Launched a side project… now what?
Hey everyone,
Long time lurker first time poster here. I launched my latest side project last week, inboxreads.co (a site for discovering newsletters), but I'm not sure how to maintain the traffic post launch. It's just meant to be a resource for anyone looking for a interesting newsletter so I'm not expecting endless traffic. But what do you do after launch to maintain a steady (hopefully growing) stream of traffic coming to your project?
Congrats! Have you seen this great checklist?
https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing/blob/master/marketing-checklist.md
That looks really useful! I'll give some of those a try.
I've seen a lot of suggestions to try content marketing but does it still work today? Seems like it's an over-saturated channel.
I can’t say from experience, but pretty much everyone says it works. It’s a long game where you have to be consistent even when it seems like it’s not working.
Good point. Thanks for the advice.
I see this working with a heavy content marketing strategy. Do people really search for newsletters? IDK. But what you could do is promote the content in each news letter on an ongoing basis. Then you have some Content by promoting someone’s content. It could work. Good luck!
Execute?
You could try some growth accounting. (maybe?) I'll say get good or experiment with some of theses:
Sticky Growth ( try to get your existing users to come back)
Deliver a good experience. Costumer Life time + retention cohort analysis
Viral Growth ( Deliberate event that propelled the exposure of your product momentarily )
*Customers touch points
*Program mechanics (Example: you get a 1/2 price item if your referral buys it)
*Keep track of your referral conversion flow
FYI: In my opinion viral marketing is not the best way to go. Now days a lot of viral marketing is based on the cooperation of a third party (google for SEO, Facebook or tweeter for distribution) meaning that you have to abide by their rules, and they are constantly changing them.
Paid Growth
*Google Ad sense, FB marketing, outsourcing SEO's.
You want your Customer Lifetime Value to be 4x of your Customer Acquisition Cost.
Manually recruit growth
Get some initial set of users by doing a comparatively untargeted launch, and then to observe which kind seem most enthusiastic, and seek out more like them.
Your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made. And you in turn should be racking your brains to think of new ways to delight them.
hope it helps.
Cheers!
Thanks I got some ideas from those tips :)
Glad to be of help
Nice! I just added my newsletter, but I don't see yet, so I assume you are manually approving them?
I also haven't received a confirmation email, so can't be sure I've submitted it correctly. Should I receive one?
It's manually done right now, even the confirmation. Looking to automate some of that soon though.
Just approved it http://inboxreads.co/n/mediatag-creativity-newsletter
Actually, there was another comment saying that the screenshots could be improved. And seeing now the screenshot for my own app, I get the same feeling.
2 problems I see for instance:
Any chance I could send you my own screenshot? Simply via email and with the same resolution as the one currently displayed, I assume?
Yeah sure you can send it at keenencharles [at] gmail
I'll look into increasing the resolution for those automated screenshots and adding an image upload to the form.
ha, even the confirmation! This is a good sign, that's what an MVP should be.
And great, thank you so much for approving my newsletter!
Dude, you should be more diligent.
You have accepted my submission of adding the Club, but look at the page http://inboxreads.co/n/CoinPride-Club. It looks awful: the "?" question? The picture is clumsy.
Remember: quality over quantity. Work on every addition like it's the last addition of your life. No rush here.
Sorry about that. The images are generated and uploaded automatically so issues like that can slip through the cracks. The ? looks to be because my database isn't set up to support emojis so it's good to know that now.
I've emailed you the cool looking picture a week ago.
Good luck!
Oh sorry you were the first to be notified via email from that address which wound up having some DNS issues so I didn't get your reply.
I updated to the image to a better screenshot.
Thanks!
I was thinking about this idea a couple of months ago, I am so happy you executed it.
One of the most interesting newsletters for me are the ones focused on copywriting.
I would put a form to sign up. I am interested if you curate a list of the best email newsletter and send me an email with it weekly.
Thanks!
I was wondering if a newsletter about newsletters would be too meta lol but if someone's interested why not.
There is some newsletters that I love and I am excited to open every week. It is definetly something interesting for a lot of people.
Took your advice and added the newsletter signup Daniel. If you're interested you can sign up here eepurl.com/c7Psy
You added lbld.it right? :)
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-KwJakdHdXpXuEauaBbS
I knew I missed one ;)
I've been looking for more music newsletters for myself btw so that I'll be signing up for myself.
Sure no prob! I also added mine, a list for card games.
For music, I subscribe to nytimes' Louder, and The Guardian also has a pretty good one.
Keep up the good work!
Cool project - just submitted StartupWatching
Added :) http://inboxreads.co/n/StartupWatching
cool thanks!
Cool project.
Aside from the list already mentioned I suspect social media would be the best channel for you along with search.
You could "interview" founders of some of the newsletters and use their social media presence to help boost yours.
Do you have a newsletter that exposes new newsletters? (So meta!) I might sign up for 5 new or trending ones to be sent to me each week.
It is definitely a long game but keep trying what other similar sites (CSS galleries) do and see what happens.
Evan
Just added the newsletter sign up. If you're interested you can sign up here eepurl.com/c7Psyz
good idea. ill join
Thanks Evan. The meta newsletter would be a good idea with some interest. I'm seeing a little success with Twitter so far so you might be right.
I happen to have a similar service, Sponsored. I add new newsletters every week and the mail goes at 5:30 AM PDT. Maybe you'll find it interesting? :)
Your link doesn't seem correct, could you fix it?
My bad, it's fixed now :)
Cool, thank you. That also seems interesting