Diana Ostrom on Her Très Chic Parisian Newsletter
If you're obsessed with Paris (me!), you need "Faraway Places" in your inbox
Hi Bleeders!
In this edition, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Diana Ostrom, the creator of Faraway Places, a Paris-centric newsletter that blends French culture and travel tips. Diana’s newsletter started as a way to fill a gap in Paris’s English-speaking media space, and now it’s grown to a 10,000-strong community, primarily through her blog and Pinterest savvy. Whether you're dreaming of your next trip to France or just love a stylish, well-curated newsletter, Faraway Places is a treasure in your inbox.
I first met Diana in Chloe Caldwell’s year-long essay generator and got to know her as a fantastic writer and editor (and a really interesting person). Her bylines include The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Travel + Leisure, and others.
In our Q&A, Diana explains how she uses her service journalism background to craft content that helps readers navigate Paris like pros, her 21-day email series that nurtures her best newsletter subscribers, and how she’s thinking about monetization. Plus, don’t miss her prediction on the future of media!
What’s the basic premise and tagline of your newsletter?
DO: News from Paris specifically and France generally, and thoughts about travel—especially solo female travel—broadly.
When and why did you start your newsletter?
DO: I honestly can’t remember—maybe four or five years ago? Originally I was writing these incredibly long, self-conscious dispatches from Paris, but my friends said they were overwrought, and eventually it whittled itself down to its current shape. Very originally, it was meant to address what I felt was a gap in the Paris media space—or at least the anglophone Paris media space—which was event listings and that sort of thing, like a Time Out for Paris by email. I would see posters in the metro promoting openings and exhibitions I wanted to remember, and I thought other people might want the same thing.
Who’s your main audience?
DO: Mostly people who come to my blog looking for advice on traveling to France, or people who sign up through my Etsy shop.
How is your newsletter differentiated from the other newsletters in your niche?
DO: The only other newsletters I read in the sort of anglophone Paris culture niche are written by my friends, and I love them. Maybe something that matters is that I worked in service journalism—which couch you should buy, which striped top, that sort of thing—and I think that really comes through. Service journalism is such a specific wing of professional writing—people who do it tend to be just super motivated by a desire to help, more than to center their own narrative. I love tips ‘n’ tricks for how to navigate the world, and Paris can be a tricky place to wrap your head around. I hope the newsletter helps people make the most of it, or helps them stay current with a place they love.
What’s your editorial strategy? Including: What kind of content are you focused on offering? What’s your publishing cadence? How far in advance do you plan your content calendar?
DO: I try to send it once weekly, but don’t always manage it. Because it’s mostly a digest of things in the news, I don’t keep much of an editorial calendar—I’ll just bookmark things I see that I think the readers will click on.
More than I plan out the content, I’ll have a sense of what people have clicked on in the past, and I try to be sure I include stories that fit those general rubrics—a home design story about a cool apartment, a seasonally appropriate recipe, or something fun from Instagram. I do know my analytics inside and out—I want to provide readers with news that is useful or interesting, so I look to them to dictate what I pick. I’ll always make room for stuff I think is great, even if I’m not sure anyone else will agree.
How many subscribers do you have?
DO: Around 10,000.
Do you offer paid memberships? Have you tried any other methods of monetization?
DO: I’ve only just started experimenting with paid subscriptions on Substack, with two new newsletters—one focusing on shopping, the other a totally different sort of thing, serializing a collection of essays I wrote about moving to and living in France. The main newsletter runs on Flodesk, which, in my experience, is better geared toward selling physical goods or courses, that sort of thing—which reflects the fact that I’ve chosen the path of selling physical goods rather than access to the newsletter itself. Personally speaking, I know that the newsletters I pay for offer a really concrete service or information that I can’t access by other means. I’ve sold things online for ages—mostly on Etsy —so using the newsletter to move traffic to those commerce spaces, rather than viewing the newsletter as the product itself, has been a better fit for me. I also do some affiliate linking for products I think are a fit.
Initially, I was thinking of my newsletter as a way to build a community for when my new novel is published—that was, and I guess remains, the long-term goal.
Tell us about your newsletter’s growth trajectory. What have been the most effective ways for you to promote your newsletter? Did you have any growth spurts, and what did you learn from those?
