District Flight Deals

After 2 months of solid work, I launched version 2 of District Flight Deals to the entirety of my user base.

I built version 2 to make it more helpful for people in the DC area looking for flights. It really differentiates District Flight Deals from competitors in the space.

Before v2, Premium members got every deal District Flight Deals sends out. Free members get 1/3 of the deals. There were some other differences between the tiers, but that was the core.

Version 2 allows subscribers to create an account on a web app. In that app, they can set filters for what kinds of deals they want to get.

Instead of treating flight deals as something that are scarce, and that I'm giving people access to, I'm treating them as something that's abundant. The focus has changed from providing access, to allowing people to curate what deals they really want to get.

The technical aspects of building out the web app and a system that sends people emails based on their preferences was complex and it's a milestone to have it working and done.

1. Reddit - I became a regular in the relevant subreddit, posting content not about my newsletter. Then, I made a post where I shared a current flight deal, and mentioned that I have a newsletter that shares these deals often. Wasn't pushy, and the post itself was valuable/ interesting. Top post of the day and got 600+ signups that day.

2. Instagram - more of the same strategy articulated previously.

3. Referrals - ever since I passed 100 signups, a large number of signups are seemingly from wom. There's no incentive to do so, but a remarkably cheap flight is...remarked on by people who see it.

Almost 100% of marketing efforts were building up an Instagram and sharing flight deal there.

I also figured out integrating Stripe with Carrd and launched a Premium version of District Flight Deals to subscribers (again, about 100 subscribers).

Had an early-access launch sequence. Did $9 on the first day of the sequence, and $75 on the last day of the sequence.

I'll always remember that $75 day - the first day I ever thought making real money online was something I could actually do.

I bought the domain on March 3rd and made a landing page with Carrd.

On March 13th, the first subscriber signed up for District Flight Deals. Over the rest of the month, I got up to about a dozen subscribers.

I found these subscribers by posting flight deals to Instagram and linking the newsletter signup page there. I'd then follow people who followed other accounts that were based around DC topics.

I'd been finding flights out of the DC area for several months, and realized other people might want the same thing.

I'd seen other flight-finding newsletters and blogs, but didn't like that they weren't segmented by location. I'd often get emails that didn't have a deal from my home airports of DCA, BWI, and IAD.

I decided I'd make an email list just for people in the DC area, so that every deal they get would be relevant.