How I use Notion to automate my blog newsletter and website
👋 Hey Friends,
Last year, the thought of writing made me so anxious I would literally shake. That’s why i chose to start this blog — to face that fear. However, I knew I wouldn’t start writing unless I made it frictionless. Here’s how I made writing easier for myself by using Notion for basically everything.
These days, I don’t just use Notion for organizing my notes — I write, design, and publish my blog, newsletter, and website almost entirely through Notion. To do this I use a few services and scripts:
- Super.so for my website — monthly fee of 15 CAD
- NoCodeLetters for my newsletter — free up to 1000 emails per month
- Notion2Medium for my blog — a free and open source script I run through my terminal
In this blog, I’ll explain why I rely on Notion for all my writing needs and provide a quick how-to guide.
🛣️ Why Notion: The Path of Least Resistance
⚠️ Skip this section if you just want the How To
As a Computer Science student, I used to think it was my duty to build my own website from scratch, learning the latest front-end frameworks along the way. You know what that did for me? I have 3 unfinished websites written in: plain JS + HTML, Angular 2, and React 16.8 (because hooks had just been released). Each time I started, I stuffed more pages and features into the project until it became too daunting to finish. None of those sites ever got published, and worse, I had nothing to share because I was afraid of writing.
After the third failed attempt to make a website, two things became clear: first, It turns out I didn’t give a shit about front end coding, and second, if I wanted to make a website, I needed something worth putting on it. I was using the mountain of features to put off facing my real fear — writing. So, I decided to eliminate my excuses and made my website with Notion.
With the help of Super.so and a free template, I was able to get nathanlaundry.com up and running in just a few hours, without the hassle of CSS. Once I set up the basic layout, I had no choice but to write. Since I was already using Notion for note-taking and weekly task planning, I saw my blank blog page constantly. It taunted me and I wanted to conquer it.
My breakthrough in overcoming writing anxiety came in the form of a how-to blog post I wrote called “Breaking Down the Literature Review.” At the time, I was enrolled in a technical writing course and was tasked with writing a related works section for a mock research paper. Luckily, I had already been taking notes in Notion and had inadvertently created a how-to guide for myself. I realized I could easily repurpose these notes into a blog post. My plan worked. I had set up the tools and the situation to make writing feel effortless — even if I was still afraid.
Fast-forward a year, and I’ve written 12 articles and 6 issues of 2 different newsletters (the first one didn’t last long lol). I know, I’m not exactly prolific but I chose computer science and mathematics in undergrad specifically to avoid ever having to write again. Now, I find writing comforting and relaxing. The path of least resistance worked and I swear I only feel a little shame being a Computer Science student who didn’t write his own website from scratch.
How to automate your blog, newsletter, and website
The Website — Super.so
Create a website in less than a minute that’s easy to manage and looks great, with instant page loads, SEO optimization, and no-code. All your content stays in Notion so you can focus on creating while Super handles the rest. — Super
Super is as easy to use as you can get. You link your Notion account to their service, and they give you a pretty decent web-editor for managing: navbar items, domain, theming, footer, and let you add custom CSS if you choose.
Here’s a comparison between my Notion page, what I see in the editor, and my published site.
Notion
Super Editor
Published site
A few of the features I love about Super.so are:
The drag and drop editor which has easy to use pre-built components
The great documentation (which includes CSS snippets if you want to customize but also hate CSS)
To set up a personal website using Notion and Super.so, follow these steps:
- Sign up for a Super.so account at Super.so.
- Create a new website project in Super.so.
- Sign in to your Notion account and provide the link of the notion page you want to use as your home page (subpages will be recognized by Super.so)
- Choose a template for your website.
- Customize the design and layout of your website using the drag-and-drop editor in Super.so.
- Publish your website.
That’s it! Your website is now live and can be accessed at the domain name you specified during the setup process. You can continue to manage your website’s content and design through Notion, and any changes you make will be reflected on your website in real-time.
The Newsletter — NoCodeLetters
NoCodeLetters is a web application that allows users to create and send newsletters without needing to know how to code. The service offers a free plan for up to 1000 emails per month and also provides paid plans with additional features. Users can customize their newsletter templates and manage their mailing lists through the platform. — ChatGPT
NoCodeLetters is a little more technical to use than Super. You’ll have to create a notion integration yourself which requires a little fiddling with API keys, but it’s nothing too difficult. I won’t pretend I can write a better guide than Notion’s team themselves so here’s Notion’s guide on setting up an integration.
I will admit NoCodeLetters is less Powerful (TM) than convertkit, substack, or some of the other newsletter tools on the market. But, it’s got what I need — Notion integration. As of today, #GuidingQuestions has a whopping 18 subscribers — none of whom are my parents by the way. So, I don’t need anything fancy. Just the barebones, thanks.
NoCodeLetters gives me an easy interface for: managing upcoming newsletters that it identifies while syncing with my newsletter database in Notion, it gives me basic analytics like sends, opens, and reads, and sets up a default landing page. What more could a broke grad student ask for in a newsletter service?
Main Dashboard
Default Landing page
In Progress Newsletters
Shameless plug: Check out my weekly newsletter #GuidingQuestions where I discuss the design questions I use in my research, productivity, and search for a meaningful life.
The Blog — Notion2Medium
This integration is the most technical. Notion2Medium is a Python script I found on github that links to both your medium and Notion accounts to push notion pages as drafts to Medium. This really was the classic CS move of spending 2 hours automating something that takes me 1 minute each time … after 120 blog posts it will all be worth it!
The initial script I found wasn’t quite working so it required some tinkering but a few adjustments to imports and packages and I got it up and running. I’ll post links to both the original script here, and my updated version here. (the buy me a coffee link on my fork of the repo still links to the original author’s)
The instructions for setting up your Medium and Notion API keys are in the README.
The fun part is this. I give notion2medium a database id from Notion, it identifies all my entries, and I can quickly send one off to Medium
I know I save a trivial amount of time with this little automation but my inner Computer Science nerd loves using the terminal and never having to copy paste an article again brings me such joy.
Cheers,
Nathan Laundry
