Software Ideas has hit $7,000 MRR from over 350 amazing readers! The growth has continued to climb due to efforts from a few places:
Twitter - I'm sharing daily updates and talking about business in general, which is attracting people who don't know me from Indie Hackers
Indie Hackers - My goal is to write more high-quality posts like these to share what I've learned in creating this project, so others can see rapid success as well.
Word of Mouth - This one is new. As the number of people who know about the newsletter increases, the amount of new people who are finding out about the site through friends is also skyrocketing!
I've long been a fan of this talk, "How to negotiate the long slow SaaS ramp of death", where Gail Goodman talks about how growth for Constant Contact wasn't like a hockey-stick, but a slow, steady grind upwards.
That has definitely been the case for Software Ideas, even though it may not look it from the outside. Growth has been linear for the ENTIRE lifetime of this product, but the "slope" has slightly increased every time I found a new marketing channel that worked.
So if there's one lesson to learn from my growth, it's that you shouldn't expect a hockey stick, exponentially increasing MRR. Instead, plan around something more linear, but that has spikes in growth as you find and unlock effective marketing strategies.
It's a very exciting time for Software Ideas, and I'm so close to the "magic number" of $10k MRR - at which point I'll be seriously considering going full-time on this project.
Here's to the next 3.5 months!