DO: I have pretty consistent growth, which is 99 percent via sign-ups on my blog. Of that traffic, 70 percent is from Pinterest—I used to teach Pinterest strategies, and I’ve found it to be a super consistent source of subscribers, though it only works for a few niches: food, travel, fashion, home design, etc.
What’s been your most popular content, and your guess as to why?
DO: I have a newsletter series called Frenchfully, which is a 21-day series of emails, all covering a tiny view of how I’ve experienced France, like writing letters, or dating in Paris, or infidelity. I always get nice emails about it, and I’ve found that people who do the series before being rolled over to the main list maintain higher-than-average engagement rates even months after the series is over.
How has your newsletter served your career as an author?
DO: That’s such an interesting question. In some ways, it’s been really backwards for me. I came to my own newsletter having worked as a newsletter writer for a brand that was originally using email as its primary product—we didn’t even have a proper website for ages. And I was like, Wait, this is super fun, and a really great way of communicating with people, and I wanted to do my own version. I’m not sure if it’ll stay this way, since they’re so ubiquitous now, but I think there’s something special about email—about the way it comes into your inbox, which is still sort of a private space, rather than on the wider web. I don’t know—maybe as newsletters themselves get co-opted by (even more) marketing, we’ll all revert to physical mail in our actual mailboxes, and the whole thing will come full circle and people will start subscribing to magazines again.
Anyway, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, I really do think a lot about how my newsletter might help my readers and less about how it helps me. That said, I’m hopeful that when my book comes out I’ll find it a useful way to connect with readers. For now, it’s really nice to have an editorial space that feels pure.
What’s your #1 tip for writers who want to start a newsletter?
DO: Don’t wait! Just do it! Figure out what platform you want to use, and go from there—for me, what I tell people is that if they want to sell their ideas, use Substack. If you want to sell goods or courses, use Flodesk. And if you want to, like, segment your list by recent behavior, you’re probably already using something like ConvertKit.
I think there’s a way bigger conversation to have here about the demolition of traditional media outlets and how independent newsletters, blogs, social media, etc., are all filling that void, in ways big and small. I don’t think it’s that off-base to see newsletters as the near-term descendents of the red-giant media outlets that have crashed and burned. I look at newsletters like The Food Section, which was until recently run on Substack and is, in a powerful and compelling way, retraining the food world spotlight on places that were maybe underserved in the past. I think newsletters are an incredibly powerful tool for the motivated writer.
What’s your #1 tip for writers trying to grow their existing newsletter?
DO: I’ve found personally that growing the newsletter and making the newsletter better are completely unrelated. For me, being on Flodesk—which is to say, publishing without the community-growth advantages of Substack—means that my growth is directly proportional to traffic to my website. That means that to grow, I really need to understand and anticipate what I can post that people will search for, and then write and optimize those blog posts so that they’ll be found.
Shout-out another writer-newsletter that you admire and enjoy consuming.
DO:
, written by my friend —she loves France, and food, in a really inspiring way.Anything else you’d like to add?
DO: My favorite reader service is answering “where should I go” questions—here’s a sample. If anyone reading this has a question, I hope they’ll send it to me!
Thank you, Diana!
➡️ Subscribe to Faraway Places and check out Diana’s blog.
Sign up for Courtney’s upcoming workshop:
How to Land Big Bylines: Masterclass
It's a classic goal of writers everywhere to see their byline in a big, splashy outlet. But it's hard to land that big break. In my upcoming two-hour masterclass for Pandemic University, I'll teach you how to slip in the side door—through the column. This has worked for me and it has worked for previous students.
On Saturday, September 21st, I'll get you started with this strategy, and you'll leave class with 10 ideas, early drafts, and editor emails. Even better, twelve students are invited to upgrade to Stream B, and there are still a few spots left. In Stream B, you'll get personalized feedback on an essay draft and pitch, plus a 20-minute consultation with ideas for revision and next steps.
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So… ROLL CALL! 🗣️
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Let’s connect on social media! I’m @courtneykocak on Twitter/X and Instagram. For more, check out my website courtneykocak.com.
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Love this! Love yall! Obsessed with both the bleeders AND faraway places