Running A Newsletter Alongside A Tech Job
This UK Product Manager shares how he run a newsletter for SaaS founders alongside his full-time job
Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your business?
I'm Charlie, a 25-year-old SaaS Product Manager in the UK.
I talk to customers and communicate with the wider business to build web applications and mobile apps that our customers will love. I also build my own SaaS products.
But my main focus right now aside from my full-time job is IdeaHub.
It's a newsletter read by 2,000+ SaaS founders focusing on growth, marketing and product development strategies.
Often I see a lot of content on the obvious topics (e.g. how to build the software physically) but not as much on the softer skills which are, in my view, just as if not more important.
How was the business started?
About 6 months ago, I decided to start the newsletter as I wanted to take a break from building SaaS products and focus on a more creative venture.
Strangely it's led me right back into SaaS with SlotSwap but hey :) I didn't spend anything initially to get going, just set up the newsletter in a week or so on Beehiiv.
I probably spent the most time initially on getting the format right. I always monitor open rates and click rates and iterate the newsletter towards what people seem to be enjoying most. I'm basically treating it like I would a SaaS, like its own 'product' in a way.
How did you get your first initial customers?
Pretty much all the way through I've used Reddit.
I've found roughly half of my subscribers to date on the platform. I've written extensively about how I did this in my newsletter too.
Below 1,000 subscribers I didn't work with any other creators, but now I work with a few each month to run cross-promotions. (It's where I got the inspiration for SlotSwap).
I think those starting out should wait until at least the 1k mark before doing this, you don't have much to offer each other below that. I've also been using Twitter to post about SaaS content and link to my articles.
I find writing off-the-cuff content works best for me despite everyone seeming to highly manufacture content these days.
Since launch, what are your marketing strategies or channels to get new customers?
Again mainly Reddit. But I've also seen good growth by reposting articles on other platforms like IdieHackers, HackerNews and dev.to.
Indie Hackers
Each week I adjust and repost my articles here and include a link back to the original. Doing this can drive anywhere from 100-300 clicks when working well and usually 20 or so newsletter subscribers.
One thing I'm super grateful to everyone in the IH team for is getting featured in the IH newsletter which is sent out to ~ 70k readers. This was completely organic and I was honoured to be included! This one link brought around 250 visitors and 100 subscribers over 3 days.
In total, IH has accounted for roughly 30% of all traffic and subscribers.
Dev.to
Dev.to is another blogging platform but more focused to technical writing. Again each week I would adjust and repost my articles to fit the style of the site.
But in particular, what worked well was making use of tags.
There are a few tags (#watercooler and #discuss) that have dedicated slots on the homepage. So instead of fighting through the crowd of posts I just curated some additional posts to fit into those tags and got a lot more traffic. Most posts to those tags would bring in 20-30 subscribers each time.
On the whole, Dev.to has contributed roughly 20% of all traffic and subscribers.
Collaborations
As I didn't have any audience to start with it was difficult to find people who wanted to collaborate with me. Plus if you both only have small sites neither gets much value from it.
But as I grew the email list what I could offer others became far more valuable. I started reaching out to other sites to swap links and over time that has brought in \~ 100 new subscribers.
To anyone starting a newsletter, I would say hold off collaborating with others until you have at least 1,000 subscribers.
Focusing on SaaS and other tech-related subreddits I would mainly comment on other people's posts who are looking for advice and to try to first and foremost offer some help to them.
Then if it makes sense to do so I'll include a link to my site. I also always try to include another resource alongside mine so that people have a choice on whether to read mine or not. This has worked well and I've had 99% supportive feedback from people with very little backlash from self-promotion rules.
I've met a few friends on Reddit along the way too and set up calls with them where we have shared our ideas and journeys.
Overall Reddit has brought ~ 30% of all traffic and subscribers.
These are all blogging platforms that are primarily tech-focused. Instead of traditional content marketing, I try to tell a story. I find people nowadays are kind of tired of obvious content marketing and being more relatable and clear is becoming more difficult to find but definitely more engaging. Interestingly I've done zero (intentional) SEO so far.
I find going to places like blogging platforms or social media to be much easier to get started with as the traffic is already there. I think its one of the main reasons I've grown quicker than most.
How does your business make money?
It's a combination of affiliate revenue - roughly $1 per new subscriber by recommending other newsletters to those who sign up.
I also run sponsorships at ~ $120 per slot and book roughly 2-3 per month.
In the future sponsorship revenue should scale nicely as the audience grows and I plan to introduce paywalled content and possibly communities once I have a strong content database that's of value.
Costa are ~ $100/month (fixed) and revenue is ~ $250/month but will grow month on month as sponsorship revenue naturally scales.
It takes me roughly 5 hours a week to write each article. I spend a good amount of time on each article as at the end of the day it is the product for a newsletter and it needs to win attention in the inbox.
I probably spend around another 2-3 hours a week doing marketing and general admin.
Where can we go to learn more?
Thanks for reading!
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