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23 Comments

5,000 subscribers!

Super excited about this milestone — the fact that 5,000 people trusted me enough to give me their email address means a lot to me. I'm hoping to keep Maker Mind growing this fast even though it's been stalling for the past week due to no big "hit" article.

How did I get there?

  • July 22nd, 2019 — Sent the first newsletter out to about 300 existing subscribers on my personal list, who I hadn't emailed in about 9 months.
  • July 25th, 2019 — My first article hit the front page of HN!
  • August and September — Several more articles hit the front page of HN and a couple got quite popular on Twitter, which resulted in being picked up by a few other newsletters and aggregator. Most of my traffic these two months came from social media. I reached about 1,000 subscribers at the end of August.
  • September 24th, 2019 — Reached 2,000 total subscribers.
  • October 1st, 2019 — Launched on Product Hunt, ended up #2 of the day and #3 of the week. This resulted in 1,300 new subscribers on launch day and 2,000 new subscribers overall, for a total of 4,000 subscribers at this point.
  • October 8th, 2019 — First paid sponsor, Maker Mind officially became a profitable project!
  • Today — 5,000 subscribers! With an average open rate of 51.7% and click rate of 14.7%.

Thanks everyone for the support, and virtual high five to all my fellow newsletter creators. It's hard work but worth every bit of it. 💌

  1. 3

    5001 subscribers now :-) congratulations on your growth!! Looking forward to reading your newsletter:-)

      1. 2

        5002, and counting!

        1. 1

          Thanks so much, Artem! 🙌

  2. 3

    It's really useful for other indie hackers to see the timeframe break down.

  3. 1

    The landing page invokes curiosity. Thus I signed up.

    Good luck!

  4. 1

    This is a great achievement. Every time we work from ours ❤️and when the intentions behind our work are to help others some way, life rewards us for that. I wish you this is just the beginning of the exponential growth for you and your work. Keep going 💪
    P.S. 5003 and counting 🙂

    1. 1

      Many thanks, Milan! ❤️

  5. 1

    Congrats! Just joined as well.

    As Andrew mentioned you should capitalize on the quick growth by sharing it

    1. 1

      Thank you so much! And yes lots of ideas in the works. 💪

  6. 1

    Congrats. There's lot of little hits you can do too while you wait for big hits. writing milestone roundups is one of them!

    • Post article roundups on linkedin
    • infographics about your newsletter
    • make a free email course (5 days to be a happier maker) I'm trying this out this week.
    1. 1

      These are great ideas! I'll give them a try in the next few days. Thank you!

  7. 1

    Woohoo!
    Congratulations! 🙌

  8. 1

    Crazy impressive growth!

  9. 1

    Awesome work Anne-Laure, that's a great milestone to hit!

  10. 1

    Nice one Anne. Party just getting started I hope!

  11. 1

    Upvoted! Congrats Anne! 5,000 is huge amount.
    Good luck on the road to 10,000!!

    1. 1

      Thank you, Alex! Onward and upward!

      1. 1

        yeah! Only this way!

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