How I got 100 newsletter subscribers in 25 days 📈

For the past 25 days I've been building a newsletter called Unheard Roots where I tell the stories of world-changing startups and share lessons from their journeys.

For the record, I've never tried growing a newsletter before this attempt.

My plan to grow Unheard Roots was to try as many different strategies as possible.

I tried:

• Running cold DM campaigns on Twitter

• Making promotional posts on Reddit, Indie Hackers, Quora, and Hacker News

• Making promotional comments on Twitter

• Posting about it Unheard Roots in Slack groups

What worked best?

Running cold DM campaigns on Twitter.

My first campaign attempts had a 0% response rate with 0% conversion rate lol.

But my luck eventually turned.

"I know you follow X and I know this is a little random but I'm assuming you're interested in startups.

I'm building a newsletter called Unheard Roots where I tell the stories of startups that have changed our lives (i.e youtube, etc). Would you like a link?"

This was the script that ended up converting.

I sent it to the followers of major VC firms & Accelerator like Y-Combinator, A16Z, Sequoia, Techstars, etc.

I've sent over 1000~ DMs at this point using colddm.me.

I now wake up with 20+ DMs asking to check the newsletter out.

P.S We all hate self-promoting shills but in case you want to support a indie just trying to add value to the world, feel free to join me at unheardroots.com