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- Creator Spotlight: How Noah Edelman is changing the way we learn about crypto
Creator Spotlight: How Noah Edelman is changing the way we learn about crypto
Crypto education in a way that makes sense
About the creator
Noah Edelman is a college student who grew up in Manhattan and has a passion for start ups, crypto and psychology. He spent about a year learning about crypto and decided he wanted to be a resource where people who didn't know about crypto can learn. After realizing that the majority of his friends and family were unfamiliar with crypto and didn't necessarily hava a medium to learn a lot of the language used in the space and some of the more foundational aspects, he wanted to change that and provide his friends and family an accessible resource.
His goal is to teach people about crypto in a way that makes sense and is funny and relatable. He started writing from a perspective of what he would want to be reading himself. He uses creativity to explain things using analogies, humor, and a conversational tone to keep it light and fun to read.
How do you ensure that your newsletter is unique to your readers and that your voice shines through?NE: I've attributed a lot of this to my parents. In the last year or so, I've been having more conversations with them and finding ways to explain and define things to them in a way they would understand and then I find unique ways to transfer that into my writing.
Whenever I'm now writing, I'll ask myself "will my parents understand this" and if the answer is no, I know it's time to re-write it or think of another version of the writing so that they could understand it.
What is your content strategy?
NE: Over time I've found ways to make the process of creating super efficient. It typically consists of:
Formatting everything and outlining what I'll be writing about
For each main point, I'll identify what I want to talk about and how I can make it understandable to readers. Also identifying different analogies that can be used. For example, "A block chain is like.." or adding in relevant jokes
Creating pictures and memes that can grab peoples attention
Finding advertisers to help promote
Describe your newsletter using a slogan:
NE: Crypto education in a way that makes sense
If you could choose two posts to share with someone interested in crypto, which would they be and why? NE: Here are my two favorite posts (& why I liked them):
The Ethereum merge (for dummies) — demystified the merge in a fun and relevant way.
Is crypto good or bad for the world — I think this shared a unique perspective bridging the gap between crypto-maximalists & crypto haters.
Who are your readers?
NE: Majority of my readers have come from my launch on either Product Hunt, LinkedIn or just students around campus. The one unifying thing about all of my readers is that they're all crypto curious and not really experts in crypto minus a few who have a really good grasp on the topic and do it full time. A lot of the readers I've spoken to are either students or people who work in tech or business related fields who want to learn more about crypto and hadn't found sources that were helpful to them.
What feedback have you gathered on content that has been the most digestible for your readers?
NE: People have mentioned that they find the different analogies around different terms in crypto really helpful, because if you don't understand the terms used, you essentially won't understand anything beyond that point.
What is your growth strategy currently and any plans on where you want to take it?
NE: One thing I'm focused on right now is tapping into different blockchain clubs at different colleges across the world. I'm trying to make connections with people also creating different blockchain clubs at their schools and building different incentive structures for them to recommend the newsletter in their clubs.
Additionally, I'm working on a college ambassador program which is similar to what Morning Brew did to grow theirs. So I'm essentially paying ambassadors from different schools to promote the newsletter and giving them the opportunity for exposure in my newsletter if they are also writing any content about crypto or are maybe dropping any products.
Moving forward, I'm focused on learning more about paid social media marketing that can help in more growth overnight since as college gets busier I won't have the time to build new growth hacks weekly. Additionally, I plan to launch a referral program soon to spearhead growth from my current subscribers. Other beehiiv creators/newsletters that have inspired you? NE: There's a few since beehiiv newsletters pretty much consume my inbox at this point. But one would have to be Milk Road, since I look to them for the standard of what I want my newsletter to become. I'm inspired by the way they talk about different ideas and make it really personable and the fact that they're teaching hundreds of thousands of readers in a really fun and easy to understand way. I think they do that better than any other newsletter that I've seen. I also love reading Cyber Patterns where Jason discusses different ways to succeed on the internet. I also love Jack Raines' newsletter Young Money and really appreciate how he just writes about whatever he wants and doesn't care about what people think.
What is something you've learned about being a newsletter writer in the crypto space? NE: I think there are a lot of ways to go wrong in crypto. So much of the media coverage in has to do with scams, or people impersonating others, different schemes, etc,. It can be tempting to write about those things because that is what gets views and attracts eye balls. So I've made an active effort to try and stay away what everyone else is talking about and focus more on the cool stories about how technology is being applied including the different types of people around the world using this technology.
I think that's where I attribute a uniqueness to my audience is that it will always focus on what's new. This has also been a challenge; identifying interesting topics to write about every week that other people aren't talking about as much
How are you working to inspire other college students like yourself to want to learn about crypto? NE: I think about this a lot and realize that a lot of college students aren't reading newsletters and spending majority of their time on apps like TikTok or BeReal. So part of this process has been to focus on more Millennials. However, there are a lot of college kids who do like to read and have grown up with the idea that traditional media is not as traditional and who utilize social media to really learn from other creators. A lot of what we knew to be traditional media has been unbundled by different platforms and I think there's a good chunk of people who would be willing to try newsletters because it's definitely a more intimate way of learning about something.
I want to inspire people to be more open minded when it comes to crypto and learning what the technology really is. This is something I had to do early on as well. I came in with the idea that this was going to change the world, but quickly realized that although that's the case, there's a lot of both good and bad that come with this type of technology so just trying to encourage people to want to learn more about it!
Why beehiiv?
What was lacking in previous platform?
NE: The first platform I used was Substack, which wasn’t necessarily bad but the customization options were quite limited. My newsletter looked like every other one out there—it just wasn’t unique. There were no mechanisms for growth built into the platform.
Beyond that, I felt that Substack newsletters were definitely catering to bigger creators, whereas when I was just getting started on beehiiv and was pretty small I was able to just contact Tyler and the team and get my questions all sorted out within like 5 minutes.
What motivated the move to beehiiv?
NE: I was early to beehiiv (December 2021). The team was in the process of building what are now core features like the referral program. The platform was decent back then but I saw an extremely high upside. Since then Beehiiv has exceeded all of my expectations.
What was the migration process like?
NE: The migration was super easy. All I needed to do was import my readers, customize the newsletter's layout for an hour, and I was off to the races.
What has your experience with beehiiv been thus far?
NE: Sometimes the best software experiences are the ones you spend the least time on. Beehiiv is so simple and easy to use that it gives me the freedom to focus on writing great content. Of course, the options are there when I need them — I use the segmentation feature to compare different cross sections of subscribers. I also love playing around with customizing the newsletter format. I feel like I’m a kid again at arts and crafts: I can make the product look like anything I want. Finally, the customer service has stood out. I’m not the biggest whale out there, but Tyler & the team have responded to my questions quickly and effectively.
What excited you most about beehiiv and has been your favorite beehiiv feature?
NE: First and foremost, I just love signing into beehiiv and looking at the beautiful dashboard! The most helpful feature to me has definitely been audience segmentation. It's really important for me at my size to know where people are coming from and how valuable those readers are because I want to spend my time and money on what users actually want.
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