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7 Comments

Need some feedback on my newsletter (content/format/positioning)

I have a weekly newsletter about Android apps that I run for several years and it has around 1k subscribers. My open rates vary from 20% to 30%.

I was doing quite a lot of experiments with the content in the past and I was trying to make it as much interesting as I could. However, I still think something is missing in this newsletter and I need to do more changes in order to make it great. One of the biggest problems is that I don't receive any feedback about it.

If somebody interested, I can also share more stats and details later but now I am curious to know what can you say about this newsletter taking this issue for example? https://www.getrevue.co/profile/testingcatalog/issues/weekly-testing-revives-testingcatalog-issue-157-239793

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    totally new to the newsletter, so this is just my perspective jumping in: is it possible that it's doing too much? looking at @PaoloAmoroso's comment, it seems like the initial pitch for a lot of people is finding new cool apps – would it be easier (and less overwhelming for people like paolo) if you cut scope on everything (including the news section), and just have the pitch be "two or three beta apps in your inbox every week"?

    a couple benefits i see here:

    1. a lot less work to write every week
    2. you can accept submissions and not need to do as much research (maybe you're doing this already)
    3. you could schedule weeks in advance if you have a backlog of apps
    4. reduces overwhelm for subscribers like paolo and focus on the exciting part - new shiny apps 😃

    again, just my quick thoughts after looking at your most recent issue. you have a much better sense long term about what has worked and what hasn't, so feel free to totally ignore :)

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      Thanks for the feedback and for the invite! Joined there. This makes a lot of sense and it was one of the experiments that I was doing in the past.

      I think I stopped focusing on sharing only apps when I realised that it will be quite hard to grow just in this direction. The competition is also quite strong in this niche - there are a lot of good Youtubers who share new apps and they do a very good job in content curation.

      So I did a small shift from "new apps" to "apps news" and started covering new features of already popular and known apps in addition.

      Maybe highlighting 2-3 apps instead of 7 as I was always doing is something I can think about 🤔

    2. 1

      btw, you should come join my chat community for people building mailing list hackers! i'd love to hear more about this problem and i imagine some other folks there would have thoughts on this, even in the early days of the chat group there's a number of people there running software-focused newsletters! https://www.mailinglisthackers.com/chat/

  2. 2

    I was actually one of your susbcribers. I eventually left, but not because it wasn't interesting.

    I initially susbcribed to find great new apps to try. I soon realized they were too many and I wouldn't have much time to try even a fraction of them, so I unsubscribed.

    I see the newsletter evolved in the meantime and you added more commentary. I'll subscribe again, this time to feel the pulse of the Android app development space.

    1. 1

      That's a pleasure to hear, I didn't expect to find anyone from my list in this community. Hope you will enjoy it 🚀

      Initially, I was posting about all apps that are available for beta testing and as you mentioned, there are just too many of them. I am trying to do a bit more curation and handpicking at this moment.

  3. 1

    Just scan your content and it's very unique :) Well done @TestingCatalog

    I'm in the middle to improve my newsletter, would love to hear your opinion if you've time. Otherwise no worries!

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