My road to 100 signups and the things that helped

I was in the middle of replying to a "How did you get to 100 followers" post, but realized my answer was taking the form of a sequential "to-do" list that might warrant more visibility. I recently reached this milestone for my newsletter Surf Report (which includes 5 paid subscribers!) and here's how I did it:

1. Start building your email list before you even have an email to send. I knew I would eventually need an email list no matter what I ended up building, so earlier this year I used Carrd + MailerLite to turn my personal website into an email capture funnel. I prefaced the form field with "I write regularly about creativity, business, technology, and human nature." and asked people to sign up. It was a broad enough description that I knew no matter what I would end up coming out with it would fit. Over a few months I would slowly get signups, which triggered an autoresponder welcoming them in the meantime.

2. Start promoting yourself even if you don't have a newsletter yet. I put my homepage URL in my Twitter profile (and all my other social accounts) and also made it my Twitter handle. (I nicked this idea from Balaji Srinivasan, and when I gave him full credit he retweeted me and sent me a nice message!). Then I ramped up efforts to tweet and connect with other people I follow. Rather than just liking, I would put a thoughtful reply of encouragement, appreciation, or value-add. Once you shift into "participation mode" you're more likely to have people check out your profile and maybe sign up. Over the course of about 6 months I accumulated about 60 or so signups just by being a more active user rather than passive consumer.

3. Be consistent: pick a schedule and announce it along with your newsletter. I did those first two things for months before I had a specific newsletter idea in mind. Once I had one though I committed right away to a once-per-week email, and made it part of what you can expect if you sign up for Surf Report. I think it shows people you're serious and also lets them know they won't be inundated with emails all week.

4. Don't tell too many friends and family until you have a couple emails under your belt. This is a controversial one I'm sure! But I wanted to validate the idea, work to get some strangers on board, and work out all the initial kinks before getting the "easy" signups from friends and family. This was a deliberate challenge I gave myself, but I think it helped to keep me from thinking I was doing better than I actually was.

5. Submit to newsletter directories. I used this list from the Indie Hackers forums and worked my way down. They can take awhile to be approved and actually propagate into their systems, but you can often be featured in email digests and Twitter posts once you're in.

6. Offer to write a guest post for a favorite newsletter in a similar space. I responded to a request for guest posts and was given the chance to write about anything I wanted. I think this is because the creator is someone I started following long before his newsletter and twitter account had grown so much (lesson in there!). You can check it my guest post here if you want. This didn't get me quite as many followers or signups as I had hoped, and I think it's because I didn't explicitly make a point to promote my newsletter or ebook. I wanted my piece to add value, not try too hard to extract it. But it did get me a few followers, and more importantly it strengthened my connection to the community I'm trying to contribute to.

7. Announce every new issue on social media and tag anyone you mentioned or featured in it. The last 10 or 15 signups on my road to 100 were the toughest, but I got there by drawing attention to the Twitter accounts and newsletters I was featuring in the email each week. Here's an example of a recent tweet if you want to use the format. Most of those people don't know who I am, but it often earns a retweet and a profile visit. Same principle goes for LinkedIn, Instagram... whatever platform you use.

8. Use automation to retweet and repost your newsletter announcements. I prefer Hypefury, but I'm sure there are others that do similar things. Most people don't see your posts at the time you post them, especially on Twitter. I have my tweets set to auto-retweet after 9-12 hours, to make sure different time zones are being considered and giving my followers another chance to see it.

If you do all of these things first, friends and family can probably tip you over the 100 subscriber finish line right if you reach out and tell them individually.

One thing I plan to focus on next is encouraging referrals. Rather than ask as a favor, I want to incentivize it by creating a new ebook and setting up a referral program where you can get it for free in exchange for a new referral signup.

Anyway, I hope that helps give you some good ideas you can try. If you actually took the time to read all of this and have a newsletter then let me know, I'd love to increase your email list by one! :)