My newsletter gave me a new career

A new chapter (and what it means for Newsletter Circle)

I’ve been in radio silence for a while. This is my first article since December.

First of all, it feels so good to write again. I only realized how much I missed this when I opened a blank page and started typing.

How are you all doing? I’m seriously asking.

Today’s post is not a creator interview.

Not a deep dive into growth strategies.

Not a Substack Bestseller case study.

Today’s post is about why I somehow disappeared.

But it’s not separate from Newsletter Circle. Actually, it’s deeply connected. Because whatever happened in the meantime happened thanks to this newsletter.

So if you’ve opened this email and started reading, please stay with me. I genuinely want you to hear this.

Long story short: I started a new job.

And yes, it happened mainly because of what I built here.

Some of you know my background. I worked in a global corporate company for 10 years in a highly regulated industry. It was stable, structured and predictable. But it made it almost impossible to grow in online marketing. So I quit.

I took a four-year break from traditional working life.

And for the last three of those years, I’ve been building Newsletter Circle from scratch.

I entered this space with zero experience, zero audience, zero know-how. I sometimes feel like this project became my master’s degree, with a very long graduation project.

When I look back at these three years, I honestly feel proud.

I learned things I couldn’t even imagine five years ago.

I met incredible people from all around the world. I interviewed more than 100 creators. Together, we revealed their ups and downs, their mistakes, their breakthroughs. I hope some of those stories made your path a little easier.

I met people I respected, like Brad Wolverton, Ryan Heafy and Jeremy Caplan.

I’ll never forget the day Jeremy invited me to Newmark Graduate School of Journalism near Times Square where he is Director of Teaching and Learning and gave me a tour. Then we had a launch and talked about building Substack newsletters. I remember walking there thinking, “This newsletter is taking me places I never expected.”

And it did.

I learned that perfectionsim took me nowhere. I switched between ESPs. Substack to Beehiiv, back to Substack. I tried dozens of tools. I built a website. Broke things. Fixed them. Broke them again.

I learned that you can succeed if you truly provide value. No growth strategy will save weak content. If the content is not strong, nothing else works long term.

I realized authentic, unique work is what differentiates you. The time you invest is never wasted. I spent three months building one report. It brought 1.5K sign-ups. And even a year later, it still brings new subscribers from that single piece of content.

I experimented with dozens of growth strategies. But hacks and hype only give temporary dopamine. What actually matters is building systems you can sustain.

I learned discipline is not scary. It’s freedom. It keeps you on track.

I learned consistency is not about never missing a week. It’s a long-term pattern. Missing one or two posts doesn’t make you inconsistent if you keep showing up over time.

I also learned something uncomfortable: writing great content is never enough. You have to promote it. You have to distribute it. And there is nothing cringe about that. If you don’t push your work forward, no one else will.

And above all, I stayed grateful for how collaborative and generous this space is. At the end of the day, what harm can come from people who spend hours creating and sharing their perspectives, mostly for free? Collaborating with so many amazing creators helped me expand my reach and stay motivated.

All of this slowly shaped me.

But here’s the honest part.

Building a newsletter-led media project from scratch is hard, especially on the monetization side. I genuinely loved what I was doing and I still do. But I couldn’t fully figure out how to turn it into stable, recurring revenue at the level I wanted. Maybe I needed more time. Maybe a few more years. That’s possible.

At the same time, it wasn’t only about money. When you carry financial pressure alone for a long time, it affects you. You start losing energy. You overthink small decisions. You question yourself more than usual. It’s like trying to move forward while constantly worrying about whether you’ll have enough fuel to keep going.

Working alone also became draining after a while. Every decision was on me. Every mistake was on me. And I knew that turning this into a fully sustainable business would require even more time and even more energy.

That’s when I started to step back and rethink things.

In my previous job, I stayed 10 years. One of my biggest mistakes was not revisiting my perspective often enough. I was so focused on making it work that I didn’t see how stuck I felt.

Life is a marathon.

Some projects come into your life not to be your forever, but to prepare you for your next step.

So after reaching 7K subscribers and carrying all these experiences with me, I decided to start a new path.

I decided to build a career in the B2B SaaS content space.

It’s been a month already, and I can honestly say I’m very happy with this decision. I joined a great startup called Teamflect as Content Partnerships and Syndication Manager. I work with amazing people, I feel challenged in a good way, and I feel energized again. What makes it even more meaningful for me is that distributing strong content through real partnerships sits at the core of my role. In a way, it still feels very connected to everything I’ve been doing here.

Of course, staying 10 years in one company shows loyalty and dedication. But if I’m being honest, the main reason I got this job was what I built with Newsletter Circle.

People saw the effort behind it. They saw the discipline, the consistency, and the risk I took when I left corporate life to build something on my own. They understood what it means to create something from scratch without guarantees.

They didn’t just look at numbers. They understood the work and the courage behind those numbers.

My newsletter spoke for me. I didn’t have to over-explain who I am or what I’m capable of.

And here’s something beautiful.

During almost every interview I’ve done over the years, I asked creators the same question:

“How did building a newsletter impact your life personally and professionally?”

Some of them told me it completely changed their careers. Now, I’m living that change myself.

Over the years, I’ve heard people talk about discipline, self-motivation, collaboration, and clarity of thought. I’ve heard them say that writing regularly helped them think better, decide better, and show up more confidently in other areas of their lives. Every single one of those is true for me too.

I’ve always been a newsletter ambassador. I’ve tried to convince friends to start newsletters about topics they already love. Not because it’s trendy, but because I’ve seen what the process does to you. Writing consistently shapes how you think. It forces you to organize what you know. It pushes you to go deeper and learn in a more structured way. It builds courage. And sometimes, it opens doors you didn’t even know were there.

Now I’m experiencing that impact firsthand.

So what happens next?

First, this is not a goodbye. Newsletter Circle is NOT ending. I’m not disappearing.

But I want to be transparent with you.

Running a weekly newsletter as a side project is harder than I expected. In my first month at the new job, I honestly couldn’t even open my dashboard. Even on weekends, my focus was on adapting, learning, and doing my best in this new role. And refreshing and gathering the energy for the week in my free time.

I have huge respect for people who manage frequent publishing while working full-time. I’ve realized that, at least for now, I can’t maintain that pace without compromising something else.

My full-time job is my priority at this stage of my life.

So moving forward, I will publish whenever I genuinely have the time and mental space. I want to publish because I have something meaningful to say, not because I’m trying to keep up with a schedule.

I’ll continue following the newsletter world closely. I still deeply believe in building audiences and treating them as long-term assets. That belief hasn’t changed at all.

One more important update: I will turn off paid subscriptions. With a monthly cadence, I cannot justify paid content in a way that feels fair to you. To all my paid subscribers who supported me until now, thank you. Your support meant more than you know. If you have any questions, just reply to this email. I’m here.

I’m excited to continue Newsletter Circle as a side project in this new chapter. It may look a little different, but the core stays the same.

My inbox is always open.

And this is simply a new phase, not an ending.

See you in the next post.

Best,

Ciler