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44 Comments

85K visitors & 2000 email subscribers in 2 months!

I sent the very first Maker Mind newsletter on July 22nd. Since then, the list has grown to 2000 subscribers, with a 53% open rate and a 14.5% click rate. 85K people have visited the website. What makes me even happier is the number of people that reply to the weekly emails with questions, suggestions, or just to share their own story. The connections I've made with readers through the Maker Mind newsletter feel much deeper than the ones on other platforms such as Twitter.

Here is how I grew Maker Mind to 85K visitors and 2K email subscribers:

  • Finding your unique angle. There are so many newsletters people can subscribe to. It's hard to differentiate yourself. For example, there are lots of newsletters about mindfulness, lots of newsletters about productivity, and lots of newsletters about entrepreneurship. Newsletters that approach entrepreneurship and productivity from a neuroscience standpoint? Not so many. Finding your unique angle and writing great content is the first step in building a newsletter.
  • Writing consistently. I've posted one new article on the Maker Mind blog every week day since I sent the first newsletter out. Subscribers know to expect 5 new articles each week. Having made this commitment public also helps me stay consistent.
  • Posting where your audience lives. Every time I write a new article, I post it on Twitter and Hacker News. In two months, 4 of my articles have made it to the home page of HN, driving lots of traffic to the blog. My latest article was retweeted 400 times. Not all articles will do well, but I'm making sure there's a way for people to discover these.
  • Asking for feedback. I always make it clear that I welcome replies to my newsletter. And I get quite a few. Some are just "thank you for writing these", and others are suggestions and feedback to make it better. I also ask people to let me know what they'd like me to write about. The articles I wrote after following suggestions from my audience tend to do better than the random ones.

I hope these are helpful! And if you're not subscribed yet, please do check it out and let me know what you think! ๐Ÿ’Œ

, Founder of Icon for Ness Labs
Ness Labs
on September 23, 2019
  1. 4

    Great tips! Particularly about, welcoming replies. That personal connection makes such a big difference.

    Also, 400 Retweets on one article is madness! I guess because you publish so frequently you're just increasing the odds of some, "black swan" event happening though!

    1. 2

      Thanks, Harry! And 100% agreed it's a bit of a number game. Because I post so often, I'm bound to see some articles get more traction.

  2. 3

    I LOVE MAKER MIND!

    1. 2

      Thank you so much for your support, Fajar!

  3. 2

    That's awesome, congrats! Have you thought about monetization?

    1. 1

      Thank you! I did โ€” in the process of creating a course around my content, and will also write an ebook.

  4. 2

    This is awesome :) Congratulations!

    1. 1

      Thank you very much! ๐Ÿ™

  5. 2

    I absolutely love your content and look forward to reading it. Congrats to reaching this milestone.

    1. 1

      Thank you so much, Bilal! This kind of feedback means the world to me.

  6. 2

    Awesome Anne! Congrats!

    1. 1

      Thank you Alex! ๐Ÿ™

  7. 2

    Fรฉlicitations Anne-Laure! Honestly so impressed by what you accomplished :)

    1. 1

      Thank you so much, Fabien! :)

  8. 2

    Hi Anne, can you please share, where does the traffic come from? By segments, not the exact traffic sources.

    I can guess that organic traffic is not your primary traffic source, and I am super interested in learning how have you attracted so many visitors in 2 months.

    I am a subscriber of Maker Mind, and I love the scientific approach, as I am fond of science-driven data. ^_^

    1. 4

      Hi Mila! Here is a screenshot of my analytics. As you can see, the vast majority of my traffic comes from social (mainly Twitter and HN).

      Then, it's direct traffic, which is quite annoying because I can't track it, but my guess is that it comes from people sharing these in Telegram/WhatsApp ("dark social").

      My goal is to grow my traffic coming from referral and organic search, as these are more stable over time. The traffic from social is great but it's hard to keep it consistent.

      I hope that helps, and thanks so much for being a subscriber!

