How to get your first 1,000 newsletter subscribers

It’s a common question whenever starting a newsletter comes up, whether on here on IndieHackers or in FB groups.

Here’s what worked really well with Stacked Marketer.

Before making the newsletter public, I explained the concept to 10 industry friends and asked them to subscribe.

I sent them 5 editions (one every weekday) and iterated every day based on the feedback. This means they saw I valued their input.

After a week of private testing and feedback, it was time to plan the launch.
I asked the most active of the 10 if they like the concept.

If they said “Yes”, I kindly asked if they can help by recommending the newsletter to their followers too once we launch.

Some of them said yes. They joined the launch alongside my posts on my personal social media profiles and in the communities I was active.

This got us to 1,000 subscribers within the first month.

We also had some paid promotions afterwards, with other relevant bloggers and newsletters that we were not as close with. If you can do that too, I highly recommend it.