A more detailed look at how Automation Cookbook got started

I launched automationcookbook.io about a week ago. It's a newsletter about the different ways people automate business processes to help them focus on higher level parts of the business.

As a developer I hated doing 3rd party integrations. While I wanted to use Zapier, I never really got the sense from their docs of the job-to-be-done. Why would someone want to send a form submission to a google sheet? It's like the proverbial 'people want a 1/8" hole, not a 1/8" drill'. So I started collecting stories and use-cases of people automating their business on various forums and threads from around the web.

On a whim I decided to ask /r/entrepreneur if they'd be interested in such a list as an eBook. The response was 400+ upvotes, higher than anything I've ever submitted. They said, "yes, but not an eBook. Give us a newsletter". I collected some emails and slept on it.

Honestly, I sat on it for a week or two, before deciding to go for it. I wrote out three posts, and then sent it out to the list. My cadence is a post every day or two.

At first, my format was:

1. state the problem
2. here's step by step instructions of how you automate it

The feedback that I got was the problem was too abstract, and the step by step implementation instructions of how to implement may not be as helpful because the reader may not use the same services and might not have the exact same problem.

But instead, I should tell concrete stories of a person's tedious business process, why they're doing it, and how they ended up automating it. It was just as well, because the step by step instructions took a long time to screenshot and write.

You can see the difference between these two posts:

• https://automationcookbook.io/best-reviews-from-your-best-customers/
• https://automationcookbook.io/when-to-add-friction-to-signups/

I did post an update to /r/entrepreneurs, saying "I did what you guys asked" but to zero upvotes this time. It's a bit puzzling.

The near-term plan of action:

• go talk to the users on the mailing list willing to be interviewed to get feedback
• keep posting
• find a distribution strategy that makes sense.