BrainPint

I've been consistently writing for more than 40 weeks and diligently creating tweets to distribute my newsletter on Twitter.

I've grown at a rate of ~100 subscribers weekly recently, through Twitter, word of mouth, and my other product, Newsletter OS.

These past two weeks I did two AMAs in the Ship30for30 and Ness Labs communities, and I got an extra boost that helped me to 2,500.

I've also hit some other milestones this past month or so:

• 1,000 unique opens
• 500 unique clicks

I love that I have a platform to lift others up when writing BrainPint!

I had been aiming for 1K by the end of the year.

Hit it early with the amazing support from the IH community & by experimenting with different distribution tactics.

The best thing about growing my newsletter has been the chance to get to know other amazing makers. I'm very thankful.

P.S. This is a delayed post, I'm close to 1.2k now at time of posting

Hit 800 Subscribers after publishing my 27th issue.

Passed ~$400 in revenue (mostly affiliate + some coffee support). Most of it goes back into buying more products to support other creators.

Redid my landing page, swapping out a generic illustration for a custom, on-brand and relatable elephant.

Wrote something on revenue here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-newsletter-is-profitable-without-using-sponsored-issues-ads-0fef35c1c4

Took a while to get to 300, but I'm now growing at between 50-80 subscribers per week without spending a single cent on ads.

I also started a community initiative last week to match subscribers who have similar interests with each other for a virtual chat. They'll have their first meetings this week and I'm so excited.

I shared what I learned when I got to 500 subscribers here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/5-things-i-learned-from-getting-to-500-subscribers-9d5562f05d

Got two coffees in a single day from two happy & extremely supportive subscribers.

It made me smile. I'm really thankful for their support as small things like this are extremely encouraging. Will continue to do my best to surface great quality content on BrainPint.

It feels good to round off another 100.

After porting to MailerLite, I've been more intentional about getting the word out on Twitter & submitting my newsletter to a few more newsletter discovery sites.

This week, I received some sweet emails from subscribers telling me how much they enjoy reading BrainPint. Those notes always put a smile on my face.

Finally ranking on the first page of Google Search for my own search term. Next step: Claim first spot (which is currently occupied by my Revue archives)

On my 19th Edition of BrainPint, I ran my first ad for a Landing Page Ebook pre-order and managed to close the sale, gaining affiliate commission.

What a thrill to get my first dollars from BrainPint. I intend to keep BrainPint free & monetize through affiliate commissions (for products that I love, of course) for now.

I learned a ton about DKIM/SPF/DMARC when I switched over from Revue to MailerLite.

My hard work paid off as I managed to avoid the spam folder of doom (didn't escape the promotions folder though, but all good)

Open rates held steady but click rates took a hit. I guess people need a while to adjust. I'm loving the ability to view detailed statistics now on MailerLite's site and mobile app.

Happy I moved!

Finally hit 200 subscribers. I hadn't done too much promotion for my newsletter as I was planning to move to MailerLite and didn't want people to subscribe and be "shocked" by the move.

But I guess whatever I tweeted about that week brought me more subscribers!

I built a landing page using Carrd!

Why did I want to build one?

1. Wanted to have a platform-agnostic site where people could sign up for BrainPint
2. Wanted the freedom to share what BrainPint is all about
3. Improved analytics abilities
4. Showcase past issues
5. Prepare for a move off Revue
6. I just wanted to try building one to learn how to use Carrd

I shared about my landing page on Twitter and got retweeted by AJ, the creator of Carrd, which brought me a few more subscribers.