CSS Weekly

I continued publishing the newsletter regularly, was active on social media, mainly on Twitter, and the number of subscribers continued growing.

As I didn't promote the newsletter, the growth slowed down. Additionally, I didn't add more value beyond the initial ideas. This, along with the plethora of new technical newsletters, contributed to the slow growth.

Around this time, I started a Patreon, offering an ad-free newsletter and a showcased profile on css-weekly.com as a gift to anyone who pledges $0.50 per month.

About 100 people committed, most of them $1 or $2 per month, which resulted in $100 recurring revenue from my subscribers directly. This, of course, wasn't enough to cover even my Mailchimp costs.

CSS Weekly continued growing steadily with occasional peaks in new subscribers when mentioned in prominent publications, whether on their blog or Social Media.

I made the first money from a sponsor who contacted me to ask if I'm offering advertisement in the newsletter.

Until then, it never crossed my mind that I could sell ads, and someone asking if they can buy something from me was a revelation and relief as I understood now that I can cover my costs of running the newsletter.

I've published the newsletter every week consistently, trying to find the best articles to provide as much value as possible to my audience, and the newsletter kept growing steadily.

I considered 2000 subscribers to be the first significant milestone, as at that point, I had to start paying for my Mailchimp plan.

At this point, I didn't believe that I'll be able to make some money with it and was genuinely concerned about how I could cover my costs if the newsletter continues growing.

The first issue was sent out to 10 subscribers.

I've created a simple signup page, shared it on my Twitter profile, and got a few initial subscribers.

The first two issues were named Alpha & Beta, and both were sent to about ten subscribers. The third issue, Issue #1, was sent on March 26, 2012 to 279 subscribers.

At the time I started CSS Weekly, there was not a lot of technical newsletters in circulation. This helped CSS Weekly get some shares on social media, which resulted in initial growth.