50 Newsletter Lessons, Turn Advice into Action, Lessons from Failure, and more from the Creator Economy
50 lessons learned from writing 50 newsletters
Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares the key lessons she learned from sending 50 newsletters.
Here are are few of my favorites:
Be part of an ecosystem. Running a newsletter may feel like you are building in a silo, but it doesn’t have to be. Celebrate other people’s work that’s relevant to your audience’s interests: link to other people’s content, include shout outs, or collaborate with other writers.
Writing subject lines is an art. The single biggest factor when people decide whether or not to open your newsletter is the subject line. It’s worth spending a bit more time crafting a subject line that reflects what’s inside. I like to keep mine short and I always add a little emoji.
Keep on showing up. Some weeks will be better than others. You may have one edition going viral, bringing lots of new readers, and weeks where it almost feels like talking to yourself.
Use your newsletter as a self-education mechanism. It can be hard to stay motivated when you want to teach yourself how to do something new. A newsletter is a great way to make yourself accountable.
via @chadunderwood.com
9 things that make marketing yourself & your creations hard
Julia Saxena shares some of the struggles of being a creator.
“I’ve struggled with all of these. Can you relate? Still, starting to create online is one of the best and most rewarding things I’ve done.”
Acting on Advice with Starting Principles: How to turn great advice into action
“A funny lie of adulthood is pretending we’ll act on the life advice we save.
We don’t revisit bookmarks. We don’t re-read Kindle highlights. We rarely re-open Google docs.
I recently overcame this self-sabotage. If I have a superpower, it’s that I now turn advice into action. This post breaks down how, and it shares the best advice I’ve been given.”
How the desire to maintain a personal brand may be harming your business.
“A deep-dive into the darker sides of having an online presence as a business owner: distraction, burnout, cancel culture and the tricks that followers and algorithms play on you.”
“I spent about a year and a half developing the product, and once it was launched, the total annual revenue of the app was $194.00.”
Good startup lessons here.
“Making your first $1 online is easy, making your second $1 from that same customer at the next billing cycle, that’s hard.”
“Just because there are a lot of products in a space, doesn’t always mean you can make a business around it.”
Rithm v1 really fell victim to the classic Vitamins vs. pain killers concept. Vitamins being “nice to have,” and pain killers a “need to have.”
“Distribution beats products every day of the week. This is why we see terrible products being used all the time, they get embedded into organizations, they have won on distribution.”
“While all businesses have a product, not all products are a business.”
via @theslice
91 Startup Ideas from the My First Million Podcast
Looking for a business to start?
10MinuteStartup has published an Airtable database of 91 startup ideas from the popular My First Million podcast by Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. There are podcast links and time stamps for each idea.
My First Million is one of my favorite podcasts!
The Ups and Downs of a Launch Weekend. Alex Haas shares his experiences launching his newsletter on ProductHunt.
via @growthcurrency
Dickie Bush explains the origins of his Ship30for30 Cohort based writing challenge
I’ve written before on how I think Ship30for30 is a genius business idea. In this thread, Dickie shares the history of the course.
They had 476 people take the last cohort at $450 each.
Early landing pages from now-famous companies
If you are worried about getting started, check out some of the early websites of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Netflix.
“The moral of the story, it’s okay to pivot, change your name, and continuously iterate from where you start. Develop the habit of progression. Don’t worry about making what you’re building pretty. Focus on creating something people love.”
Master Essential Creator Skills
Here is a selection of the best links I’ve found this week to level up your creator skills.
10 copywriting tips — GrowthTactics — via @joshspector
The 80/20 Guide to SEO — VuduMarketing — via @BasicProblem
How to Get your First 100 Backlinks — Ahrefs
Getting started with email design marketing — UXplanet
Google Analytics Audit Checklist: 12 Things You Should Pay Attention to — DataBox
