From IH to PH: 10words is growing up
Hey hackers!
A few months ago, I created a newsletter called 10words.io based on @Adith's post series here on IH.
10words has since grown to a community-curated newsletter and some browser extensions. The idea is to give users a way to discover and be inspired every day, while giving makers another way to spread the word about their project.
(btw... you can submit your project - just bring your best 1-floor elevator pitch!)
To date, here's how the numbers look:
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505 subscribers
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393 startups submitted
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6,199 startup clicks
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135k startup impressions
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53% average newsletter open rate
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16% average newsletter click rate
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$55 in revenue
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$173 total loss
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? hours spent (too many late nights)
Today, 10words is featured on Product Hunt, our first big step outside the IH community, so I'm excited to watch these numbers grow.
I want to thank you all for your support along the way, and created an IH product page to continue the updates without cluttering the forums.
For now, I'd love to answer any questions, disclose any info, or give advice from my newfound experience :)
Hey Chris,
awesome job! I've been following your journey and am amazed at your progress.
Kudos
TS
Thanks! The support from this community sure has helped get through some of the more difficult stretches. Much appreciated :)
Very nice idea! :) How you make your first revenue on it? :D
If you notice on the homepage, there are 2 highlighted startups... those are sponsors who are helping support the project! In return they get premium placement for a week.
In addition, there's an option for startups to pick the day they are featured for a small price, to align with a launch, marketing efforts, etc.
I just rolled these out a couple weeks ago, and testing heavily, but so far so good :)
Congrats, Chris!
I wish you the best for 10words 🙌 The chrome extension is a very good addition. Continue making 10words more valuable :) Good luck 👍
Thanks Adith! Appreciate the inspiration and support along the way :)
What has been your biggest expense?
The backend that manages submissions and subscribers sits on Heroku - with a couple of dynos, a postgres database, and a redis instance.
I use AWS SES for sending, and S3/Cloudfront for the main site hosting which is negligible.
Other things were the domain and a few ads on Reddit to A/B test some copy, but just a few dollars here and there.
Most of the ongoing costs are Heroku.
You should look into EmailOctupus.
Disclaimer : I don't own it but it's great if you use AWS.
EmailOctopus was one of the first to submit their startup to 10words! The bro-founders have a great interview on the IH podcast.
I actually wired it all up myself - so I track opens, deliveries, etc on my heroku worker. I knew of EO but kinda wanted to learn myself so decided to build it. I'm within the SES free tier, so haven't paid for any emails yet.
Do you have auto-scaling turned on? Also, in your busiest days how close was your "couple of dynos" to max CPU?
I do not have auto-scaling on. The backend (app.10words.io) is separate from the website (www.10words.io), and only handles submissions and other management stuff so the traffic is much less.
I started on 2 hobby dynos and eventually spun it up to 3 performance 1x's (2 web 1 worker) to get ready for PH. Looking at the stats today, the dynos haven't gone over 40%
The www site is hosted on S3 and delivered via Cloudfront, so it's just a static html page and super duper fast.
Cool, thanks!
Chris, I'm using 10words.io since you post it. Nice project. Can you share stats now, after PH? ;)
Congrats @luckyba ! You are on the right path! Keep up the great work, stay committed, and everything will be awesome :)
So happy for you! I enjoy skimming the list each time I get it.
Congrats Chris. I love this!
Nice Work! I didn't know 10words, I just subscribed and I'm already discovering very cool apps :D. Congratulations!
Great to hear, thanks Maximiliano!
Really cool idea Chris, and congrats on your success. I submitted http://collecttrust.com/ as well, looking forward to seeing how it all works/goes.
Congratulation and good luck!
Thanks Adam! I actually have been a spacedoo subscriber for the last few weeks - must have seen it here. Glad to have it submitted :)
Great, I hope you hound it usefully
Nice work Chris!
Thanks Davis! I appreciate the PH support - wish you would have told me about the thieves though 😝
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