Lean Code Weekly (sunset Nov 2021)

I started this newsletter for a bunch of reasons.

• The tools for email newsletters have become very accessible
• This was a way to try out one of those tools (ConvertKit)
• I've read over and over that building an email audience is a "start as soon as possible" kind of thing
• I had a backlog of interesting links to share, and would find new ones regularly
• There is so much content online now, curation becomes valuable
  A schedule/excuse for writing
• Finding a tribe of like-minded folks
• Some other positive outcome I could never have predicted?

I learned a lot, found lots of interesting content, and made a little pipeline for ConvertKit -> Hugo -> newsletter archives static site. In the end I found it hard to maintain motivation and quality. I ran out of links, and didn't have time to thoroughly investigate new ones. There were changes in other areas of my life: today is my last day at Gasket Games. In the spirit of difficult decisions and big changes, the weekly newsletter is turning into a more infrequent email list for upcoming original articles and possibly personal project announcements. I will be updating all the references to the newsletter and keeping the archives site online.

Thanks to Olya for editing every issue and thanks to you for reading! I hope to have interesting content and updates for you soon.

Following the advice from this post, I submitted to all the listed directories. So far InboxReads and Thanks for Subscribing have got back to me and listed my newsletter.

After more work than I anticipated, https://lcw.karlschmidt.net/ is live with all 20 past issues of Lean Code Weekly. When I started the newsletter I didn't realize that being able to read past issues is very valuable for potential future subscribers. It's also great for folks subscribing later on! I built the site with Hugo and Bonsai CSS, and wrote a custom Python script to parse previous issues and convert them into Markdown.

I updated https://newsletter.karlschmidt.net/ to include a link to the first issue in HTML form (I'm using ConvertKit, so unlike Substack there is no easy way to host previous email content on the web).

I also updated the landing page to include some quotes from existing subscribers.

One of the suggestions from my post how to market a curation newsletter? was to provide access to previous newsletter editions, like substack does. I'm using ConvertKit which doesn't have support for that, so I manually extracted my "week 1" newsletter and posted to it https://lcw.karlschmidt.net/week1 . Next up is to include it in the landing page!

Still just posting to my personal Twitter and LinkedIn networks that the newsletter exists. So far I have been consistent with sending the email out on time. I've also started preparing further ahead of time, so the risk of slipping is minimized. ConvertKit is still working great!

5 issues in and I had to send my first correction email. The moral to the story is that I didn't prepare ahead of time long enough. I mistook a day in July as a day in June. I sent a corrected version of the email as soon as possible (ended up being less than an hour after the original). These things are bound to happen, so now it has and I can adjust to make sure it's far less likely to reoccur :)

I hit 20 subscribers a few days ago! So far the majority are family and friends. I need to figure out other ways to grow the list, so far it's just me tweeting or posting on LinkedIn about it. Perhaps some content marketing, and I am also thinking about making a short "motion graphics" video clip for Instagram and YouTube.

Thanks to https://www.indiehackers.com/post/for-the-word-your-newsletter-description-is-missing-af44959a2c I updated the wording on my landing page. It could probably still use more refinement, but it got me thinking different and more specifically about who my audience is.