to use on mobile

I don’t own a phone, can you please be more specific on the difficulties you
had? I’d be happy to address them.

> \- make feed title and feed URL fields appear together at the same time

To which screen are you referring?

> \- send a test post to each newly created feed so I can confirm it's working

That’s a good idea. Of course, the sole fact that the feed exists with the
title you gave is already confirmation that it’s working. Even if there are no
entries. And, right after creating the feed on Kill the Newsletter! the user
is probably going to use the email address the service gives to actually sign
up to a newsletter. Upon doing that, the newsletter provider usually sends a
subscription confirmation email that shows up as a feed entry. Still, I think
one more confirmation wouldn’t hurt and I’ll add it.

> That said, I'm not sure if OP is actually the author based on taking a
> glance at commit dates in the repo.

You’re correct. I don’t even know ProfDreamer, but I’m glad he liked my work
enough to post it. Otherwise I wouldn’t have received feedback such as yours
:)

------
thecabinet
NewsBlur does something similar. Forward your newsletters and they appear as
an RSS feed. Works with any kind of email...

~~~
Semiapies
Similarly, Feedbin gives you an email address you can aim a newsletter at and
see as another feed. It's kinda genius.

~~~
leafac
Hi thecabinet, snksnk and Semiapies,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. Thank you for your comments! I didn’t
know of NewsBlur and Feedbin and it’s nice to see that other tools take
similar approaches to the use case. It validates that my solution was
appropriate.

It’s unfortunate that NewsBlur and Feedbin bind the feature to their platform.
But I guess it makes sense, Feedbin is even trying to make money. Anyway,
whenever you need a free tool that doesn’t lock you in or ask for your
personal information, I hope you consider Kill the Newsletter! an option :)

~~~
Semiapies
_It validates that my solution was appropriate._

It does!

 _It’s unfortunate that NewsBlur and Feedbin bind the feature to their
platform. But I guess it makes sense, Feedbin is even trying to make money._

Unfortunately, _this_ is nonsensical and obnoxious. I'm perfectly happy to pay
for a service, given that "free" tends to mean "shuts down in a couple of
years". And I'd have to pay for a server anyway if I wanted to run my own.

------
finchisko
I personally prefer RSS over mailed newsletters. And was expecting that
newsletters will eventually die. I was wrong. Not sure why they didn't died
and actually grow more popular, but IMHO RSS is probably too complicated for
regular Joe, so they probably not even know RSS exists. I'm only subscribed to
newsletter when RSS is not an option, like js weekly, android weekly... But
wish I can read those in digg/reader too.

~~~
vollmond
Yeah, I would assume newsletters have a lot higher chance to be read...
everyone I know has an email account, but only a subset bother with RSS.

And even if you have RSS, chances are you have a lot of feeds you never read
that just end up part of the furniture of your life.

~~~
sanderjd
Maybe RSS should rebrand as "textcasting" or something. Podcasts are popular,
are not considered only for "power users", and are just RSS feeds of audio
links.

------
leafac
Hi all,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. First, thank you ProfDreamer for finding
my service and posting it here. Thanks too to everyone that took interest in
Kill the Newsletter! and commented or wrote me emails. I appreciate the kind
words and testimonials that the tool was useful to some of you. I also
appreciate the suggestions for improvements, I’ll try to implement them in the
near future.

Kill the Newsletter! ended up on an LifeHacker article:
[https://lifehacker.com/kill-the-newsletter-converts-
newslett...](https://lifehacker.com/kill-the-newsletter-converts-newsletter-
subscriptions-i-1788953342) As a long-time reader of the website, I’m
flattered.

Finally, I want to say a word about the name of the service. The copy on the
website starts with “I love newsletters …” This is true, otherwise I wouldn’t
have created the tool. So don’t really mean to extinguish the newsletters. I
understand RSS users are a small niche when compared to email users. I also
understand the business reasons to prefer mailing lists. The comments on this
thread had some very interesting arguments on that topic. I certainly learned
a lot by reading them.

The name Kill the Newsletter! was supposed to be whimsical. But I understand
death and specially killing are sensitive topics to some people and I
apologize if I offended them with my joke.

Still, I hope everyone can enjoy Kill the Newsletter! if they ever need to
convert that mailing list into an RSS feed.

