How the Web Works
Easy-to-digest education content about the web.
In a world where LLMs and AI-generated content are dominating the indie hacker landscape, I'm betting on human-generated content for How the Web Works.
So far, I think it has been a major success. In two weeks (and only two editions with paywalled content), I have gotten a couple hundred free subscribers and three paid subscribers to the How the Web Works newsletter.
The premise of the newsletter is that I'm developing a "How the Web Works" course, which is my attempt to codify my knowledge about the web in easy-to-digest installments.
It's heartening to me that people are still ready and willing to pay for human-generated content. This is content that could potentially be generated by a LLM, but people seem to like my explanations and want to support me doing this without AI involvement.
I have gotten a few comments that a newsletter isn't exactly novel and may not lead to a huge source of revenue. That's totally okay with me! Ideally, I want to end up creating a course out of this content, and the newsletter subscribers will be a great starting point to spread the word about the course. I'd like to then offer other learning materials as well and with any luck start a semi-lucrative education platform.
After my latest post, I’m happy to report that How the Web Works now has $60/month stripe-verified revenue!
It looks like my plan of offering some premium content below a mostly-free article worked well in encouraging some folks to become paid subscribers to the newsletter.
I also recorded an inaugural podcast episode to try to tap into the podcast listener demographic for customers.
Overall, quite happy with the direction of this new venture!
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Good job, man! Go ahead!
So far, all of my content on How the Web Works has been free. I have given people the option to support the newsletter but offered nothing in return. Unsurprisingly, no one has taken me up on this offer yet! 😆
This Friday, I'm releasing an article that has a small paywalled section at the end with exercises. I really want my articles to stand on their own without paywalls but still offer a little something extra to users who financially support the newsletter.
My hope is that the content before the paywall is compelling enough that some folks will want to support me (with the promise of some extra, paywalled content). I will update next week here to let folks know if I had any success!
Introducing How the Web Works!
I have been creating web development-related newsletter content for a while now. HTWW is all of my different efforts coalesced into one. The premise of the newsletter is easy-to-digest explanations of different web-related concepts and technologies.
Please check out and subscribe to the newsletter here! https://howthewebworks.substack.com
Currently, HTWW is a free newsletter offered through Substack, with the option to support me if people so desire. Right now, there's no added benefit to paying for the newsletter. Unsurprisingly, people haven't done so yet!
My plan for HTWW is as follows:
- come up with some incentives for a paid Substack subscription
- write excellent content, of course!
- continue to grow the subscriber base (it's at 2,500+ now!)
- expand to other educational content (video courses, PDFs, books, etc.)
I think this is the sort of product that can grow quite a bit with good effort and marketing. Fortunately, I have a couple personal websites that result in a fairly consistent flow of new users (typeofnan.dev, interviewguide.dev).
I'm looking forward to seeing where I can take this and hope some of you are interested in the journey!
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