Hello.
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 just reply to me if you want to learn more.
Don't hesitate and share your thoughts on the content.
👋 Welcome
Welcome to the 17 new people joining this week.
Move this email to your primary inbox to ensure you get the newsletter, and it doesn’t land in your promotional folder.
Let me know what you think of your first issue. Replying helps Google realize it’s not spam.
Prefer Twitter? Drop me a DM here.
Now let’s crack on with the newsletter ☕️
🔭 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 profile points.
👀 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 of 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.
All money from Premium subscriptions we spent on advertising in other newsletters, sponsoring creators, and communities.
It gave us brand awareness, new listings, and improved SEO.
⌚️ Nowadays
We are at 2,600 subscribers and keep growing.
The way was long and hard. Every activity helped us spread the word about 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. Awesome UI and friendly UX.
In one word: it will help startup founders to promote their side projects.
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💡 Wisdom from subscriber
💌 Share with a friend
If you found value in reading this issue, please consider sharing it with your friend.
Let me know if you have an exciting story about your startup. I will cover it here so other readers can learn.
Stay awesome,
Ilya Novohatskyi
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