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One month later, and I still managed to keep my lazy ass consistent!! Literally over the moon!

So just to back up, I run a newsletter that showcases products made by solo-founders, such as SaaS, apps, chrome extensions, productivity tools, resources, actionable blog posts, niche communities and podcasts.

I didn’t really know what I was doing, but after one month and 4 issues later, today I’m sitting on 256 subscribers, which apparently is pretty good for a newsletter after one month. (I didn’t use any paid ads)

Channels I used for marketing/promotion

Indie Hackers
I joined the Indie Hacker community where I asked questions, got validation on my idea, searched for advice, spoke about my newsletter, connected with other makers, and I got a large portion of my early subscribers here.

I found that if I just contributed to the community and did outreach, people would subscribe and they did.

Definitely recommend that you check out this community for insight, feedback, resources and support!

Reddit
I’ve always been a big Reddit user, so it was a no brainer that I would try and leverage the highly engaged niche communities here on Reddit. Obviously, in 90% of the subs, self-promotion is frowned upon and will lead to a ban, but I found the best way again is just to contribute to each sub while abiding the rules.

I made a post on r/EntrepreneurRideAlong that did pretty and got me a lot of traction early on to.

Hacker News
This can be a hit or miss, in my case the I was just lucky and the Show HN post that I made, managed to get on the top 100 for about a day and a half.

Telegram
I’m a part of a few closed startup and maker channels that I’ve been a part of for a while, so my fellow members on there were reluctant to subscribe and provide me feedback.

Facebook groups
I'm on a few Facebook groups, but not really where my audience is, and I tend not to pay to much attention there. I am part of a few newsletter and startup groups that led to a few cross-promotions, but nothing really came of it.

Now I’ll break down each newsletter that I sent out with some stats.

Issue #001

  • 31 recipients
  • 90.3 % open rate
  • 22.5 CTR
  • 6% unsubscribed

Issue #002

  • 148 recipients
  • 45.2% open rate
  • 10% CTR
  • 0.6% unsubscribed

Issue #003

  • 169 recipients
  • 76.3% open rate
  • 19.5% CTR
  • 1.18% unsubscribed

Issue #004

  • 206 recipients
  • 74.27 open rate
  • 15.3 CTR
  • 0.9 unsubscribed

As of today I have 256 subscribers, and I don’t think I’m doing that bad for my first month and I’m quite proud!

  1. 3

    Congrats. Definitely easy to be motivated to move forward when you are getting subscribers and good feedback.

  2. 2

    That's great, nice work Nic.

  3. 1

    Wow, congrats Nic! Great achivement

  4. 1

    Those are some seriously impressive numbers. I'm working on my Twitter account to then subsequently grow my email list. So far Twitter has worked well for me, it just needs more time to grow (~200 followers in a month).

    I'll have to try Reddit but their no self promo rule is a killer, especially when you're a newsletter.

  5. 1

    256 subscribers in a month is no small feat, congrats for that.

    Can you share more details on the traction that you got from Reddit. I have been trying to get traffic for a new project (www.justanotherpm.com), but haven't had much luck with reddit

  6. 1

    Great to see your progress over the past few weeks @TheWonderingZall. Big congrats all round!

    1. 1

      Thanks Gordon! I appreciate it! 🙏🏻

  7. 1

    Damn! 🤩
    That's insanely good for a month. I have yet to start my newsletter/email marketing part. Do you have any recommendation on which company to go with for the emailing part of it?
    I remember that some years ago I was researching a bit on the alternatives regarding a business I was considering starting back then. I remember that Mailchimp was pretty much a go-to back then. Some better alternatives out now?
    Would also love to connect more, maybe here or somewhere else. 😎

    1. 2

      I chose to go with Email Octopus, and I love it. Simple UI, not complex like MailChimp, easy to pick up. There are few chinks that were tedious, such as the verification process, but other than that, I was happy with it.

      I know a lot of people are raving about Substack, but for me personally, I care a lot about the visuals on my newsletter, and I feel that Substack is super bland and boring, and it basically looks like everybody else’s who also use it. The only reason people go with them is because it’s easy to monetize, but I’m not really about that.

      1. 1

        Will have a look into that for sure. I see that lots of people here are talking about twitter being a great place to gain subscribers?

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