how we reached 1.2K subscribers in under two weeks 🎉

Behind the scenes:

Creating, promoting, and growing

Blogging for Devs

Hi friend,

I hope you're feeling good about yourself for finishing (or wrapping up!) the 7-day blogging challenge.

As I said in my last email, a lot of people want to learn how to grow their email list. So, I thought it would be fun to do a "meta newsletter" that explains the steps I took to create, promote, and grow Blogging for Devs.

Regardless of whether you're looking to build an email list, these tips can apply to blog posts, too. So stick around!

Here's what we'll talk about today:

1. Why and how I created the course (both process & tools)
2. How I promoted the course (fun charts ahead!)
3. What I learned and what I'd do differently
4. Closing credits

Before we dive in: A tip for getting better at SEO

I never expected to get a sponsor for this 7-day challenge, much less Glen Allsopp's SEO Blueprint course.

I did a lot of research before deciding to accept this sponsorship, including trying the course myself AND talking to people I know who've taken it and actually implemented the tactics on their websites. Honestly, I was impressed.

To keep it short: Glen has condensed a mind-blowing 15+ years of SEO experience into SEO Blueprint. You will not find it overloaded with weird marketing jargon. The 100+ course videos are clear, actionable, technically precise, and honestly just fun to watch and learn from. If you enjoyed the SEO content on Blogging for Devs and want to learn SEO in a systematic way, I definitely encourage you to click here and get on the waitlist.

Thanks so much to Glen and SEO Blueprint! And now, on with the show 🎩

Why and how I created the course

My goal with the course was simple: to validate the idea that developers are even interested in growing their blogs.

I've learned so much about blogging, but I didn't want to commit to any big projects without first testing whether people are even interested in it.

Originally, I planned a 14-day course and no newsletter. But the scope was too big, and I got the feedback that the content didn't feel "actionable" enough.

So, I pivoted to a shorter 7-day course in the form of a challenge, and cut out a ton of material, with the understanding I can keep sharing more tips and ideas afterwards.

I used ConvertKit to create the course as a 9-day sequence that starts once you sign up: 1 welcome email, 7 lessons, 1 conclusion email. By setting it up this way, "late joiners" wouldn't miss out or join part-way through.

It also helped me make tweaks the content as you were sending me feedback, since not everyone started on the same day. This wasn't really intentional but it saved my butt!

How I promoted the course and what worked

Almost exactly 75% of people who subscribed came from Twitter, with the majority from the announcement tweet (43%) and the blogging tips tweet (11%).

Luckily I had the foresight to track the referrer as a hidden field inside the ConvertKit signup form, so I could attribute not just the general source (Twitter) but more specific tweets and locations because of their t.co URL shortener (which gives unique URLs, even if it's to the same domain).

Here's what the subscribers look like, broken down by referrer:

(Open bigger image)

I'm guessing that the "Unknown" traffic is what we typically called "Direct" traffic, someone sharing in places like Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Instagram, Email, etc. where the referrer is intentionally stripped by the platform.

I am a little surprised at how big the direct slice is. But it's kinda cool because it probably means a lot of deliberate sharing of the URL 😍

Here's how the subscriptions grew over time, in two waves:

(Open bigger image)

The first wave being the blogging tips tweet, and the second wave being the announcement tweet and the post on Indie Hackers.

With this data, plus all the things in my mind from the conversations I've been having with you one-on-one, here's what I learned and would do differently.

What I learned and what I'd do differently

What I learned (a healthy mix of data, assumptions, and anecdotes :)) --

• The "challenge" was a great way to inspire people to action. Plus, 7 days doesn't sound like an excessive commitment. I think this framing was a big part why a lot of you decided to sign up (let me know if you agree!).

• Tactics that are common in one community can be "refreshing" in others. Doing email challenges is pretty popular in the broader blogging community, but pretty much no one does it in tech. I got a lot of positive feedback about the unusual format.

• A big part of your reach is who retweets you. It's not really something you can control, but I'm certain I can attribute very large number of signups to a small handful of people who retweeted me with bigger follower counts and a relevant audience.

• Developers have a lot of different motivations for blogging, but four are the most popular: Build an audience (or improve your career prospects), solidify your knowledge in written form, improve your writing and communication skills, and give back to the community.

• Giving people an incentive to sign up works! In both of my tweets, I offered something: either I gave out useful tips first and then asked for a signup (before announcing the course), or offering the free course. I think this probably works better than just, "Hey I have a newsletter, sign up?"

What I'd do differently --

• QA the links in my emails! I added some new links while the course was running, and it seems either technical or human error led to at least one broken link. Email formatting is SO fickle, I should've predicted something like this would happen.

• Create a separate email account or alias for sending the email course. Since everything is going into my personal email account, it's been pretty messy. If I had organized it differently, it would be easier for me to see how many emails were waiting on a reply from me :)

• Assume the link could be shared out of context. I didn't expect the link to get shared in other places, especially outside of Twitter, where people may not already be a little familiar with my work or reputation. I'm not sure, but I might've shared more social proof if I really wanted to convert "the skeptics". But ultimately, I'd rather have fewer chill people on my list than try to "win over" people who join begrudgingly 😂 So thanks for being chill!

Last but not least, I want to say a massive thank you to the Blogging for Devs beta testers. Dom, Carolyn, Joey, Fernando, Jillian, and Mike -- your detailed feedback was instrumental in helping reach this point. Thanks also to Shawn, Robin, and Rosie for feedback and support in other ways 🌈

But also, thank YOU for being a part of it. For sharing your stories, your feedback, and your content with me. It's been awesome! 🤗

That's a wrap, folks. Did you find anything from this Behind the Scenes useful for growing your own newsletter? What did you learn, or what maybe surprised you? Anything you think I missed??

As always, I love receiving your thoughts, questions, and feedback in my inbox, so hit "Reply" and share 'em!

See you next Saturday,

@monicalent