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Have you created a email course? Have you taken one?

I recently took Monica Lent's (@momoko) Blogging for Devs 7 day email course, and I couldn't recommend it enough if you want to get started blogging or creating a newsletter!

(P.S. she is starting a community for dev bloggers too!)

Not only did I think the content was very valuable, but the delivery format through the email course was awesome. Now I want to create an email course of my own (on one of the few things I know decently well which is coding interview prep).

So, I want to do some research on if others have found success through email courses.

I'd love to chat!
Thanks in advance :)

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    Big fan of email courses, both as their own way for delivering educational material over time - especially if each lesson actually has instructions for the reader to attempt/complete on their own before moving on to the next - and to grow an audience that actually buys stuff!

    One of the advanced email newsletter techniques is to automate the advancement through the sequence using form submissions. Basically, each email includes a link to a form that the reader can fill out when they complete an exercise and when they do, the automation is advanced to the next email. It takes a bit of extra setup, but can be done with off-the-shelf tools like ConvertKit, Zapier, and Google Forms.

    We have two email courses as primary onramps to our newsletter:
    https://shop.stackingthebricks.com/ship-in-six/
    https://stackingthebricks.com/year-of-hustle/

    Combined these two courses have had tens of thousands of people go through them, and are directly attributable to millions of dollars in product sales. Year of Hustle is getting a refresh that will probably launch over the holidays, I'm very excited to put the finishing touches on that!

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      Just signed up for "Ship in Six"! Interested to see how well Podia is able to host that course.
      Love stackingthebricks, seems like I always find value when my browser hits that domain.

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        Podia doesn't deliver the email, we still do that with ConvertKit.

        Glad to hear you've enjoyed our stuff so far!

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    I’m thrilled you liked it Jonathan!

    So I can say I encouraged a friend of mine who is in product management to do an email course, and he got 50 signups in his first day from LinkedIn. His list is at around 400 now after starting just before the pandemic.

    It is extremely popular in the pure “blogging” world but I’ve seen very few people do it otherwise. As effective as I’ve found it (and of course readers too) — i’d give it a try before everyone’s doing it and it’s not unique anymore 🙃

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      Haha you're a trailblazer! I definitely think email courses will become much more popular to "drip" content like you've done here.

      I'd love to also discuss using BloggingForDevs as a case study about the effectiveness of email courses? (I am taking some notes on your recent newslettercrew podcast episode) Can I shoot you a quick email?

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        Of course :) I think my results are a little atypical just because the topic itself resonated so strongly with people, but the format itself has a high promise of value.

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    I've started a pretty niche email course a few weeks ago for my trainees. In the last fifteen years I taught my trainees how to model database schemas.
    Like other topics, modelling databases is something you have to do often to prevent common mistakes. Apart from that, database modelling is part of the final exams for software developer trainees here in Germany.

    Long story short: After looking for more exercises I decided to pack my experiences into an email course, primarily for my own trainees (eat your own dog food) and trainees here in my home town.
    Instead of using the classical exercises, like "How to model a library database?" I go with things like "Derive the database schema from a Twich screenshot" and such topics. It's definitely more fun for my trainees and more practical.

    In the last few weeks https://database-modelling.com went live. In addition to the weekly mail exercises I try to make a video once a week about the database modelling exercises of the final exams of the previous years. I am not sure if I'll continue with the videos on my channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmume4kxCrLmwWj3PqZuMhw/) but I give it a try until the end of the year.
    I am pretty fast in developing exercises and modelling the solutions but doing a video about it and then also editing it takes so much time...

    The tech stack for https://database-modelling.com: PHP, Slim framework, MySQL, Markdown for articles, Cron jobs, AWS SES.

    The coolest thing about my small publishing "platform" is that it fits totally into my developer workflow:
    I write the exercises and solutions in plain markdown files, including SQL and other code snippets. Screenshots can also be included. I can decide if the exercise will be also published on the website for SEO reasons or is just used for the email course.
    The emails themselve contain the rendered source code and any screenshots. No need for more me to do additional editing just for the mail content.

    My trainees and premium users receive the solutions a few days after the exercise has been sent out.

    1. 1

      Awesome stuff! Can definitely see how email courses might benefit your niche expertise in database modeling.
      I'd love to hear more about your learnings from running databse-modelling, is there somewhere I can drop you a DM?

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        Sure, either send me a DM on Twitter (@schakko) or write me a mail: me[at]schakko[dot]de :-)

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          Shot you an email! Thanks

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    I've taken Monica's email course along with several others and, as a learner, I like the format. As a creator, I'm planning to make an email course myself.

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      Awesome! Mind sharing what you plan on teaching?

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        I'm not yeat ready to share the details. But it's something related to my core interests, astronomy and space.

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            Let's light this candle.

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