The Slice is a weekly update of the latest SaaS products to help founders and solopreneurs grow their projects. Since launching in May this year, almost 1,000 subscribers have signed up.
So in the latest of our series of creator interviews, I caught up with founder Nic Getkate to find out more about why he launched his newsletter and how he's grown his audience.
I’ve worked in the marketing space for close to 4 years now. But it’s only been in the last 2.5 years that I became a freelancer while I lived in Asia. I did the whole nomad thing, working for Asian-based marketing agencies, a few internet startups and clients.
At the time, home for me was Bangkok. But five months ago I moved back to my home country of South Africa due to COVID-19. I’m still doing the same thing now, just in a different country and closer to home.
I was doing some contract work with a fellow nomad in Bangkok, who I’d assisted on some projects he had going on at the time. But it was while I worked for him that I was introduced to the world of newsletters, as he ran his own newsletter that was quite big.
Fast forward about 10 or so months and it was around this time that I found the Indie Hackers forum and saw all these amazing tools that flew under the radar. So I revisited the newsletter project, and came up with the idea to curate tools, SaaS, and actionable resources for independent creators and founders that they could use in their own project/side-hustle. And that’s how The Slice came to be.
A lot of my early subscribers all came from Indie Hackers, and it was just a matter of me being active there. I also hung out in a lot of subreddits, but Reddit can be a bit iffy with self-promotion. And the users there tend to bring out the pitchforks, so I stay away from promoting there.
Nowadays, growth mostly comes from word of mouth, Twitter, and a lot of cross-promotion between other newsletters of a similar audience and size. I haven’t actually used any form of paid advertising yet, so I’m pretty stoked that I grew it like that.
At the moment, I’m at 921 subscribers with an open rate of 47%. In my welcome email, I ask all new subscribers to reply to the email. I do this to get to know my subscribers on a personal level, so I’m not just some anonymous person behind the newsletter to them.
This actually also helps with my domain and IP reputation, which keeps my deliverability high and avoiding the spam folder.
Writing The Slice each week has taught me to be more accountable for the things that I need to get done, especially now that I have a small audience that’s waiting for the latest issue each week.
But that’s the best part about it – the creating and curating part I find the most most fun. The Slice has also taught me how to be a good curator, and that’s being able to differentiate between signal and noise.
Learn the technical side of deliverability – it will save you a lot of time and headache. Specifically, DMARC, DKIM and SPF. In the beginning, I really struggled with this but it’s important to understand, especially since you’re going to be using a custom domain.
For now, I’m just focusing on growing The Slice, and enjoying the process. This newsletter has given me the opportunity to connect with many different and extraordinary people from so many different parts of the world, so I’d like to carry spreading the word.
This is an adapted version of an interview published on the EmailOctopus blog
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for this @Hollie! It was so great for you and everyone else at EmailOctopus to reach out to me and share my story ❤️
Thanks for agreeing to do it and all your insight into the world of newsletter creating :-)
Hey @Hollie Youlden! Awesome read. Big fan of The Slice, his awesome GIFs and cool finds.
Thanks Janel! Yeah, Nic's GIF selection is great!
Great read Hollie :)
Cheers dude!
I featured the blog post in my newsletter.
That's great news, thanks!
Very cool! Going to subscribe 👍
Nice!
Awesome post @Hollie Youlden! @TheWonderingZall has one of the top newsletters I've read :)
Thanks Yaro!