~~~
jcrben
Great service, but you might be encouraging more annoying newsletters. Before,
they just lost out an audience who wouldn't stand for annoying automated email
;)

------
doozler
This service looks really awesome! I think there may be a slight spelling
mistake on the first line of the "Introduction" section. It say's "I love
newsletters, but I _have_ receiving e-mails", should that be " _hate_ " ?

~~~
leafac
Hi doozler,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. Thank you for the kind words and for
pointing out the mistake. I fixed it :)

------
tedmiston
I'm so glad that someone built this. I have the same use case as the author
where I just don't want newsletters to read, but that are time insensitive,
intermingled with communication to people in my inbox. I'm excited to try this
approach.

I'd be interested to see what other solutions people have come up with to this
problem.

~~~
icebraining
A simple approach is to filter them in your email client into a folder/tag and
out of the inbox. That's what I do for mailing lists (which aren't well suited
for RSS, since they're threaded).

~~~
tedmiston
That's what I do today but what often happens is I just never check them. Also
some newsletters contain events or occasional time sensitive bits so partial
filter has proved a challenge there. Curious to hear if you've experienced
either of these.

~~~
jclos
I used to also filter them out to a folder with no unread tag until I realized
that I missed quite a few free ebooks that O'Reilly was offering. Since then I
still have them in a folder but I go mark it read once a day to make sure I
don't miss stuff like time-sensitive offers.

------
tammer
Nothing currently wins over the format or ease of use of newsletters. This is
why they're becoming MORE popular as an engagement tool. I think there's a
vacant startup space for a tool that can beat newsletters for ease of both
entry on the sender side and engagement by the recipients in the many-to-many
communication mode.

------
bogomipz
Tangential question here - can anyone comment on the recent-ish
proliferation(explosion) of sites thats float an HTML 5 light box a few
seconds after the page loads asking people to "Sign up now for our
newsletter!" It's a pretty obnoxious practice.

Newsletters aren't new of course but there seems to be a very enthusiastic
renewed interest in them. Does anyone know why?

~~~
revicon
Two reasons I've heard, but haven't tested out personally yet:

1) The pop up results in higher conversions (people actually filling out the
email address field and hitting "subscribe")

2) The action of "closing" the modal popup confirms that the viewer of the
page is probably a real human and that they genuinely made some kind of
movement on the page (scrolling slightly, moving the mouse off the window,
etc). This is supposedly taken into account by google, etc when judging page
rank for pages.

~~~
bjterry
Regarding 2, Google has started penalizing these popups, at least for mobile
users.

[https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-
easi...](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-
access-content-on.html)

------
jypepin
It's funny, last week I actually looked for the opposite! I don't use RSS and
don't have a reader (since google dropped theirs) and so when I find blogs
that interest me, I want to be able to subscribe via emails. Then I just add
the updates I receive in the correct folder/tag and go back to read whatever I
want, whenevr.

~~~
tedmiston
I tried this approach but found that I'd get an email newsletter with 5–10
stories but I might only want to read 1 or 2. I'd like to only keep the ones
of interest. Opening them and adding to Instapaper or Safari Reading List
seems to work okay.

------
bikamonki
I think we are moving towards a descentralized Internet. The RSS feed needs a
central server, the newsletter can be broadcasted and then forwarded peer to
peer. I'd argue the opposite then: save the newsletter, just maybe evolve it
into something better (maybe with schema email??)

~~~
chriswarbo
Sounds like Usenet :)

RSS is probably easier to layer on top of those new fangled HTTP-over-P2P
networks like IPFS.

Heck, I remember proposals for combining RSS and BitTorrent, so an RSS feed
could be spread via BitTorrent, with incremental updates being applied, and
with each entry containing BitTorrent magnet links. This was proposed as a
distributed way to provide podcasts ("podcatching"). Not sure if it got
implemented.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
NNTP is one of the most underrated protocols. It's a distributed superset of
email + RSS + twitter.

~~~
dantheta
There are parts of it that have aged really badly, though. I was working on an
NNTP-related project last year. Article numbers and threading are a bit
crappy. The conflation of messages and commands (like cancel) also sat rather
uncomfortably with me.

I was impressed with it as a piece of history, but more thorough exposure left
me with a much decreased interest in building a system on it. More modern
approaches to pubsub feel more natural (and are also more fun to work with!)

------
shortformblog
As a guy who runs a newsletter with a few thousand subscribers, I'm supportive
of this idea.

In fact, I put a lot of work into my RSS feeds knowing that people like this
would exist. [http://feed.tedium.co/](http://feed.tedium.co/) (Using
FeedPress, if you're curious.)

I see it less as killing the newsletter, and more as giving people options.