      1. 1

        Regarding direct traffic in Google Analytics: Some of the direct traffic is usually from search, which might be nice to know. Could some of it also be from your newsletters? Or are those links tagged? The dark social makes sense, too.

        1. 1

          Interesting! How come the organic traffic from search would show up in direct traffic? And the ones from my newsletter and other newsletters show up under email traffic I think.

          1. 1

            Because Google Analytics depends on the referrer (sent along with the request by the web browser) and/or UTM parameters, etc. From what I understand, anything that Google can't classify ends up under Direct. In other words, "we don't know where this came from". Sometimes search traffic won't include a referrer and thus becomes "direct".

            This used to be a bigger issue back in the day than it is now, I think. The misattributed search traffic, I mean. Google depends on browsers to play nicely, and with privacy filters and so on, this is bound to stop some of that information to be sent across.

            Here's an old gem from when this was a huge deal, back in 2014 (it has some nice background info on how this works in general, too):
            https://searchengineland.com/60-direct-traffic-actually-seo-195415

            1. 1

              Super interesting, thanks for clarifying and for the link!

              1. 1

                Youโ€™re welcome. :)

  9. 2

    Solid growth after 2 months. I like the approach with combining a couple of topics to create a new angle.

    Your writing is awesome so am sure thatโ€™s helping! (No idea how youโ€™re managing to get 5 articles per week written and keep up the quality)

    1. 1

      Thank you! And I basically write for one hour and a half first thing in the morning. As a result I've been going less often to the gym, so that's a trade-off haha.

  10. 2

    Thanks for sharing Anne-Laure!

    Really exciting to follow your journey :)

    1. 1

      Thank you so much!

  11. 1

    Thank you soooo much . keeep moving forward .i need people like you to pushing me to succes 100% ... ๐Ÿ˜Ž๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ™๐Ÿ‘Œ

  12. 1

    Great stuff. I loved the surprise signup bonus. Thank you.

    You can get more signups to the newsletter if you flaunted these in the popup form.

  13. 1

    Congrats! I just launched a newsletter myself and hope to have the same success! I just subscribed and looking forward to reading. Love your signup page - very straight forward!

    1. 1

      Thank you so much! And good luck with your newsletter ๐Ÿ™Œ

  14. 1

    Congratulation! One of your posts was suggested to me via Twitter. I checked out your website, it's super well done. On many places, I saw the " ex-Googler, a startup founder, a writer, and a speaker. " tagline and I was curious about the order of these elements. Is being an ex-Googler your most defining trait?

    I love the "Hotline" section, such a clever name. How did you decide on the $99 price?

    Keep up the good work, this is amazing!

    1. 2

      Thank you! Great question regarding my tagline. I left two years ago already so may need to change the order now. Thank you for reading! ๐Ÿ™

  15. 1

    Thanks for the tips!! I've found some Facebook and LinkedIn groups can be in the millions for the right audience as well. Posting to 5-10 can get some interest quickly. Thanks again!

    1. 1

      Great idea! I'll try LinkedIn and Facebook groups too. Thank you!

  16. 1

    Congratulations! And that's quite an open rate. :)

    P.S. You now have one more subscriber.

    1. 1

      Yay! Thanks for subscribing ๐Ÿ™

  17. 1

    Blogs and newsletters could also make a great starting point for making other products;
    I am thinking something like a productivity tool for makers with a neuroscience twist?
    What do you think?

    1. 2

      Yes I'd love to create a tool in the future!

  18. 1

    That is a great achievement. Getting 4 on home page of HN is crazy. well done

    1. 1

      Thank you! ๐Ÿ™

  19. 1

    Wow! These are some amazing stats, congrats ๐ŸŽ‰

    Also, thank you for sharing the tips. During my blogging days, I had huge issues with consistency. I believe that's the enemy of many out there ๐Ÿ˜…

  20. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      Thank you! Great question. I haven't looked at specific numbers, but HN folks are definitely hard to convert in general. I still find โ€” again, I haven't properly looked at numbers, but just looking intuitively at my general growth โ€” that I get more subscribers from front page posts on HN than I do from viral posts on Twitter.

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