How I Grew Growth Currency⚡ from 0 to 500, How to 10x your content's value, A community coin business model

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Welcome to Growth Currency⚡ #40 — your weekly dose of Creator goodness

If you're new here, I'm excited to have you! Welcome to the 78 new subscribers including Taylor, Matt, Marie, Tom, Natalie, Jake, and Divya!

I appreciate you giving me a little space in your inbox. I will try not to disappoint.

A QUICK NOTE:
​Last week, I officially converted my newsletter from Substack to ConvertKit. Many asked why, so I wrote a short Atomic Essay explaining here.

GROWTH INSIGHTS | Pt. 2 | Growing this newsletter from 0 to 500

In last week's edition, I explained how I started this newsletter January 19th, 2021—officially 9 months ago—with zero subscribers and no clue what I was doing or where I was going.

I've since published for 40 weeks straight (!) which has led to opportunity:
→ I've recently passed the 900 subscriber mark helping to attract advertisers & sponsors
→ I've earned over $1500 of revenue from a mix of ads & sponsorships (54%), affiliate/referral links (45%), and reader support (1%).

Here are the strategies I used to grow from zero to 500 subscribers.

#1 - Consistent publishing & promoting

Publishing consistently, combined with sufficient self-promotion, helped grow this newsletter in the early weeks and months.

I wrote, published, and promoted my newsletter every week. I only used Twitter to promote it (more on that shortly).

But in staying consistent, asking for and listening to feedback, and keeping an eye on what readers were resonating with helped guide the direction of the newsletter. And what's the point of publishing your work without sharing it? So I promoted my newsletter on social media and anywhere else I had a bit of an audience.

Share your work!

#2 - Twitter

I leveraged Twitter for promotion. I would tweet each week when a new edition was published, and promote various links and creators within the tweet. (Worth mentioning at that time I had just over 700 Twitter followers.)

Promoting other creators was a great way to spread the newsletter, as they were bound to at least 'like' the tweet, and often retweet it to their audience.

The steady tweeting, daily engagement, and self-promotion was enough to catch the eye of other newsletter writers and well-respected Twitter accounts. One shoutout tweet by Jack Forge brought in over 100 followers.

Writing personalized DMs to new followers helped build rapport and earn a few more newsletter subscribers. And then getting noticed by writers like Josh Spector and some writers at Hypefury helped my newsletter get featured in front of larger audiences.

#3 - Community

I joined a few communities (disguised as cohort-based courses) to improve my writing skills. It turns out joining Ship 30 For 30 was one of the best decisions I made all year for my newsletter:

→ I published 30 Atomic Essays in 30 days—providing plenty of content for the newsletter
→ I was exposed to a large audience of engaged & motivated creators who could benefit from reading my newsletter
→ Gained 500 Twitter followers + ~70 newsletter subscribers in 30 days

Joining a community—and being an active member—helps foster relationships and collaboration. It's really a win-win for your growth as a creator, and as a human.

How long did it take to reach 500 subscribers...?

It took me 100 days to get to 100 newsletter subscribers.
It took me another 100 days to get to 500 newsletter subscribers.

Be consistent, do the work, and watch it compound.

Next week I'll share my strategies to go from 500 subscribers to where I am now, over 900—and what I've done to monetize this newsletter.

📢 FREELANCERS: LISTEN UP!

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CREATOR SPOTLIGHT 🔦

🔦 JULI HORVATH || Juli writes The Self Letter where she shares about healthy, no-BS self-care for creators and entrepreneurs. She also shares about her venture as a digital nomad, prioritizing freedom and travel over the 9-5 life. Her most popular article has been read over 110,000 times detailing how Juli earns $1500 per month in passive income to support her lifestyle.

🔦 JOHN BARDOS || John’s building a stellar newsletter called Idea Economy — a great resource for creators. Each week I find resources in his newsletter that help me grow my own. Follow him on Twitter and better yet, sign up for his newsletter 🔥

Want to be featured in the Creator Spotlight? Reply to this email and let me know what you're building.

YOUR GROWTH CURRENCY ⚡ THIS WEEK

​7 Useful Marketing Skills (That I Used to Thrive in My Career) by Si Quan Ong of Ahrefs.com

Si shares the 7 skills he developed and honed — AND — he shares how YOU can get started. All 7 sections have resources for you to take action.

Creators need to be good marketers, and this resource will help you become a better one.

​CreatorHooks Newsletter by Jake Thomas

Check out this great resource to help you with your headlines & hook writing.

Jake shares "a weekly breakdown of 5 YouTube videos that are crushing it right now, why they work, and how you can use the same strategies to grow your channel."

Spoiler: use these insights for your article headlines, Twitter threads, newsletter subject lines, etc.

​10 Ways To Turn Podcast Episodes into Great Blog Content (w/Examples) by Jaclyn Schiff of Podreach

You already went through the trouble of recording and editing your podcast. Why not leverage that effort and turn that audio gold into some written content to help promote your show?

Here are a few ways Jaclyn lists in the article (see the article for more ideas)...

→ The As-Told-To article
→ The Briefing article
→ The List article

​See more »​

(I found this in the For The Interested newsletter)

​The Business Model for Community Tokens (for Content Creators) by Joe Pulizzi from The Tilt

The Tilt got my attention when they launched their $TILT coin this year—paying YOU $5 USD in $TILT coin simply to subscribe to their newsletter. This article explains that very business model—and how creators (ie. content entrepreneurs) can use a community token to earn a living, just like Joe Pulizzi and The Tilt are doing.

​Join me in The Tilt's Discord community »​

​The Daily Routines of 12 Famous Writers by James Clear

When James writes, I read. The title of this article sums it up well.

​Content Optimization: 23 Ways to 10x Your Content’s Value by Growth Badger

Another stellar article from one of my favorite, newly discovered sites by Kyle Byers. This article helps you…

→ Optimize for Search Engines​
→ Optimize for Social Shares​
→ Optimize for Conversions, Acquisition and Retention​
→ Optimize Your Content to Hold Attention​
→ Content Optimization Software​

Thanks for being here and making it to the end!

Last week I asked your feedback about whether or not you'd listen to an audio version of this newsletter.

I wanted to thank each of you who replied with your thoughts, thank you sincerely. It's something I'm considering and hoping to add as a different way of consuming this content.

As always, I'd love it if you wanted to share your thoughts on this edition by replying to this email or sending me a DM on Twitter. I reply to every one.

And in case you missed it, here are last week's most popular links:

#1: ​20 Call to Action Examples that Create Instant Leads by Tim Stoddart of Copyblogger​
#2: 🎨 Brand Yourself as A Creator: The Ultimate Guide by Jessie van Breugel

Peace and plutonic love,
Dylan

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