Grit List

Ummm, what? I already have 4 subscribers. The site's been done for about 16 hours. These people are not my friends (well, one is, but you get my point).

Yesterday I finished my site. Earlier I had posted in Indie Hackers asking about Ghost, the blogging platform I'm using for Grit List. I figured I'd post the link to my site on a few of my responses in the thread for feedback.

I didn't expect much.

But I got 3 subscriptions! From strangers! With 19 total unique visitors! Ahh!!

This fundamentally confirms my new approach–build users, then build product. A newsletter is a product, and it can be carried from product, to product, to product.

You can even monetize lists. Yeah, that's a thing.

I stumbled on the interview with the founder of The Hustle on Monday (the first interview is the best one imo), and it really flipped my approach. The fact that hustle makes $30M or something a year is stupid crazy.

So yeah, I'm building a newsletter. And down the road, I'll build a product that my newsletter wants.

Flip the approach.

Don't build a product, then find users.

Build an audience, then build a product that your users want.

And subscribe to Grit List!

I finished the MVP today! It was a whirlwind of 72 hours of learning Ghost, customizing my theme, and building out the infrastructure on AWS to support my vision.

Now I have a fully custom build of a membership platform, that I'm not beholden to some host or platform (looking at Substack) to be able to publish through.

Now it's time to create content and start promoting aggressively!