~~~
criddell
I just checked out your site and uBlock blocked 27 requests and noted that
loading the page involves 11 domains. Do you have any insight into what's
being blocked and why so many domains are being accessed?

~~~
shortformblog
Hey there, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. (Sorry I didn't see
this sooner—I was keeping an eye on the thread just in case I got any
comments.)

I'm using Ghostery on my machine rather than uBlock, and on the front page, I
count eight items—standard social fare like Pinterest and AddThis, along with
some advertising-related stuff like Skimlinks (I use some affiliate marketing,
and am transparent about this.)

Beyond Google Analytics, one tool that I in fact do use specifically to track
things is HubSpot's free LeadIn service, which mostly exists to tell me how
people end up subscribing to the newsletter.

But on the article page, it's showing 46. Two things are different there: One,
I have a single Google AdSense ad, which I only added a few weeks ago because
I was seeing some traffic surges, and second, I have Disqus advertising turned
on.

Just for kicks, I commented out Disqus for a second, and reloaded the page.
That 46 number went down to 15. I'm assuming that if I turned off the single
Google ad I use, that 15 would go back down to 8.

So there's your answer. Disqus is shoving a ton of ad trackers onto my users.
I should really turn that off—I'm not making that much on it anyway.

(As for the number of domains used, I will point out a couple things: I'm
using a font family that's not through Google, I appear to be using a third-
party jQuery, and I'm using Cloudinary for image hosting—the latter because I
use a lot of GIFs.)

Edit: For the sake of comparison, I loaded a couple of other pages to see how
many trackers they had. The front page of Mediaite.com had 59, while an
average article page had 81. Pitchfork.com (which doesn't have comments) had
22 on its front page and 20 on its article pages. And Washington Post had 17
on its front page, 42 on its article pages.

~~~
criddell
I really appreciate you taking the time to check into this. The weight of the
Disqus ads is a little surprising. Really interesting answer though, thanks.

------
yesimahuman
Interesting idea that could co-exist with newsletters, but as a business
person newsletters are _the best_. Seriously, nothing compares to a good list.
Not Twitter, not Facebook, not Ads. It's gold.

------
Ayraa
I just created a separate email address to receive all the newsletters I enjoy
reading but don't want to mix with my work/personal emails. I check it 1-2
times a week. Works beautifully.

------
sametmax
I would love to kill the newsletter. I love RSS. I perceive most newsletters
as spam. Except:

\- non tech saavy users don't know what RSS is and often won't use a RSS
reader even after tutoring.

\- newsletter still makes a LOT of cash. I didn't believe it, but working in
the adult industry teached me that many things I would never do (read a news
letter, click a ridiculous add, engage with an obviously fake profile) is
actually common practice among the vast majority of users.

~~~
petercooper
_I perceive most newsletters as spam._

You primarily receive newsletters you didn't actually sign up for? (stores you
bought stuff off, etc.) That's the only way it's spam. But there are plenty of
people who actively sign up for and appreciate them.

~~~
CaptSpify
When every website uses black-design to "helpfully" sign you up for their
newsletter without you noticing, it gets harder and harder to differentiate
actual newsletters that I signed up for, vs plain old spam. When in doubt,
mark-as-spam it is.

------
norswap
Very useful! What worries me: when this eventually fails, I won't know it's
not working anymore (partially the fault of my feedreader, but still).

~~~
leafac
Hi norswap,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. That is a valid concern, thanks for
bringing it up. I worry about this myself, being the #1 user of the tool. Do
you have any idea how to fix it, though? I thought of a dead man’s switch kind
of thing, in which I would periodically add an “everything is still working”
for low-volume feeds, but I didn’t do it because I would consider such entries
spam. What do you think?

~~~
norswap
I don't really have a better suggestion. Ideally, making sure that the feeds
would raise some kind of error condition in all feed readers, but I doubt
there's something universal like that.

Maybe the "still working" message is good enough, it wouldn't bother me too
much, personally.

------
zizee
I run a curated newsletter builder platform^, that includes
subscription/delivery component. After reading this, I'm going to survey my
users (email publishers) to see if enabling RSS subscription is something they
are interested in...

^[https://www.NewsMaker.io](https://www.NewsMaker.io)

~~~
leafac
Hi zizee,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. I’m glad to know that my project inspired
your idea. Feel free to generate NewsMaker RSS feeds using Kill the
Newsletter!, if you’d like :)

------
akamaozu
Out of curiosity, what's stopping me from using this to sign up for services
and having this app mahically keeping their emails out of my inbox, but neatly
filed away for when I need it?

~~~
Tepix
That's the idea. You poll the RSS feeds whenever you want to see if there's
anything new. I.e. probably not that frequently.

