Publication Settings

July 17, 2023

Module 1 — Lesson 5

The publication settings help you customize your publication. You can find them by going to ‘Settings → Publication’.

Why are they important?

They create the backbone of your newsletter:

  • Logo

  • Name

  • Thumbnail

  • Welcome email

  • One-line description

In other words, you don’t have a newsletter without setting them up!

(So to everyone who thought they could just skip the “boring” settings set up… HA!)

Here’s how it works…

[Start from 4:20]

The video you just watched pretty much covers everything you need to know to set up your publication. But I want to add some additional context and explain why you may choose to use certain features in different ways. Sound fair enough?

Private Publication Settings

When you toggle on the Private Publication setting — your newsletter archive will look like this. New visitors won’t be able to see your past content until they’ve subscribed to your newsletter.

Why might you want to use this feature?

  1. To incentivize visitors to subscribe

  2. To not let any freeloaders view your content

Truthfully, if you’re just starting out, I wouldn’t recommend gating your content. It’s important that you get enough people reading your content for you to gain momentum.

Sender Name

Your sender name is the name people will see when they view your email in their inbox.

You can change your sender name to your publication name if you’re operating a media brand and don’t want your personal name attached to the email.

Example:

Pete Huang → The Neuron

UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are short text codes that you add to URLs (or links) to help you track the performance of a webpage or campaign.

My colleague EJ does a MUCH better job of explaining it than me, so I’ll leave ya with him for this one:

Custom Domains

What’s that, you say? You want to use a custom domain?

Don’t worry, we gotchu…

Connecting to Stripe

Stripe is a payment platform that allows you to accept payments, send out payments, and manage your online business.

When you connect your stripe account to your beehiiv account you’ll be able to collect payments from your subscribers (if they’re subscribed to your paid newsletter).

To go more in-depth on this, click here.

Syncing Posts to Your Website (RSS Feed)

Do you already have a website? Want to add your newsletter content to your website?

As a publication, having an RSS feed allows you to:

  • Use beehiiv to send newsletters while also using a WordPress or Webflow site (you'd use a plugin to read your RSS feed and render posts there)

  • Trigger automations when your RSS feed is updated (here are some suggestions from Zapier)

  • Provide your readers with a feed they can use for 3rd party reader apps

Generating an RSS feed is simple—just head over to your settings and go to RSS.

Then go through this playlist of Integration Guides to find the one you need.

Migrating Your Newsletter

Are you coming from another email platform?

Here’s how to import your subscribers and content:

Exporting Your Data

You may hear other people say, “Your email list is your insurance in case you get shadow banned on your social media.”

Here’s why they say that:

Once your social media account is deleted… it’s gone.

But when you have an email list on a platform like beehiiv — you can quickly export all your data.

A friend of mine once said, if his office was on fire, the one thing he’d run back in to save was his USB drive with his email list data on it.

(Although I don’t recommend you do that, you get the point.)

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to export your data.

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