How I launched a profitable newsletter in a weekend
Hello!
My name's Joe and I just wanted to share how I started my newsletter NicheSaaS, identified a pain point and found some paying subscribers over the course of a week.
NicheSaaS is a premium newsletter that shares well-researched ideas for SaaS Products. It is aimed at developers with the skill set to build products but don't know what to work on.
TLDR
- 💡 Came up with the idea for the newsletter
- 📛 Came up with the name and bought the domain from NameCheap
- ☁ Created a Redirect with Route53, S3 and CloudFront (for HTTPS)
- 🗞 Wrote my first post on SubStack.
- 📋 Created a survey using TypeForm (❤) to validate the idea
- 📢 Shared the survey with my developer friends, some slack communities and of course here on IH!
- 🐦Tweeted it out and gave it a little push by promoting the Tweet
- 💲 Gained 148 subscribers and a handful of premium subscribers!
How I came up with the idea 💡
I currently run Product at a software company based in Sydney but I'd started to get that creative itch to do start something again.
I've built quite a few semi-successful SaaS apps in the past and recently I've become really interested in SaaS products that focus on solving a single pain-point for a niche.
I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are developers and one thing I always here them saying is how they'd love to work on a side project, to make some additional income.
The problem is many of them struggle to come up with a viable idea that has the ability to generate some income. And so, NicheSaaS was born!
Validating the idea 📋
I created a survey using TypeForm, if you haven't used it before I really can't recommend it highly enough!
I wanted to validate that this was something others might be interested in, so I shared it in as many places I thought it might been seen my developers.
I shared my survey:
- with my friends friends and colleagues via email and LinkedIn
- with some relevant Slack communities
- on IndieHackers with a post - massive thank you to those of you who filled out my survey.
- with my Twitter audience and paid to promote it outside of my followers.
Results 📈
It seems that there are a quite a few talented people out there who are interested in running a profitable side project but are just waiting for the right idea to get started.
Survey Results
All in all, 91 kind souls took the time to fill out my survey.
It seems many people struggle to come up with real ideas for their side projects
Twitter Ads
As you can see below promoting my tweet was expensive and not really that effective, but this could be purely because I am bad at Twitter 😭.
Subscribers
Here are the resulting stats after my initial promotion and sending out my first idea!
Conclusion 🏁
I would definitely experiment trying to get feedback via other channels next time. I would also like to try Twitter Ads again and see if I can get it to perform better.
All in all though, I am really happy that I have found an idea that resonates with a few people!
Thank you 🙏
Just wanted to share in the hope that this gives someone the push they need to get started!
🙋♂️ And shameless plug, if you are stuck for what to work on check out NicheSaaS. I have a really cool idea I can't wait to share coming on Monday!
If there is a particular industry, niche or market you'd like me to research and explore in my newsletter please just drop me an email at [email protected].
Peace ✌
What is the revenue here?
The MRR is $42 at the moment, but the newsletter has only been available for 2 weeks.
I also refunded some people who signed up before the content was ready.
Hey Joe, where are your 148 subscribers coming from exactly? How many from Twitter Ads?
To be honest with you this is where I messed up. The short answer is I don't really know.
I had a
source=xparameter on my TypeForm survey which would populate a hidden field so I could track where the traffic was coming from, but I forgot to include it or use it anywhere until now.A large chunk according to GA came from Twitter, there was some traffic from here (IH) and then there was a lot that was direct, which I imagine came from me sharing my link via email/slack etc.
Congrats on launching! The paid newsletter model is super interesting. I think we'll see a bunch of these bubbling up over the next few years.
Thanks Dominique 🙏
Wow! Looking forward to see how the initial spend on Twitter ads pays off later on. Hopefully there'll be more organic growth from there maybe from word of mouth, and you won't have to continue purchasing ads.
Yeah I hope so too.
I stopped running the ads after people filled out the survey.
All in all I spent $55 of Twitter Ads, but it just seemed super ineffective and expensive averaging around $0.97 a click on my survey
How much did advertising cost?
I put a limit of $200 but only ended up spending $55 at the end.
Sounds like an awesome idea! Looking to sign up. Is it only one idea per week?
Yes, currently it is one article a week.
The Idea of the Week is a long-form, well-researched idea for a SaaS product.
I am also experimenting with a free version of the newsletter called the Weekend Project. The Weekend Project isn't backed by the same level of research, but is just something that can be explored over a weekend by the reader.
Hi Joe,
This is awesome²!
awesome 1 = Amazing what you managed to do in such a concise and directed way.
awesome 2 = Love the list itself and good luck with it!
Cheers,
Jonathan
Thanks @JonathanOron! I appreciate the kind words 🙏
hmm, insteresting. I mean I have my doubts that these subscribers are real or lasting, but pretty good results for not even explaining how these ideas are validated. Cool..
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.