Rosieland ☁️
Writing and research in community building.
It's been 2 months since I started my paid newsletter and this is where I'm at.
50 paid subscribers (I have one away for free), $8k+ annualized revenue, creeping closer to 1000 email subscribers in total.
I won't lie.
It's been tough, but it's also been amazingly rewarding.
Some interesting points to take away from it:
- I've never written so consistently in my life
- I hosted a meetup, got more to come!
- I continue to add to my Notion resource weekly
- Wondering whether to call paid members Rosielanders or Prosies, what do you think? 🥴
- I'm now often referred to as someone who builds in the open
- I get tagged into posts alongside Lenny (who has done amazing stuff with his paid newsletter + community)
- I have a guest post coming on Monday, helps me breathe a bit.
I had opted to make my curated newsletter free and add in other stuff (articles, meetups, Notion) for paid subscribers. It has worked well so far, though a little manual of a set up for coordinating things.
I need to ramp up my promotion of it, mostly I wanted to focus in on the habit of writing and delivering things of value.
My dream is to get 1000 subscribers, slowly but surely!
AMA!
It seems like I naturally check in here every couple of months or so. And each time I've made progress. This time I've more than doubled my email list.
I've not done a huge amount to promote it. I decided to use Notion for my website, which some people can't understand, but other people seem to love it. 😆
For me, I love it and it's super easy to update. And anything that saves me time is a massive bonus for me right now.
I've also started talking more, gone on a couple of podcasts and done a couple of talks. This all helps build up general awareness.
Writing has been something high on my wishlist for a long while. I've struggled how to make progress with it. Part of me wanted to do an (e)book, or maybe a course. I thought about preselling something. But I didn't make any progress.
I realise now that I have to do it in steps, life is just too busy for me to make a full product. Hopefully in time it will evolve into more. For now, I will commit to writing 1-2 times a week.
This is why I've chosen the newsletter route. I've shown up weekly for over 40 weeks now doing a free curated links newsletter for community building. It's become enough of a routine that I felt ready to do a bit more.
The weekly curated newsletter will continue for free as it is, and is essentially a lead magnet.
Also, I'm conscious about not doing too much for free, I decided to go down the paid route. Opting for Substack mostly because I already used it my time is seriously limited to set up anything else.
Of course I'm going to treat my newsletter list as more than just an audience. I'm throwing in access to a private Notion database – I pulled some of it off from my main site and I'm adding in more areas for paid subscribers. I also plan to do video/meetups, still need to figure those out, but they will come.
I launched on Monday with a simple tweet and haven't done much else, and I'm now at 10 paying subscribers, the majority of them paying annually which is nice.
I opted for a $200 per year or $20 pm price. With a current 25% off until the end of August.
But honestly, I feel in my element at the moment. Whilst I did some great things at Ministry of Testing, I never felt able to step up and do things with my own voice. So now is my time, I suppose. 🤷🏽♀️
Substack link: https://rosieland.substack.com/
Website link: https://rosie.land
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Hey,
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✨✨ -
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That’s so great to hear! 10 subs is awesome and also it means that your email list of 500 love what you do. Amazing!
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Congrats Rosie! Love your content :)
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Yay Rosie!!
We must be on the same frequency, I was obsessed with building a site called "Kilandia" for months, before other projects took over.
I get that thing, about finding your voice. It is a daily struggle. I feel you have been mastering it lately!
If you get a chance, check out the People & Co. Community builders, with a pretty different audience. They have fun Popcorn Q&A's and their motto is "Build With". Also a regular podcast.
https://www.people-and.com/I also enjoy publishing on Notion! I made the switch last year, it is so much easier to "polish" and it stays organized and clean on its own. I wonder how many of your readers who do "get it" are parents. :)
[ And just as a fun aside, I think for me the idea of the site originated from Buckethead's theme park site. It's down now, but if you Wayback Machine it: http://bucketheadland.com/
Took me FAR too long to realize it was a fake theme park... I was already making plans to go! ]
Signing up for your newsletter now! ♥️
~Ki -
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Congrats Rosie! Your content is really awesome and this is a huge step forward for you! More paid subs = more power to the awesome Rosie to keep this thing going.
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Wow! Where do you find the time to do all the things you do?! Now I feel lazy 😂
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Well done, Rosie! This is so inspiring to read and I’m sure you’re delighted.
