Everything that worked (and didn't) to grow my Excel newsletter from 0-2000

Hi everyone 👋

Inspired by a post by first1000, I've been outlining how I grew my newsletter list from 0-2000 over the past 6 weeks. I posted this as a comment and someone suggested I should make it a standalone post, so here it goes...

For context: my newsletter teaches people to use Excel's visual design features by sending them weekly xlsx template files and tips/tricks.

From 0-500 -- I started with 500 imported users from an old web form on my site, so I had a leg up from the beginning

From 500-800 -- On day 1 I added links to the newsletter from all my old blog posts related to my niche (Excel dashboards). I got about 200 sign ups this way over the course of the last 6 weeks.

From 800-1700 -- I did direct outreach to Excel influencers asking for advice, this lead to 3 of them posting or commenting on my content and had the biggest impact on my numbers.

1700-1800 -- posting short video content to LinkedIn and Youtube. Didn't get a ton of engagement but a decent number of people got pushed through to the newsletter.

1800-2000 -- from various outreach to people in my network, referrals from existing subscribers, and other random sources

What worked the best:

direct outreach to Excel influencers: these weren't pushy emails, they were genuine questions about getting started in the Excel space and asking what worked for them.
adding links to the newsletter from all my old blog content: my content was already Excel-related and had a steady stream of readers.

What didn't work:

Twitter posts were extremely ineffective - content that got 100s of engagement on other platforms got zero engagement on TW
LinkedIn posts only worked if they included useful videos about Excel tips/tricks, posts that were just about the newsletter got barely any impressions and very little engagement
I tried writing a couple blog posts about the newsletter but they didn't perform well
I did a small experiment with FB/TW ads, some hyper-targeted and more general. My cost per conversion was waaaay too high.
Product Hunt launch - I put a lot of work into a PH launch that ended up not getting featured and lead to <20 sign ups. Not sure what went wrong but I've had other launches with far less effort that did much better.
Posting examples of templates on Reddit - got a ton of upvotes, 50,000+ post views, and a handful of link clicks but <20 sign ups

If you're into Excel, feel free to come check it out. Every email I send includes an a useful xlsx file: https://exceldashboardtemplate.com/newsletter