From 0 to *Double Digits* in 30 Days

Yep, you read that right.

I cracked the code. I grew a newsletter from 0 to the very low double digits in subscribers in just 30 days. A feat almost anyone could achieve, but I’m pretty proud of it. You can check it out here. You don't need to subscribe to read it.

Beginnings

You can check out my initial post in anticipation of pressing publish on the first edition here. That post goes into my motivation to do the newsletter as well. The first edition covers it, too, and can be found here.

At the month mark, I have published on each Friday for a total of 5 editions and feel pretty good about it.

A few things I wanted to learn from the first batch of newsletters were:

• How to connect with some of the creators I appreciate?
• How low could I keep my costs?
• What content should I produce in addition to the newsletter to improve my reach?

I also discovered a DMCA villain along the way. Stick around if you have any recommendations for a Clipchamp alternative.

Creators

I’ve had little social media presence over the years and also did not want to tie the newsletter directly to my personal accounts. I knew this would inhibit my ability to rapidly get my first 50 or 100 subscribers and unlock the possibility of compounding growth from there.

As an alternative, I thought highlighting creators I appreciated and then messaging and tagging them in content posts would be an option. I’ve had mixed results.

I didn’t think everyone I mentioned would repost reels or stories I tagged them. I would have imagined that more social media channel managers (some of the channels very, very small) would have responded to a message saying I wanted to ensure I got their links right in my descriptions and tagged any additional accounts they wanted.

From a quick tally of Instagram DMs, it looks like a little less than 1 in 5 responded or interacted with a post in any way. Some of those accounts are massive, but I assumed the smaller ones would appreciate the shoutout. I think close to a 20% success rate on that is pretty good overall, and I’m going to carry on with my efforts on this front.

Costs

I wanted to keep costs as low as possible since this is pretty much a glorified creative outlet at this point. With that in mind, my only initial costs were purchasing the domain and setting up my email account.

The one thing I “splurged” on was software to make content creation easy. After checking out a few options, I went with Clipchamp. It looked like the most streamlined solution for putting together <60 second clips of screen recordings with some stock media included at no extra price (more to follow on that). It’s $11.99 per month.

I’m using beehiiv as my distributor, and I’m pretty happy with it so far. Sticking with the free plan for now, my only real groan is that I can’t use a custom domain at that tier. One day, though…

Content

In my initial post, I set out to make one piece of >60 second content that would be an overview of the whole newsletter and three smaller pieces of <60 second content highlighting one of the recommending pieces each week. After checking out more YouTube content and thinking about what value the longer piece brought to the table, I scrapped the longer piece.

I’ve published 18 pieces of short form content and pushed them across Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube. The experience has been positive overall except for the interaction below.

Enter Our Villain - HAAWK

The one thing I splurged on turned against me and I’m extremely frustrated. Clipchamp offers some royalty free media to everyone and an additional library to subscribers. That additional library is available through an underlying license with Storyblocks. HAAWK patrols the internet for any misuses of Storyblocks content. By way of having a Clipchamp subscription, I am licensed to use the Storyblocks media as part of content I create and am authorized to publish that content on social media as I desire.

Make sense, right?

HAAWK doesn’t seem to see it that way.

I am using one instrumental in the background of all my short form content. There were no issues with the first couple of videos. Then, the HAAWK bots decided they didn’t like that. They made copyright claims on a few YouTube shorts but then released them after I disputed them with my explanation of being licensed through Clipchamp. They did not release the latest one. I just submitted the appeal below.

With this, I am exploring other content creation platforms. I want to be able to screen record with audio, overlay text and images, very superficially edit audio and video, and access gifs and stock images. I guess I could just get background music produced on fiverr or somewhere, but I would rather just use free options for now so that I can adjust it as I please without having to overcome sunk cost feelings.

Any recommendations are welcome!

Thanks for making it to the end. You just made my day.

The content at issue is the audio track Summer House by Nikolay Kiselev.
The audio is being used under my Clipchamp account. You can find a screenshot of my account page to confirm my subscription here: link to screenshot.
Under that subscription, I can integrate audio from their library into new content projects and share those projects across social media platforms. Please see their terms and conditions below.

The party HAAWK represents in this claim is Storyblocks. Storyblocks is specifically listed in Clipchamp's terms and conditions as the provider of stock media to Clipchamp. The current claim by Storyblocks (via HAAWK) is a claim against its own licensee - me, through Clipchamp - for using the media as permitted under the license. HAAWK has already released several of the claims for the same media on this same channel after recognizing the same licensing rights.

Please tell me the bots haven't won. I believe in you, human. You have the power to review this appeal, see that I am using the content as licensed, and set HAAWK's improper claim aside.

Clipchamp's terms and conditions can be found here
A screenshot of the media at issue being used via the Clipchamp platform can be found here: screenshot of music with “Provided by Storyblocks” under the title