How do you grow a newsletter?
I've been trying to grow devtales101.substack.com, a weekly newsletter where I interview software developers and share their stories.
After about 1 month I am at 43 subscribers. Some of the things I am trying:
- Posting on Linkedin, Instagram, and Twitter every week (once for every issue)
- Repurposing content for TikTok tiktok.com/@dev.tales_ (still experimenting with this one)
- Posting on relevant subreddits and their weekly showcase threads
Most of my subs came from 2 sources:
- Reddit, although that's very random
- The network of one of the developers I featured in the newsletter
What else can I try? How are you growing your newsletters?
If I just keep posting, I'll wake up in 3 months with < 100 subs, having spent 7 hours a week, every week to publish a new issue.
I wrote about this earlier and mentioning again.
I am running Micro SaaS Newsletter with close to 30K subscribers.
Some tips:
You must know:
Thanks for the tips! Which subreddits did you use?
Mostly subreddits around SaaS, Entrepreneurship
Have you tried ads at all? I'd assume with that much data you could get decent results.
No, I haven't tried ads yet. Do you have any experience with ads?
I think you're doing great for being 1 month in.
My newsletter on option trading crossed the 100 emails this week, and I've been at it for about 3 months.
Right now, my main source of email subscribers come from Twitter.
Thanks for the encouragement. I guess I don't have any benchmarks, so I am not really sure how I'm doing.
Are you using your personal Twitter to promote alfatoro or you have one specifically for the newsletter?
I am using my personal Twitter to promote alfatoro
To grow your newsletter, consider these tips:
Leverage email signatures.
Collaborate with others in your niche.
Write guest posts with a call to action.
Create a referral program for subscribers.
Engage and ask for feedback from your audience.
Focus on high-quality content.
Build a community.
Optimize your social media presence.
Growth takes time, so keep experimenting and refining your approach.
Thanks for the tips!
What do you mean by "Leverage email signatures"?
I subscribe to Growth In Reverse (https://growthinreverse.com/), it's a pretty good newsletter that breaks down how other newsletters have grown.
Regarding your newsletter so far...
To be blunt, it's not very interesting, why would anyone subscribe to random stories about web developers?
You need to pick a theme/angle that's actually interesting.
For example, how to get your first dev job. This is a topic that's always evolving, so it fits well for a newsletter format.
In addition, it gives you a clear audience that you can go target, and instead of general titles like "Serena Bertozzi · Junior Frontend Engineer for the BBC", you can do something more interesting like "How Serena Bertozzi became a junior dev for BBC...". Guess which one would do better if you posted it on places like Reddit, LinkedIn, Blind, etc.?
Thanks for linking Growth In Reverse. Subscribed.
Great point about making it more interesting.
The content is what it is. My assumption at the moment is that the content of a dev story is interesting.
But I'll work on the titles and do exactly what you said. Turn it from "Serena Bertozzi · Junior Frontend Engineer for the BBC" to "How Serena Bertozzi became a junior dev for BBC...".
I think this makes a lot of sense
You need to trade something people want with email. And then provide something they would like to hear and valuable to them.
Maybe you can include some random discount code inside your newsletter. Or make a a free tool which can attract people to subscribe to learn more. Or e books that show that you have something to give.
Essentially it comes down to trading something with the subscriber. Think email as something of value, you can ask for it for nothing.
Here an article about email newsletter that might be useful for you : Step By Step Guide To Build Email List for Solopreneurs
I get that. But shouldn't the content of the newsletter be enough?
One should be willing to give their email cause they want to hear more right?
If that's not the case, the content may not be good/interesting enough.
You could consider an affiliate system.
I don't yet know a lot about affiliates. What do you have in mind?
You can try building a freebie and doing it as a giveaway to your target audience.
We did this for our newsletter and we got around 300-400 subscribers.
But, the freebie should be highly relevant and of high quality, so that they continue reading your mails.
Our newsletter is about Product Hunt interviews and we gave Product Hunt launch guide as a freebie.
Thanks for this. How's the engagement of these 300-400 subscribers you got through the freebie? My concern is that they won't care about the content and they just subbed for the freebie.
Some feedback for https://launchpedia.co/the-big-bang-launch-newsletter/ if I may. There's barely any contrast for your h1 and h2. It's black on black making it hard to notice or read. I hope this helps!
Hello,
You might want to follow Amanda Cua on LinkedIn, she has a newsletter about entrepreneurship in South East Asia, which is already monetising. She shares very insightful posts on how she is growing her business.
In case you are interested, the newsletter is called BackScoop
Thanks! I've just followed Amanda