------
allyjweir
Great job on the project! I had this exact same idea about a week ago and put
it on my Trello.

Will definitely be taking a deep dive into your website for inspiration.
Congratulations on shipping!

------
webgurl83
I've been looking for a service to turn email into RSS for a while, (email to
RSS not RSS to email.) This will definitely do the trick!

------
uptown
Pretty sure publishers prefer newsletters because they get opened more than an
RSS feed based on a few conversations I've had.

~~~
sanderjd
That's why this (or something like it) is a good solution. Publishers can
still send emails, but users can decide they prefer to read them through RSS.

------
gilgongo
RSS was all the rage back in about 2005. About time we tried again after
failing to get it to work first time.

~~~
Leynos
For some people, it never went away.

------
WillPostForFood
Maybe we need to star with: Revive the RSS readers! Then move to killing the
newsletters.

------
sincostan
I've used emails2rss for a few years for mailing lists. Exists as a google
app.

~~~
leafac
Hi sincostan,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. Thank you for your comment. I tried the
tool you mentioned before creating Kill the Newsletter! Of course, I was
trying same work :)

Unfortunately, I ruled it out for two reasons. First, it required a Google
account, thus binding my identity with my reading preferences. Second, I set
up a throwaway Google account just to test the service and it didn’t work. I
can’t remember exactly why, though.

It was definetly an inspiration for Kill the Newsletter! It gave me an
indication that the project was feasible.

------
sengork
For those who used to use Google Reader I can recommend www.netvibes.com

------
ourcat
This appears to create Atom feeds, not RSS.

~~~
leafac
Hi ourcat,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. Thank you for your comment. Indeed, the
tool generates Atom feeds instead of RSS. It is a better format. But RSS is a
more popular term, so I went it. It’s like the TLS vs. SSL: I only use the
term TLS with highly technical audience.

------
necessity
I gave up looking for such service a while ago, instead I just used twit2rss
or the like (everyone with a newsletter is also on twitter it seems) and
emailed the website suggesting an RSS feed in the future. Good to know it
exists now.

------
bbcbasic
Doubles up as a way to get an anonymous / throwaway email address. I just
signed up a twitter account using it :-)

~~~
leafac
Hi bbcbasic,

Author of Kill the Newsletter! here. First, thank you for interest, I’m glad
the tool was useful to you. While of course Kill the Newsletter! does work as
a throwaway email address, I ask you to please not use it for that. I fear
this might result in @kill-the-newsletter.com email addresses ending up in
blacklists. Or that the service grows in a way that I couldn’t support with my
$0 budget :) Finally, I can’t make strong guarantees of privacy and security
for incoming emails. The security is through obscurity of the generated email
address and corresponding feed URL, which is not a strong model. This is
generally fine for newsletters—whose contents are public anyway—but not so
much for signing up for a private Twitter account.

Also, there are other tools like
[https://www.mailinator.com/](https://www.mailinator.com/) designed
specifically for this use case. You’re much better off with them!

And, when you want to convert that newsletter into an RSS feed, I hope you
consider Kill the Newsletter! an option :)

~~~
bbcbasic
Hi leafac, thanks for the response. I don't plan to use your service that way
myself but thought I'd mention it so you are aware.

I think its a great service for the original purpose though and I'll start
using it for that.

------
ommunist
Well, you can't effectively kill newsletter. Because newsletter COMES so you,
and you have to CLICK to get feed.

~~~
chriswarbo
It depends what level of abstraction you're working at. At the level of
sockets, you're right that a mail server receives a connection from a sender
when a newsletter is sent, whilst an RSS aggregator initiates connections to
each feed's source when it polls, even if there are no new articles. At a
lower level, the server's doing polling to check for new connections, but
that's a fast local operation so it doesn't break the higher-level
abstraction.

I wouldn't say there's much difference from a user point of view, i.e.
"clicking". Polling for feeds with an RSS reader is comparable to polling for
new messages with a mail client. Both can be made fast by fetching mail and/or
news in the background, either using a client or using an OS service.

~~~
ommunist
You are quite correct. But for vast majority of real world users RSS is quite
misterious piece of technology. Emails are ok, everyone 'knows' what the email
is? But 'feed'. Can I save it for offline use? Can I forward it to friends and
family?

~~~
chriswarbo
> But for vast majority of real world users RSS is quite misterious piece of
> technology.

I would imagine that the "vast majority of real world users" of this email-to-
RSS converter know exactly what RSS is

:)

~~~
ommunist
there are about 2.5 billion email users worldwide. At the same time only
around 100 million use RSS. Speaking of vastness of majority.

