5 Million Subscribers in 4 Years, The Most Underrated Writing Platform, How I grew my Twitter (+9K) and Newsletter (+6k) in 3–4 months, and more essential creator links

How Peter McKinnon got 5 Million Subscribers in 4 Years

YouTuber Peter Mckinnon got 1.8 million subs in his first year and more than 5 million subscribers in his first four years.

Jeremy Nichols breaks down McKinnon’s content strategy.

Check out McKinnon’s Just a YouTuber video for some inspiration.

Quora is the most undervalued writing platform on the Internet

Nicholas Cole was the number one writer on all of Quora. He believes Quora is the most undervalued writing platform on the Internet — and has been for the past 7 years. Here are 10 tips to get the most out of the platform.

CreatorScape 2021 — A Map of the Creator Economy

Market map of the creator economy including 438 companies in 20 categories.

Here is the Google spreadsheet of all the companies.

How I grew my Twitter (+9K) and Newsletter (+6k) in 3–4 months

“When you don’t have many followers, it’s not reasonable to try to tweet a lot and make viral tweets. You can get a viral tweet of course, but the probability is lower. Just because not many people see your tweets because you don’t have many followers.

So if the number of followers is low, the better approach is to participate in discussions, engage with others, get followers from external sources (reddit/IH/HN).”

🚀 Strapping yourself to the back of someone else’s rocket

It’s much easier to piggyback on someone else’s success than to start something from scratch.

Examples include
- building a plugin for a new piece of software,
- launching a browser extension that automates and simplifies workflows on a new platform,
- creating a course that explains how to effectively use a new technology,
- or building a user-friendly wrapper around a newly launched API.

A great example of this is Nat Eliason’s Roam course that earned over $300k. It started with a post of Roam notes that blew up on HackerNews.

via @MarketerCrew

“Traction Tactics” Behind Square, PayPal, Waze, Twilio & More

The early insights behind 9 breakthrough companies — and what tactics drove their traction.

Great post on how 9 large companies built their businesses in the early days.

Big Idea: Finding early traction in your startup often requires experimentation and counter-intuitive insights. The same is true for creators as well. Experiment until you find traction, then triple down on what is working.

via @ProductHabits

Five useful questions to make sure you are focusing on what matters.

Here is a simple yet important list of questions from Seth Godin that are useful to ask on a regular basis.

Big Idea: What would have the biggest impact on your work? Is that where you are spending the bulk of your time? Frameworks like this can be a very powerful way to maximize your effectiveness.

What’s the hard part?
Which part of your work, if it suddenly got much better, would have the biggest impact on the outcome you seek?

How are you spending your time?
How much is focused on the hard part?

What do you need to know?
What are the skills that you don’t have that would make your work more effective?

What is the scary part?
Which outcomes or interactions are you trying to avoid thinking about or interacting with? Why?

Is it worth it?
Does the outcome of the project–for those you serve and for you–justify what it will take to get it there?

Alex Kantrowitz on going solo as the creator economy goes mainstream

Journalist, Alex Kantrowitz gets interviewed on Means of Creation about:

- Why the creator economy went mainstream, and how Big Tech’s attitude toward it shifted
- Why he is bullish on Twitter Spaces and why he thinks live audio will not really replace podcasting
- His work as a solo creator, and how having direct control of his audience compares to his time working for larger media companies
- The pros and cons of monetizing through advertising versus subscriptions, and
- His personal strategies to avoid burning out

How to grow your audience from 0

“Starting from zero is hard. Thankfully, successful creators have given us clues on how to grow an audience by using something called a content funnel. Here’s how it works.”

via @Modern Museum

Steve Jobs @ Stanford — 16 Years Later

Lessons and mental models from the greatest commencement speech of all time.

Sahil Bloom provides a good summary of the key ideas of Steve Jobs’ famous speech.

Master Essential Startup Skills

Here is a selection of the best links I’ve found this week to level up your founder skills.

Why Your Marketing Strategy Needs a Conversion Funnel (and How It Works) — Unbounce via @ProductHabits

I love genius ideas like this!
Guerilla marketing by Pieter Levels of NomadList via @NatEliason

SEO Writing For Newbies: How To Attract Readers And Search Engines — SerpStat

Google on How to Use Keywords in Content — SEOJournal

Getting started with automation: a complete guide (with examples) — MakerPad

34 Ways To Improve SEO Rankings in 2021 — QuickSprout

12 tips on how to write in the business world — Dickie Bush

How to Promote Your Blog: 21 NEW Strategies — Backlinko