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25 Comments

I'm building an organic growth platform for newsletter creators

Everyone says "Never build a network product".

Well, screw that I'm doing it anyway...

I'm Charlie, the founder of IdeaHub - a newsletter for SaaS founders that I've grown 100% organically to over 2,200 readers in the last 6 months.

A big part of that growth has been by running cross-promotions with other newsletter creators.

Basically, it works by two creators including a signup link in their email and promoting the other's newsletter. Doing this with a couple of partners every month is a great way to grow your email list.

But to be honest, the process of finding relevant newsletters, reaching out to the founders either through cold email or social media and then organising a link swap is a real pain.

So I'm building SlotSwap - a network of newsletter creators who are looking to partner up with others and grow their email lists.

You'll be able to:

  1. Search through the network to find the most relevant partners for your audience (across all newsletter platforms)
  2. Request partnerships with those you want to work with the most.
  3. Schedule dates to run cross-promotions that fit both of your newsletter schedules.
  4. Easily copy and paste a pre-built subscribe widget into your email that will automatically track all new sign-ups.
  5. Track the results of your cross-promotions and decide who to work with again.

So if you're a newsletter creator and want to start working with others then join the waitlist!.

Cheers,

Charlie

on January 27, 2024
  1. 2

    Well done! I really liked the idea of SlowSwap, and since I started my own newsletter last year, I know the pain of growing the email list!

    1. 1

      Awesome, best of luck with your newsletter!

  2. 2

    Hi Charlie,

    Is there anything I can contact you on that isn't Twitter?

    1. 1

      Hi Ethan, sure you can email me on charlie@ideahub.tech if you like :)

  3. 2

    "Well, screw that I'm doing it anyway..."

    • the motto of indie hackers everywhere :)

    Good luck with your network! Add an affiliate program.

    1. 1

      Haha exactly :)

      Affiliate program for users to invite other users?

      That could be interesting…

  4. 2

    Well done Charlie! Great idea - best of luck with it ☕️

    1. 1

      who are you?? ;)

  5. 2

    This looks great. Just joined the waitlist.

    1. 1

      Thanks so much - can’t wait to release!

  6. 2

    Great idea, hope it’ll work well and gather more people :)

  7. 2

    Joined the waitlist. What will be the price of this tool?

    1. 1

      Just been on a round trip around your Twitter, newsletter etc and it looks like we’re in the same niche. We should work together!

      1. 2

        Sure im down. I could probably design an example that will only be available in one of your newsletters if that sounds good? We can chat about it on Twitter

    2. 1

      Awesome thanks! I’m not sure yet - I was thinking probably free tbh! Would you be willing to pay for a tool like this?

      1. 1

        Free sounds great, in the future i might pay through

  8. 1

    If there's an imbalance in subscriber counts - let's say newsletter A has 100 subs and newsletter B has 1000 - will there be someway to incentivize newsletter B to still do the swap? Otherwise I feel people might only swap with similar sized newsletters.

    1. 1

      This is a good point and something I will have to think about. Generally you would only do swaps with people of a similar size anyway, so as you grow you can start to partner up with more larger newsletters. But it’s given me something to think about so thanks :)

      1. 2

        nice edge-case @mstack4830

        @IndieCharlie I would think about the ways to plug-in "paid promotion options"

        for example passionfroot is the product I use to pay newsletters. they only have newsletters that are part of their partner network.

        they only have 5% of all newsletters in their partner network. i

        f you could have more creators on your platform, I would gladly pay to be able to access it.

        1. 2

          This sounds cool, you mean like you pay $10/month or something to get a 'Partner' or similar badge next to your name, maybe some verified stats etc + a bump up the rankings?

          Interesting :)

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    This comment was deleted 2 years ago

    1. 1

      hey matteo, sure are you on Twitter?

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 2 years ago

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