I’ve been toying with creating a Substack newsletter, to accompany The School of Design’s weekly newsletter, The Periodical. I’m really enjoying Substack – in particular the Everything bundle – and I can see it being a useful channel for education.
I love that you’re sharing additional things (in Notion, etc.) as added value elements for subscribers. This has given me a lot to think about and has really got me thinking.
Thank you for sharing. —Mr Murphy (Call me Chris, if you prefer.)
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Now really is the best time. Much better than tomorrow.
Congrats on this - I’ve always appreciated the way you pour into community.
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Hey Rosie, congrats! 🎉 You deserve it. All the way up!
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Thanks Leo. I appreciate all the support you give me.
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Well done @rosiesherry. Gotta check it out and subscribe :)
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Hey Rosie!
Congrats! Your website is great and the Notion idea is good! I tried it!
I like your logo! Keep up the good work :) -
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Congrats! That is awesome.
I especially like the part where you say that "it saves you time." I, too, feel like there is never enough time, so to match what I enjoy doing with what is time efficient and effective is would be a gold mine.
I can't wait to hear more updates.
Last time I wrote how it took me 6 months to get to 100 email subscribers.
2 months later I'm at 207. So I guess I can make myself look good and say I more than doubled it. Clever me, eh? 🙃
Growth is slightly faster, though that is not my focus. These days I'm just pleased I can keep it going. And that I keep showing up with everything else that is going on in the world.
Also, important to me at this point is the face that people recommend and open the emails. I average 55% open rate, and people are increasingly recommending it.
I've been chipping away, trying to improve things week on week. Most importantly for me is to just have the consistency on improving and creating value.
I feel everything about Rosieland is still very much in 'figuring stuff out' phase and I've been reluctant to push or promote it too much. Lots of ideas that I like to slowly think upon and figure out how to juggle alongside my current and more important commitments.
A couple main things I did:
- I moved over to Substack, it feels easy and much more like blogging, which I like.
- I've started posting a question a week, Substack has a nice 'Threads' feature for that. Essentially, it enables me to start building more of a community. I really dig this. Simple, yet powerful.
- Revamped my Community resource using Notion. I'm quite pleased with it as it really is a bit of a second community brain for me.
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Congrats, I started https://bullish.email and got my first 1k after I published this article detailing the process of building it on Hacker News - https://eduardosasso.co/blog/turning-my-obsession-in-the-stock-market-into-a-side-project/
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Wow, love that list of resources. You've got a new subscriber also ;)
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Really interesting, thanks Rosie! Had somehow never come across Substack, looks awesome :)
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Where do we sign up? Let's make that 1000!
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Hah, you can find it here - https://rosie.land/newsletter
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Subscribed!
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Congrats!
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This comment was deleted 4 years ago
I've been building communities for a long time, but I always failed (or found an excuse) not to participate in the communities for community builders.
I know, kinda funny.
As part of my own personal progression I wanted to change this.
Any new landscape can be hard to get a true understanding of. Often information and people scattered. It takes time to find out what is what, and who is who. Then it takes time to organise this into something meaningful.
As part of this process I set up a page of resources to help myself. I also decided to set up a newsletter, this was mostly to help keep me accountable of staying on top of current news.
I started from scratch 6 months ago:
- I set up a single page with useful resources
added my newsletter sign up to there - tweeted a few times
- shared on LinkedIn a few times
- I hang out on a couple of community slacks and a FB groups, participating and occassionally sharing the link where relevant
- first 15 or so newsletters were completely automated via RSS from blogs, websites, podcasts and things I had stumbledupon that I had bookmarked/saved on weekly basis.
- I've had great and positive feedback on the actual newsletter (via Slack, FB, Twitter and personal emails)
Now, reality check: it took 6 months to get to 100. It feels slow, but really it's ok.
It makes me laugh, but I'm honestly in no rush, and really it's a way to force me to learn more about the community building world and network with others.
The design isn't anything special, there's lots I could do to improve it.
I'm starting to get recognsied more (never had the time in the past), been invited to speak on an online thing and had compliments that people love the newsletter.
Also upon reflection, the professional 'community building' world isn't massive and really I see it as a place where lots of growth needs and will happen over the coming years.
Overall I feel like it is providing value, so I'm happy.
