New Website and Newsletter Launch

tldr: New episodes are now available on this dedicated site, and you can get them delivered straight to your inbox through my new newsletter.

What a year it's been so far!

Six months in, and the Audrow Nash Podcast has gained some serious traction. I'm thrilled with the incredible guests who've joined me and can't wait for the many more to come.

When I kicked off this podcast, I didn't have a dedicated site. As questions kept popping up, I realized I needed a central hub for all the episodes. I'd also been toying with the idea of starting a newsletter to announce each new release.

In pursuit of these goals, I've test-driven a bunch of options - Beehiiv, Mailchimp, Ghost, you name it. But none of them quite hit the mark.

One of the big hurdles was creating a good-looking site with all the features I wanted. It turns out that's surprisingly tricky. Take Ghost, for instance. It had a top-notch editor and made blogging and newsletters a breeze, with great templates to boot. But customizing those templates? Not so easy. I'd have to either learn their stack or hire someone to do it.

Beehiiv nailed the newsletter features but fell short on the website front. Their newsletter tools were complex and growth-obsessed - not ideal for the tight-knit robotics community I'm aiming for. I'd rather have a small, dedicated following than chase numbers. Oh, and their editor? Let's just say it left a lot to be desired.

Tools like Mailchimp were just overwhelming. So. Many. Features. Great if you're a marketing agency, but overkill for my simple needs. They also lacked a solid option for creating a custom site.

So, I took matters into my own hands and coded this site myself. Initially, I wanted to avoid this route, but with AI getting so good at frontend work, and me knowing exactly what I wanted, I managed to whip this up in about two weekend days.

The DIY approach has another perk - I can write these posts in markdown using my preferred code editor, then use that for both the newsletter and blog post. That's a win in my book.

For the newsletter itself, I'm using Buttondown. They've got an API and focus on the core features I need - markdown newsletters, subscriber tags, easy embedding, and so on.

My vision for this site is to evolve alongside the podcast, growing more sophisticated over time. I hope it gives you all the info you might need about the podcast and makes it easy to browse past episodes.

Looking forward to this new chapter of the Audrow Nash Podcast. Thanks for being part of the journey!