TL;DR: I started writing a free newsletter one month ago where I share business ideas and problems to solve, based on market research. So far, I have published 5 issues and reached almost 400 subs!What happened?On August 6th: Soft-launch on IndieHackers, Reddit & Twitter.The first milestone: reach 100 subscribers.WOW! 4 days after launching, I reached the first milestone. THIS IS FUN!!!This was super exciting: it was the first time I really launched something online and it was amazing to see that people care about what I'm building. I got a glimpse into what is possible on the internet: pretty much anything. Amazing!Next milestone: reach 1000 subs.On August 12th, I published the 2nd issue on Gaming Content Creators.Reached 250 subs 3 days later. Yay!On August 20th, I published the 3rd issue on Bootstrapped Founders.Reached 300 subs. Woohoo!Around that time, the initial traction started to calm down. Is this what you call "The Trough of Sorrow"?On August 27th, I published the 4th issue on Airbnb hosts.Received feedback from my readers: they want more info on the problems and less info about the proposed solutions/business ideas. First feature request, interesting! Let’s run with it and see where this goes.On September 2nd, published a new format: "Problem Spaces"Feedback is mixed: people seem to be liking both formats, but I also start seeing the first churn. Ouch, that hurts!On the other hand, I found out that I have quite some power users! Yay!Where do I stand today?388 subs (let's see if we can get to 400 by the end of this week).~30% Open Rate & ~13% Click Rate.As a newbie, I thought that was good. But after reading about people with a 50% Open Rate and a 20-30% Click Rate, it seems as if there’s room for improvement. What do you guys think?~10% of power users (they open and engage with everything I put out). Love y’all!What did I learn?The internet is great! It’s amazing how easy it has become to reach thousands of people from the comfort of your home.The subscriber count is a vanity metric. It won't be my key metric for now. I want to focus more on engagement, open rate, and click rate.Spikey growth isn’t sustainable. SEO and word-of-mouth are.Where do I go?I want to shift focus from growth towards creating more value for my readers. However, every time the “New Subscriber” notification comes up (no, I didn’t turn that off just yet) I get super excited. This is definitely a motivator to keep going, so I will continue working on growth.I'm thinking a lot about lifetime value for my readers: business ideas are great, but once you run with one, you don’t need anymore! So, I'm thinking about supporting entrepreneurs in the stages following the ideation phase. Thoughts I'm having: create different content formats, build community, offer SaaS tools.Last but not least on “where do I go?”: for vacation! Next week, you’ll find me on the beaches of Croatia 🏝I'm happy to hear what y'all think about the journey so far. If you liked this post, consider subscribing to my newsletter about business ideas.Also, have a great weekend! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
0 comments:
Post a Comment