We launched our free newsletter one month ago and have already reached our first milestone! Here's our journey so far.

TL;DR: We started writing a free newsletter one month ago where we share business ideas and problems to solve, based on market research. So far, we have published 5 issues and reached almost 400 subs!

What happened?

• On August 6th: Soft-launch on IndieHackers, Reddit & Twitter.
• The first milestone: reach 100 subscribers.
• WOW! 4 days after launching, we reached the first milestone. THIS IS FUN!!!
  • This was super exciting: it was the first time we really launched something online and it was amazing to see that people care about what we're building. We got a glimpse into what is possible on the internet: pretty much anything. Amazing!
• Next milestone: reach 1000 subs.
• On August 12th, we published the 2nd issue on Gaming Content Creators.
  • Reached 250 subs 3 days later. Yay!
• On August 20th, we published the 3rd issue on Bootstrapped Founders.
  • Reached 300 subs. Woohoo!
• Around that time, the initial traction started to calm down. Is this what you call "The Trough of Sorrow"? :(
• On August 27th, we published the 4th issue on Airbnb hosts.
  • Received feedback from our readers: they want more info on the problems and less info about the proposed solutions/business ideas. First feature request, interesting! Let’s run with it and see where this goes.
• On September 2nd, published a new format: "Problem Spaces"
  • Feedback is mixed: people seem to be liking both formats, but we also start seeing the first churn. Ouch, that hurts!
  • On the other hand, we found out that we have quite some power users! Yay!

Where do we stand today?

• 388 subs (let's see if we can get to 400 by the end of this week).
• ~30% Open Rate & ~13% Click Rate.
  • As newbies, we thought that was good. But after reading about people with a 50% Open Rate and a 20-30% Click Rate, it seems as if there’s room for improvement. What do you guys think?
• ~10% of power users (they open and engage with everything we put out). Love y’all!

What did we learn?

• The internet is great! It’s amazing how easy it has become to reach thousands of people from the comfort of your home.
• The subscriber count is a vanity metric. It won't be our key metric for now. We want to focus more on engagement, open rate, and click rate.
• Spikey growth isn’t sustainable. SEO and word-of-mouth are.

Where do we go?

• We want to shift focus from growth towards creating more value for our existing readers. However, every time the “New Subscriber” notification comes up (no, we didn’t turn that off just yet) we get super excited. Those dopamine hits are def motivators to keep going, so we will also continue working on growth.
• We're thinking a lot about the long-term value for our readers: business ideas are great, but once you run with one, you don’t need anymore! So, we're thinking about supporting entrepreneurs in the stages following the ideation phase. Thoughts we're having: create different content formats, build community, build SaaS tools.
• Last but not least on “where do we go?”: for vacation! Next week, you’ll find me on the beaches of Croatia 🏝 and Moritz in (hopefully not) rainy Hamburg-city.

We're happy to hear what y'all think about the journey so far. If you liked this post, consider subscribing to my newsletter about business ideas.

Also, have a great weekend!