ScrapeDiary

At the end of January I finally released ScapeDiary's first info product, which is a guide teaching people how to get in to web scraping using no-code tools. I've noticed in the community people spend a lot of time talking about technology, frameworks, approaches etc but all of this tends to just overwhelm people new to webscraping and ultimately they simply never start.

Instead I wanted to focus on a guide that explains the theory, introduces some easy tools to master and get them into the practice. They can then select new tools and eventually learn to code to build their own web scrapers using the foundation set by this guide.

From a builder perspective, info products are hard. They take a lot more effort than you think, especially if you're a perfectionist like me and you want it to be amazing right out of the gate. A few things I did right really helped, namely getting a graphic designer to put together a Canva template I could drop content in to, and doing this via a pre-sale model where people pre-commited to purchasing the guide.

The two things both kept me committed as I didn't want to disappoint the pre-sale customers, but also got me excited as I could see the finished product taking shaping in a format that I think looked good and could be something I was proud of.

In its current form I think the guide is great for web scraping beginners and maybe even more experienced people who aren't too familiar with the theory behind it. It is still at this point however very much a V1, and I'll be adding additional sections, tutorials and other parts based on user feedback.

As I get closer to a V2, I'll be ramping up marketing, using Gumroad's referral tools to encourage those in the space to sell it as well as placing ads in newsletters and in forums. The idea is that for everyone who buys it pre-sale or while its in V1 gets access to all new content for life. Excited to see where this goes.

As a side note, now that ScrapeDiary has a info product that can bring in revenue, the business is starting to take shape, with the ability for me to re-invest these funds into the community, the blog or in other areas to draw more people in and build the biggest/best community for web scraping enthusiasts anywhere.

One of the limitations I had found with the newsletter/blog was that I felt it was hard to get a grasp on engagement with the audience. Open rates are good at ~50%, but email metrics alone are very lacking when it comes to understanding whether you're acting solving problems for your audience. I built an online community on Slack for readers and found this to be immediately successful in bringing readers as well as wider community together to share lessons and inspire each other.

Within the first 2 weeks, I've had 50 signups and 30 members participate in the group. The immediate benefit of this is the ability to talk 1:1 with readers and facilitate the community to learn from each other and share their experience. Running the community is also 10x more fun, and I think I've learned more from conversations in the group than my last year of study on the topic.

From here I want to put a lot more of my energy into growing the community, and using the newsletter/blog as a marketing medium for new members to find and join in.

ScapeDiary now has 100 active subscribers! This was goal I set for the project to determine whether or not it was viable, could attract readers and keep them engaged. Through hitting this goal I've learned a lot about what it takes to consistency produce content, attract readers and build a tech stack that supports growth.

I wrote about the journey in more detail in a Subtack Article for a more in-depth read.

One of the challenges I've faced is building engagement with the audience. The newsletter format is very one dimensional, and I want to build a community around the project to help me better grasp the pain points of my audience and turn this in to more of a dialogue. As such my next focus is going to be around building a community along-side the newsletter to encourage this.

I'm slowly working out how to bring new readers to the blog and to get them to sign up. Finding the right websites to post content to has been tricky, but I'm now having success in driving traffic to the blog with a few key posts. I'm now focusing on improving the signup flow and converting readers on each article. Currently I'm getting 1-2 new signups per day consistently which is ok for now.

Once I make it to 100 subscribers, I plan on moving towards monetisation. My original plan was to do this with a subscription service, but now I'm leaning more towards selling a course.

Since the beta launch, I've been focusing on writing quality content and attracting new readers to the newsletter. I'm starting this completely from scratch without a big network to tap in to. Originally I seeded the newsletter with about 10 friends/colleagues to provide feedback. From there I've been posting into various Q/A sites focused around marketing/growth hacking which has brought an additional 15 subscribers.

On the content side, I've been experimenting with different mediums such as video for tutorials and setting up a "code lab" section to provide code samples.

I've had some really promising feedback from early readers which tells me the content is adding value, I just need to get it in front of more readers.