42
39 Comments

1K email subscribers in under two weeks 😱

Some of them are my friends and at least 1 of them is my friend's mom, but hey, it's a really nice round number I didn't even fathom reaching.

Main ways this happened were:

  1. Two different kinds of tweets (knowledge-sharing thread & direct call-to-action)
  2. Asking people to "Click to tweet" on the Thank You page
  3. Being on the front page of Indie Hackers (ty Rosie)

I am tracking the referring URL for each signup so I should be able to break down how many subscribers came from each source.

I'm planning to do a "Behind the Scenes" edition for the newsletter about how it went, so a) they can feel like part of the story b) a fair number of people asked about newsletter and email marketing tips in response to the welcome email.

Now I have some work to do 😁

, Founder of Icon for Blogging for Devs
Blogging for Devs
on May 19, 2020
  1. 2

    Wow, that's impressing! And I was happy with my 50 subscribers in six weeks... Hahaha😅

    Congratulations Monica!

    1. 2

      Hehe well it's a free newsletter, so I think it's much easier to get them than for a product :) Our SaaS definitely hasn't reached 50 paid subscribers!

      1. 1

        Mine is free as well 🙈 But yes I agree it's different still! Keep up the good work!!

  2. 1

    Nice work Monica on finding a niche topic!
    I just visited Blogging for devs and signed up ( dev currently trying to start blogging )

  3. 1

    This is great, congrats @momoko. How are you going about tracking each signup source?

    1. 1

      Hey, if you scroll down you'll see a code snippet that does just that.

  4. 1

    Awesome. I am one of your new subscribers. :)

  5. 1

    Hi, how do I sign up for the newsletter?

  6. 1

    Congrats! That's excellent news.

  7. 1

    That's amazing Monica! That's a remarkable start to the newsletter. Would love to know your tips on the tweets, and which of yours have driven the most subscribers.

    1. 3

      Here's the pie chart of the referrers that I tracked:

      Pie chart of subscriber referrers

      The blogging tips tweet is this:

      The announcement tweet is this: https://twitter.com/monicalent/status/1261311666303705090

      (since it's roughly 1K just multiply the numbers to get an idea of the absolute subscriber count)

      Pie chart of subscriber referrers

      (First wave is the blogging tips tweet, second is the announcement tweet)

      My main suspicion about why the tweets worked is a) clear call-to-action b) time-sensitive c) a good amount of my followers have read my blog posts or seen my conference talks before d) really clear twitter image e) lots of supportive retweets, especially from people with waaaay more followers than me.

      I hope that's useful, Fred!

      1. 1

        This is great! How are you doing the referrer tracking and what are you using to manage your list - Mailchimp or other?

        1. 2

          I wrote up a custom ConvertKit form, and then I have a custom field called "source" where I track the referrer (it's populated with JavaScript). In code it looks like this:

            const handleSubmit = async (e) => {
              e.preventDefault();
              const data = new FormData(e.target);
          
              try {
                data.append('fields[source]', document.referrer);
                const response = await fetch(YOUR_FORM_URL, {
                  method: 'post',
                  body: data,
                  headers: {
                    accept: 'application/json',
                  },
                });
          
                const json = await response.json();
                // Handle success and error cases
            } catch (err) {
               // Handle success and error cases
            }
          };
          

          Hope that helps :) ConvertKit does track referrers automatically if you use their built-in forms though. I didn't have that option because I found their landing page solution too limiting.

  8. 1

    Awesome job Monica! Congrats. Did you offer any type of lead magnet or did you just invite people to your newsletter?

    1. 1

      Hey Faisal, I'm running a 7-day challenge to help people publish one excellent blog post. So they sign up, get an email every day with educational content and "homework" to achieve on their blog. And at the end, they have a finished piece of content with a good headline, SEO basics like keyword research, using good copywriting tactics, analytics setup, etc.

      (BTW I think it helps that my announcement did a weekend "kickoff" so there was a time-based incentive to join the challenge. However it still runs for everyone depending on when they subscribed.)

      You can see the landing page here: https://bloggingfordevs.com

      This challenge accounts for somewhere between 80-90% of signups. The others came from the "blogging tips" twitter thread, or just clicking the link in my twitter profile.

      Hope that helps!

      1. 1

        Yes it does! Thanks! Amazing results. I’ll have to try launching a challenge myself and see what the growth is like. Thanks for sharing your “win” with us.

        1. 1

          Cool! I just shared some images breaking down the sources of the subscribers above, if you're curious. Good luck with your newsletter :)

  9. 1

    Congrats on the milestone. Can't wait for the BTS post.

    1. 1

      Thanks! If you're subscribed to the newsletter it'll be sent out after the challenge ends :)

  10. 1

    It's just so insipring from a guy looking to get into newsletters myself.

  11. 1

    Congrats! I just hit 250 myself and the feeling was amazing. I can't wait to reach 1k!

    1. 1

      Honestly having it all come at once is a little overwhelming! I'm answering 50-60 emails per day as people reply to various emails and the welcome sequence.

      Having it a little spread out would be more relaxing :D Wishing you luck for growing your newsletter!!

  12. 1

    Congratulations Monica that's awesome!

  13. 1

    great, that is fast! Congrats 🚀

  14. 1

    That's also when you can start to feel the compound effect.
    Solid milestone for momentum, good job.
    Keep it up! 🏔

    1. 1

      yeah it's wild! thanks for the encouragement.

  15. 1

    This is awesome @momoko. Congratulations. 1K is definitely a nice milestone. Keep up the great work.

  16. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      Hey Jay! For sure, we've noticed an uptick in people doing music-related affiliate websites. Even people in our apartment building are receiving new instruments ahaha. Thanks for the encouragement and good luck with your site :)

  17. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 2

      Thanks Luca! I had a suspicion the topic would resonate with people, but I definitely didn't expect it to grow so quickly :)

Trending on Indie Hackers
Meme marketing for startups 🔥 User Avatar 11 comments Google Whisk - Generate images using images as prompts, not text prompts User Avatar 1 comment After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project User Avatar 1 comment Need feedback for my product. User Avatar 1 comment We are live on Product Hunt User Avatar 1 comment Don't be a Jerk. Use this Tip Calculator. User Avatar 1 comment