Newsletter growth: from 0 to 5.5K subs in 7 months 🚀

Hey Indie Hackers!

Every week, I send a marketing Case Study from a profitable Founder. Today I want to share with you the recent issue 👀

1. Explain your product to an 11-year-old.

I’m Katt. My mind has always been full of business ideas. But it always stopped after some mockups, a domain name, and a fancy logo because I couldn’t code.

After discovering No-Code, I finally could build and launch my small solutions. One of them was acquired, and my tweets about that blew up my DM’s every time.​

This inspired me to start No-Code Exits. A newsletter to inspire other non-technical makers with real stories from products made with No-Code that got acquired.

2. Who’s your ideal reader, and how do they find you?

My core persona is a non-technical person who wants to earn money by building products with No-Code. You hear a lot of ‘‘No-Code is the future yada yada”. But where are the real products made with No-Code? With the interviews in No-Code Exits, I hope to solve this and inspire people.

My main acquisition channels are Twitter and communities where non-tech people interested in entrepreneurship hang out.

3. How do you monetize your newsletter?

For the first 5 months, I have focused on getting new subscribers.

From 1000 subscribers, I started doing first ads and selling a small (10$) info product that interests my readers. But it’s only since this month that I have been more serious about monetization.

• I have been working on my ads: adding packages, improving CTR, reaching out to brands I think are a good fit, and improving my partnership page with testimonials.
• I added a higher-priced info product (50$) based on questions I received from my audience.
• I launched No-Code Exits Club this month. A paid challenge that you can join to go from 0 to Exit with No-Code. Pretty interesting if you don’t like too much marketing.

The power of a niche newsletter is that you can spot problems your audience struggles with, validate product ideas and build distribution.

4. How did you get your first 10 customers?

I first validated the idea of my newsletter. I tweeted that the first story would go out in 12 hours and went to bed. I had around 600 followers on Twitter back then.

People reacted with great enthusiasm, and I woke up to 200+ subscribers. That was enough for me to start writing.

I did the same to find my first sponsors - tweeted. As I’m building in public, many of my followers are indie makers, so this, combined with a reasonable price, helped sell the 10 first ad spots.

My readers enjoy the classified ad part (even rave about it in reviews). And it brings good results for indie makers that are advertising. I should probably raise my prices, but I want it to stay accessible for smaller businesses to advertise. It’s a win-win: my readers enjoy discovering small indie products, which shows in the results: good click rate, no ad blindness, and enjoying the content.

One thing I recommend is to upsell with packages. Instead of one ad, you can book 4 or 6 ads with a discount. I did this from the beginning, and this gives me some breathing room. It is a pretty good deal for the advertiser because the newsletter has been growing nicely every month.

5. What’s your Best marketing decision and why?

I tried a lot, and I’m still trying a lot.

• Most of my growth was all thanks to Twitter. I repurpose content from my newsletter to tweets.
• Being active in communities where non-technical people hang out.
• Doing (no-code) webinars and interviews for visibility.
• Partnering up with other No-Code businesses and cross-promote each other.
• A Product Hunt launch. I only launched when I already had around 3000 subscribers. That day when my product went live on Product Hunt I immediately sent my weekly newsletter to ask for support from my readers which gave a great initial boost. This resulted in 1000+ subscribers.
• Building my newsletter in public helped build a strong brand. Whenever a project gets acquired, I get tagged. People reach out to me for partnerships or sponsorship, people recommend my newsletter, etc.

6. If you could do 1 thing differently, what would it be?

A few months ago, I decided to become active on LinkedIn + Medium to crosspost my content from the newsletter. I did it for a few weeks, and now I’m very inconsistent.

I was just copy-pasting and not adapting the content to be the perfect and most interesting read for the platform. I just did it so I could cross it from my ‘to-do list.’ Now I try to focus more on what works and do that with great care and quality.

P.S. I share marketing case studies like that every week. Subscribe for free and don't miss the insights from profitable Founders ❤️