How I grew my SaaS newsletter to 1,000+ sign-ups in 3 months

Getting started

So my background is as a product manager and tech lead in B2B SaaS. I also work on my own side projects on nights and weekends and like to think of myself as an indie hacker at heart.

But the past few months I felt like I needed to try something different. I've been trying to think of things to start that are related to SaaS but wasn't actually building a SaaS itself. I'd heard a lot in the tech media sphere about newsletters starting to gain attention primarily due to a few large acquisitions that had recently taken place in the space and it sounded exciting.

Eventually, I decided I was going to start a newsletter, and what better to write about than SaaS! I realised I had all this knowledge about product development, growth, marketing etc as a product manager that I was applying to my own products but that I thought others could benefit from it too.

First 100 subscribers

So on 1st July this year, I got started with IdeaHub. Initially, things were really slow - I was my first and only subscriber for a whole 11 days! But I decided that I was going to approach this newsletter like I would a SaaS product, following the PLG (product-led growth) methodology by talking to users, validating my assumptions and trying to grow as fast as possible.

I thought the best place I would be able to do this having zero audience to start with was Reddit. I'd got some customers for a SaaS product on there before so I figured why can't it work for a newsletter too? So during those 11 days, I spent a lot of time on Reddit, answering people's questions, trying to help them out and asking if they would consider signing up for my newsletter if they were interested.

Most didn't want to hear it, but eventually, I got my first sign-up! Like most indie hackers when we get our first sign-up for a new project we naturally think we've made it and are on top of the world. I sent my first email out to a grand total of 2 subscribers (one of which was me!). It had a great 100% open rate and a whopping 50% click-through rate and is still my best-performing email to date :).

Wondering who the click was from? Yes, you're right, it was me...

Over the rest of July, I kept going with Reddit, trying to get as many sign-ups as I could and sending out an email once a week covering topics like idea validation, building MVP's and how to find customers. I finished July just shy of 100 sign-ups and was learning a lot.

First inflection point & 500 sign-ups

As August came around, I was starting to figure out how to use Reddit to get people to sign up. Having a forum-based platform as your main growth channel is really great, as you can get immediate feedback from your potential customers as you are literally in conversation with them!

I was talking to people building their own SaaS products about pricing, onboarding, how to figure out what to build next, how to talk to customers and so on. I discovered that the more help you can provide people, the more likely they are to trust you. And once you've built that trust, handing over an email doesn't seem so difficult.

My conversion rate on traffic to the landing page was starting to increase, topping out at around 20%. This is pretty insane when you think about it - for every 100 visits to my landing page, that would mean 20 new sign-ups. So it became all about traffic...

I started focusing on the most trending posts in the most active subreddits but still focusing on helping people first and foremost, offering my newsletter as an additional resource and making every effort to not sound like a salesman.

Getting to 500 seemed inevitable if I just kept going, and just after the end of August, I made it.

Second inflection point & 1,000 sign-ups

By this point, it had taken me just over 2 months to reach 500 sign-ups and I felt confident I could make it to 1,000. But as every indie hacker knows, juggling product and marketing at the same time can be really hard, especially when you're working full-time.

I decided that I would continue to write a weekly email but compressed the format so that I could keep going without hitting burnout. Instead of long discussions around a particular aspect of building a SaaS product, I was now writing shorter, more actionable emails niching down on one focused topic.

And readers seemed to like this, open rates increased and I was starting to get replies and feedback about what to write next. I put on my product manager cap and listened...

This also gave me more time to spend on marketing. So I doubled down on Reddit and started a new X account to try to build an audience there too. Plus every email I would write, I would repurpose on IndieHackers, HackerNews, devto and Reddit to try to drive further sign-ups.

It was all starting to fall into place and ultimately led to an increase in the growth rate of new sign-ups. On a few days in particular, I had over 100 sign-ups from various channels and the rest of the time I was netting ~ 25 per day.

And on 3rd October I finally did it - 1,000 sign-ups!

What's next

I'm due to cross 1,100 subscribers in the coming days and have set my sights on 2,000. My open rate is still strong at 48% and the click rate is also above average at 9%.

While Reddit has brought me a lot of success, I'm recognising the platform risk that I have built into the business at this point. Therefore I've slowed down that side of the marketing and picked up on Twitter.

Plus I'm still loving the writing, as that's what this is all about at the end of the day. In total, I've sent almost 6,000 emails to readers and written over 16,000 words. Here are some of the highlights:

• "My proven guide on talking to customers"
• "How to grow your SaaS building free tools"
• "7 questions all SaaS founders must answer"
• "Are all the good SaaS ideas already taken?"
• "8 ways to leverage AI in your SaaS product"
• "How to build an awesome onboarding flow"

Something I have planned to start soon is a referral program. I plan to give readers the opportunity to get their SaaS products featured in the newsletter in return for a few referred subscribers so that we can all grow together.

Thanks so much for reading, you can follow my journey building this newsletter on X here.

If you'd like to hear my thoughts on building SaaS products then here's the link to sign up for the newsletter: Sign up for free