Mentorship for Newsletters newbie with great idea!
Hi IndieHackers,
I am new to the game of newsletters, but I want to solve my personal problem and help others who have it. I am excited and overwhelmed by the amount of information out there, so, I would like to ask for your support in creating my first-ever newsletter and helping me with the steps to become as successful as you are! I created a Convertkit account and started to fill out the first email template, but it is not enough.
I wanted to ask for some help in the following areas:
- How and where to create a website, so, Convertkit could be triggered?
- Where to find the audience?
- How to connect AI automation + Convertkit?
- Any suggestion or important step that I could consider?
- Bonus: How do you monetize and what is a suitable audience for the first ads/form of monetization? Of course, everything from your experience.
As I watched an episode about @alexgarcia_atx from @Marketing Examined, that gave me a boost of energy and confidence that I can do what I always put in the darkest drawer.
I really hope that one of you could support me in this endeavor and we can reach success together!
Newsletters grow much faster when creators focus on consistency and audience trust instead of perfection early on.
A mentor can help avoid common growth mistakes and create a clearer content strategy.
The idea sounds interesting, curious what niche or audience you’re targeting first.
I have built Micro SaaS Ideas to 25K subs and here is my take.
Don't do any of that. Assuming, its a topic that IH audience finds it interesting, here is my suggestion - Simply Write 2-3 full newsletter issues here on IH and add a CTA for Signup emails.
If the topic is not relevant, try the same on Reddit.
I usually try to create simple, short and very objective newsletters. AI hasn't been useful for this purpose.
Instead of Dear Max, I Hope this e-mail finds you well.
Get to the point like Hey Max, next week we'll gather our users for a networking sessions I'd love if you could join. Here's the link. Cheers.
In addition, I usually use only plain text, which I found to be more effective and personal.
I usually have around 50-70% of open emails.
Hope that helps. Cheers.
I think if you shared your newsletter or gave context to the type of newsletter you're creating we'd be able to help more.
Without that info my biggest tip would be to create a landing page (I use carrd, but maybe convertkit comes with landing pages on your tier?). As long as you can embed a email form or trigger an automation you'll have a place to start.
Reddit and community-centric platforms are my favorite for audience building right now, however, if you're targeting businesses instead of individuals LinkedIn or Twitter may be better.
There's a few ways to connect AI to convertkit. But since I don't use ConvertKit my recommendation would be Zapier unless ConvertKit has features for this.
Based on your message one thing that's missing is the brand. By talking about your new brand you'll learn to talk about it better.
I've monetized newsletters through Kickstarter and individual products but a subscription model could also be possible as you build content. Initially however I highly recommend on learning to provide value to build your marketing funnel and grow your initial audience while building your initial content.
I recently grew a new productivity email newsletter to over 100 subscriptions mostly through landing pages and content then sharing that content on channels such as Reddit, Discord, Twitter, and Mastadon (finding places where our target audience of gamers who want to be productive live)
Thank you for your suggestions!
I forgot to mention the idea, you are right. I thought about emailing the summaries of the podcasts to people.
Yeah, I would think about whether sub model could work.