Here it is for reference: https://community.rosie.land/
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Rosie, there's such a nice maturity about this. You're not in a rush. You're building on your own terms - finding your own way in Rosie Land.
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Thanks four sharing!
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Love that it says four sharing and you currently have 4 upvotes!
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keep going! you know the “secret” for anything like this: it starts small and the growth starts small too. most folks quit before they really ever see the fruits!
this is how it’s supposed to “work”!
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100 more than every one else who didn't start - well done Rosie!
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This was good to read. I try to remind myself that the finish line doesn't have an expiration date and to enjoy the process, slow as it may be.
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I feel you because I have been building my newsletter for 2 years and I haven't reached the 100 mark, but it's my first newsletter, and it's on Revue. Here is where I sharpened my sword and really learned my tone of voice. Oh and guess what, I had been blogging on Medium prior to that for about a year. Not enough people talk about the messy middle, but that's what it is.
Somethings need to take time to be done right.
Thanks for sharing
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Thanks for sharing Rosie and congrats on the patience and results so far.
I have some questions:
You mentioned the first issues where automated from RSS from blogs, podcast, etc. Did you need to ask for rights of usage to share the links?
Any tools in your experience is worth looking at to automate the content of the news letter?
Is the content curated by you now and why did you decide to stop automating?Keep the good work
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I stopped automating as I had gathered a fair amount of sources via RSS and the automatic output wasn't as organised as I would like it to be. Also, I was using Mailchimp which limits the amount of outputted links to 20, which sounds like a lot, but I was finding that the RSS links gathered weekly were more than that. So I opted to do it manually and cull some along the way.
I don't see a need to ask for right of usage of links, so many newsletters these days are based on sharing industry/relevant links.
I used Mailchimp for email, then I use https://bazqux.com/ as an RSS reader. It's works really well despite the name! It's cheap and has the crucial feature of outputting a single rss feed on 'folders' I organise.
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Thanks for the information I'll take a look. It makes sense to stop automating at some point and get a more curated list.
The current content of the news letter is very good, good luck!
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There are two things I've wanted to find more time to do. One is writing. The other is helping other people.
I do a lot of helping people as my role in Indie Hackers, but I'd love to find someone that I can help and follow through with over a period of time.
A while back I listened to Dom's Indie Hacker podcast and thought that would be a good place to find someone to mentor whilst also supporting and indie business.
I'm opening one spot at the moment.
If this sounds of interest then head on over to here https://mentorcruise.com/mentor/RosieSherry/
I had actually just bought recklessrosie.com as a domain to use as I wanted a fresh start. There is a bit of a story behind the 'reckless' thing.
However, just as I was about to start my writing efforts I got an email out of the blue from an indie hacker who had listened to my podcast and recommended I get the available rosie.land domain.
I felt it was perfect.
I've also heard said person has gone on to recommend similar .land domains to other (now) happy people. 😊
15 Comments
Hey,
Saw this post and thought you might be interested.
You can now sign up for the beta of NoCodeLetters. NoCodeLetters is the easiest way to send your newsletters to your subscribers directly from Notion.
Sign up for the beta https://www.nocodeletters.com/
✨✨
Congrats Rosie!
Also “Prosies” is 💯
Or Rosieland Fam has a nice ring lol
Way to go @rosiesherry! Thanks for sharing!
Congrats Rosie! I subscribed and really enjoy the content you put. You've convinced me building a community is the way to go. Also, +1 for Rosielanders :)
Thank you. 😊
Congratulations @rosiesherry and thank you for sharing! :)
+1 for Rosielanders
Awesome awesome, always rocking @rosiesherry ♥️
Congrats!! It's super inspiring to follow along.
Have you asked your paying subscribers what it was that made them decide to switch to paid? Mostly because they're just interested in hearing what you have to say about community, or any other motivations?
I think it's a mixture.
There are people there who have appreciated my work over the years and signed up straight away.
Others signed up because they appreciated the curated newsletters I put out and wanted to support.
There's long time community professionals there too who are there for my insight/angles.
There's also quite a few who don't know much at all about community and are looking for guidance in getting theirs off the ground.
Haha I'm in the last group :D It's cool to know there's some diversity in motivations!
Prosies is cool.
Well done! 👏 It's a long road for us at https://eastly.co too but hopefully we're on the right track!
👏👏 All the way to 1000!
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Ah, lol, I did not know this. 😬