Sipreads
Takeaways from the best books
@basilesamel and I launched Sipreads 2.0 yesterday.
We learned from the previous launch that it's harder to get featured on PH, so we asked Chris Messina to hunt it for us.
We hope 2K subscribers would make it easier to get a newsletter sponsor (contact me if you're interested 👀)
In the next few days, we'll implement Google Amp to make our SEO rankings better, and post Sipreads to app stores for more exposure.
Do you have any other ideas for bringing it to the next level?
@basilesamel and me just launched Sipreads 2.0 on Product Hunt.
We created a brand new design and a better reading experience. We'll also add mobile apps for better exposure, but we didn't have the time to include it in the launch.
Our goal for the launch is to reach 2K subscribers so that it would be easier to get a newsletter sponsor and make Sipreads profitable.
Let us know what you think 🔥
We just hit 1K subs of our newsletter today! Also today, we sent out our first newsletter ever :D
1K came with some difficulties though.. we needed to change our email newsletter provider from Buttondown to Mailjet. Buttondown was awesome, but it's $5/mo after 1K subs. Mailjet is free up to 6K, so it gave us a chance to have zero costs longer 💪
We tried to send our first newsletter earlier this week, but we were notified by friends that amazon affiliate links aren't allowed in emails. So we stopped the campaign, and sent a new version today to the rest of our subscribers.
Our next step is looking for newsletter sponsors.. Do you have suggestions on how to find a good one?
Thank you! 🤗
You can subscribe here: sipreads.com/subscribe
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Nice work, it's always intimidating hitting send on the first EDM, but it gets easier over time.
Any tips on how you got to the first 1000 users? Were there any particular channels that worked best?
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Most of the traffic came from Product Hunt launch.
I think what made it work is that we wrote substantial content (5 books) before launch, so people found it useful at launch and subscribed.
Also a good CTA helps. That's an awesome article by @harrydry on good CTAs. We followed it exactly on Sipreads https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/email-subscribers.
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Cheers Ali. And big congratulations
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Mailjet is free for unlimited subscribers but you will have a 200 daily emails limit (6k max per month). I confirm that you can't send Amazon affiliate links through email.
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Oh okay, thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, our newsletter takes about 5 days now to be sent to everyone :D
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Congratulation!! 1K subs is such an incredible milestone to hit! 👏 I just can imagine how hard it was for you guys to work for this. Also I'm glad that Mailjet works well for you 😊
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Thank youu!
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that sounds good, didn't realise Mailjet is free for up to 6k, that's pretty amazing! For sponsors, good first place can be seeing who sponsors similar projects
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Yeah makes sense, will look into it 🧐
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Not sure what is going on with the subscribe link but this is what I see when I click the link you posted
It looks like a lot of the subscribe window was not loaded properly. I am on the latest version of Firefox with an adblocker. Plus there does not seem to be any way to close the modal window to view the content underneath it.
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Yeah, it seems that we forgot to add a dark background for the popup in dark mode. Fixed it now! Thank you for the heads up!
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How are affiliate links not allowed? Just clearly disclose them and you should be fine.
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They say it’s against amazon associates policies.. Not sure though
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Two days ago, we launched on Product Hunt but it totally flopped! We didn't even get featured.
https://producthunt.com/posts/sipreads
We asked for feedback on twitter on why people think it happened. The most insightful feedback we got was from @graeme and @anthilemoon (https://twitter.com/anthilemoon/status/1182573102552768514). They both pointed out that links didn't seem like links. People thought the excerpt was the full summary! 🙀
So we updated the heading with underlines and arrows to look like links and improved the newsletter CTA to be more clear.
We did the improvements for the future of Sipreads because we planned to continue adding books anyway. But in a weird twist of events, we were featured today on PH!
😻
And we're #1 Product of the Day as well! Algorithms work in mysterious ways.
Hopefully, we can hold this position till the end of the day
✌️
Twitter Flopping thread: https://twitter.com/alisalahio/status/1182409883200741385
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congrats @basilesamel @alollou!! Turns out quite good that they featured it later, as you can benefit from those fixes. Very happy to see it #1 so far!!
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Yeah, I'm very happy as well :D Yeah, surely fixes helped. Thursday at PH was going to be a tough competition too! Thank you Graeme!!
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Well done, amazing how some real feedback and a little tweak can make all the difference. Had this exact idea a few months ago...I called it book vitamins and did all the fluffy stuff like buy the domain, make a logo and get social media...then moved onto the next shiny idea 🥴
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Yeah real feedback is crucial! What I learned from this experience is I should seek feedback before launch. I usually do it but Sipreads had a very simple UX so I felt it was unnecessary, but that was a big mistake!
Yeah I struggle with moving through ideas too! Because it’s hard to do the actual work.. It needed patience to produce content that’s valuable enough to launch. Also my co-maker @basilesamel helped so much to get it off the ground :D
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Well it turned out well even though you got this feedback post-launch! So not sure if doing this before launch is all that essential.
What's your master plan for the future of Sipreads?
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Yeah, it worked out this time, fortunately :D
For the near future, we'll just push new books on schedule and send newsletters every two weeks.
We'll see how it goes.. If we have promising results, we can focus on it more and increase the frequency of new books, either through our own efforts or by adding new writers.
Also we want to optimize the reading experience to make it more enjoyable, add dark mode, and optimize affiliate links because right now it's limited to United States visitors.
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Yeahh! Thank you!
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In the past few months, @basilesamel and I started reading one nonfiction book every month. And write our takeaways on Sipreads.
We started this project for two reasons:
1- Motivation for us to read more nonfiction books.
2- To create a no-bullshit destination for well written book summaries.
For the revenue model, we're using amazon associates, because we feel it's a natural and non-intrusive way for readers. They might be interested to buy the summarized book anyway.
Our focus after launch will be to continue adding books, and I think most traffic will eventually come from SEO.
Do you find it useful? Please reply with your feedback :D
Thank youu!
Website: https://sipreads.com
PH Launch: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sipreads
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