How we reached 1,000 email subscribers
Hey Indie Hackers.
Today I’m going to share my way from 0 to 1,000 subscribers.
I dived into things that helped me and hopefully will help you if you decide to start a newsletter one day.
I captured all the essential things in this story, but reply to me if you want to learn more.
Don’t hesitate and share your thoughts on the content.
🔭 Before word
I didn’t know much about marketing and growing startups when I started Microns. I started building a lot of features by following competitors in the field. After creating the product, I didn’t know how to acquire users and what to do.
But what I realized after six months of developing my startup is that nobody cares about a lot of features if you don’t tell people about them and build with them.
This way, I accidentally found a book written by Pieter Levels called Makebook. I learned that you should be fast and explicit. Users should be first, and your app should make one feature but does it great.
After looking at the available options to start: blog, YouTube, podcast, newsletter, social media, I chose the newsletter.
Why?
Because I had previous experience writing, I love writing, and I like reading other newsletters.
👶 From 0 to 50 subscribers
To be fast, I found the all-in solution for running a newsletter called Revue and set up everything to send the first issue.
To find the first 50 subscribers, I did only two things.
I engaged on Twitter and Indie Hackers by helping people and sharing valuable things.
This also positively impacted my Twitter following and IH connections.
👀 Going to 350 subscribers
In a few weeks of being active, I found a growth partner, and we started thinking about the next steps.
Eventually, to go further, we needed a brand new custom website. We built the first version of Microns in under two weeks.
After this, we’ve made three essential things.
We made our product completely free for the next six months.
We posted a newsletter in many startup and newsletter directories to get some SEO juice.
We launched on 10words and Product Hunt. We were on the first page on 10words and then got 3rd place on Product Hunt.
And people loved the product.
🚗 On the way to 700 subscribers
After launching on Product Hunt, we’ve got a few ways of popularity on Twitter. Many people talked about Microns.
They were excited about it. Look what they said.
In a week, somebody from the Hustle editor team noticed us and mentioned Microns in their newsletter issue. It gave us around 300 new subscribers.
The same did a lot of small newsletter creators. They mentioned Microns and made an organic free ad for us.
📈 Reaching 1,000 subscribers
I consistently wrote newsletter issues every week and engaged on Twitter and IH. By making them a stable stream of traffic.
But besides this, we started testing paid growth channels.
After six months, we monetized Microns and introduced the Premium plan.
We spent all money from Premium subscriptions on advertising in other newsletters, sponsoring creators, and communities.
It gave us brand awareness, new listings, and improved SEO.
⌚️ Nowadays
We are at 2,800 subscribers and keep growing.
The way was long and hard. Every activity helped us spread the word about the Microns.
We’ve made many mistakes, but we learned from them too.
Soon I’d be happy to introduce you next project built by the Microns team, which will help startup founders promote their side projects.
Thank you for this informative post, @sweatC! I'm curious, how far in advance did you plan out the content of your newsletter at the beginning? I've been hesitant to start one because it seems a bit daunting to come up with something new each week. I heard some advice that it's a good idea to write down the first month's worth of ideas before committing to starting a newsletter. (if you can't come up with a month's worth of ideas up-front, then it may not be a good time to start one). What are your thoughts/experience with getting started with planning content for a newsletter?
I don't plan content in advance, even in the beginning. I write as is every week. If something shows up(tweet, article, other newsletter thoughts) and resonates with my experience, I write it in my weekly letter.
I have been for seven years in tech and am curious about new things. So, I like writing in real-time.
If you feel uncomfortable committing to a newsletter, you can start a blog.
I think it is good to have some plan, at least it will give you confidence in the work to start quickly. But in the end, you'll come up with a situation where you need to improvise and write on the fly.
So I think having a plan at the start is a good idea, but don't stick to it for long. Improvisation is an essential skill :)
Thank you for the insight!!
What's the most effective way to engage with people on twitter? Give advice and link at end of post? I've noticed there's a fine line between pumping your product and also being helpful. Any specific tweet structures you've leaned on?
I learned from people on Twitter what works the hard way. But I found this valuable article on what kind of content resonates with a Twitter audience: https://marketingexamples.com/social/twitter-inspiration
My main advice is to be yourself. Don't pretend and find your style of writing.
Congrats Ilya!
What is your monetization model? From what I've seen is seems that the newsletter and marketplace is free and you get paid by sponsors. Is it a recurring thing?
Premium membership(https://www.microns.io/signup) + sponsorship.
Premium subscriptions are recurring revenue.
That's good news and great to see your subscriber are growing. You made an important point of building products by telling people what your are making and taking them along with you while building the product.
I'm building a product and did the same mistake. Built the product and about the launch but until now i didn't tell anyone. Now growing users signup's is completely different game than building products which i realised lately.
Yeah, it's a game-changer. I'm happy you figured out this technique.
🚀
Like a rocket to the sky 🔥
Thanks for sharing this. I have been writing my personal newsletter for over a year. Growth stale. Little upset that it's not growing as I wished!
I needed this for inspiration!
Epic journey!
Can you breakdown the importance of finding a growth partner?
How did that change things for you?
Thanks for sharing this! So useful
Hey, loved the post (will be circling back several times in the next few months). Did 10words give a considerable boost? Did you explore any alternatives to Revue?
you have collect emails data.
I loved reading the story of your growth. I'm new to IH, but am loving this community so far, honestly can't believe I didn't hear about it sooner.
I'd also never heard of 10words until your article here, but I'm definitely going to keep that in my back pocket! :)
Thanks Ilya!
Thank you for sharing your strategy mostly for the 0 to 350 subscribers, very insightful.
Thanks for sharing! How long did it take you to get to 1K?
Amazing progress. Some really good tactical tips in there.
Love this! Congratulations on the growth and success. Did you do any audience research or surveys prior to launching the premium option, or did you intuitively know what would make the premium version valuable?
It was based on customer research and competitors research.
First of all, love the idea behind Microns! Secondly, what resonated the most to me was that you actually focused on your original idea and built everything around that and acted on it. Personally, I get lost in thinking up of new features and trying to figure out a way to implement them all while keeping me from actually doing what I initially intended to do! Looking forward to Microns journey!
Thank you so much, Salman!
Very helpful !
amazing! Your experience is very helpful to me
Read about Kosovo's youth and outsourcing.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/04/18/kosovo-an-example-of-how-young-professionals-can-transform-the-tech-industry/?sh=188fb0fb5309
This is amazing content! Thank you for sharing this. I find it intriguing that Twitter is such a great help when launching businesses.
What is a growth partner?
Think about it as an on demand growth consultant. Developers have a hard time marketing and growing their startup - and that's where I come in :)
You can read more about it here: https://newsletter.microns.io/issues/microns-new-saas-apps-for-sale-issue-4-704926
Thanks for sharing. Keep it up. One observation from my end - the design is not very well optimized for mobile.
Please have a look.
Thank you ✨
so great 🤩, congrats 🎉
🧡
Exactly what I needed to see today - RE.STATEMENT has the goal of 1,000 waitlist members before our first batch launch, and currently working towards the 350! How long did it take you to reach the first 1,000?
6 months
Thank you for this useful information @sweatC 👏👏👏
😇
very impressive! keep it up!
🌷
Awesome post, Ilya! Makes me inspired to continue growing Coinletter. Well done.
Very cool. I'm glad this post inspired you 😊
really interesting story. I just start a newsletter and this is going to help me grow it. thanks.
Sure. If you have questions, let me know :)
Very impressive!
I wish you to continue to grow!
Thank you so much, Kate. Appreciate the support.
Wow, this was an awesome post and gives me hope for my startup. Thank you!
Absolutely. What are you working on?
Congratulations, keep it up!
Thank you, Misha 💪
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