Week 1 update: I launched the minimum viable newsletter

Last Friyay I announced the first case study of my build in public experiment.

A minimum viable newsletter called: Be Like Shiva

In this email:

• How I set up the MVP newsletter + sign up flow in 2 hours

• Going zero-to-one with Facebook ads

• 3 lessons that saved me time and headache as a new newsletter builder

Week 1 - Getting the newsletter + sign up flow live

Week 1 was all about getting up and running, but with a strong emphasis on making it easy.

I’m trying to stick to the minimum viable newsletter idea.

Partly because I like that word and I want to keep saying it. But also because there’s something to it.

Here are the 4 things I did to get the newsletter up:

First, I chose a name and created a logo without (too much) overthinking.

I'm a professional over thinker (hence this challenge), so every time I got stuck here I would remind myself of this Tweet:

So I chose a name. Registered a domain. And set up the landing page with ConvertKit.

Next, I set up a simple email flow that looks like this:

I did not use double opt-in, and I'll talk about why in a moment.

After that, I launched some Facebook ads

I pulled my hair out for a day trying to figure out how to do Facebook ads for a new B2C newsletter. But then luckily I found an amazing guide that showed me exactly what to do.

This paid acquisition crash course by Matt McGarry is the BOMB (Matt worked on acquisition for some serious newsletters, like The Hustle, Milk Road and Bankless)

I set the ad spend budget for $60 per day and created a campaign with two ad sets. Each ad set had different targeting and the same three ads. Spy on my ads here.

The ads went live yesterday, and while I know its too early to look at the data my dopamine center is getting excited at seeing subscribers roll in already.

Finally; I wrote and scheduled the first newsletter, of course (it went out this morning)

That’s it.

The real wins this week, however, was what I learned along the way.

Pay attention if you’re building your own newsletter this year:

3 lessons that saved me time and headache

Sure, reading is cool, but have you ever tried learning by throwing yourself in the deep end (publicly) and doing?

Here are 3 impactful lessons I learned when launching this week:

1/ Twitter advanced search = a search engine for specific knowledge

Not a lesson, but more of a reminder.

Google search sucks. Unless you want a vague listicle or a vanilla blog post. ChatGPT is better. But if you need specific knowledge you must learn how to use Twitter advanced search.

Using advanced search I found a handful of accounts sharing everything you’ll ever need to know about building a successful newsletter biz. If you’re building a newsletter, follow these accounts;

Twitter list of worthy newsletter builders.

Another thing I learned:

2/ Ignore double opt-in

*GASP*

“But If you don’t use double opt-in, you’ll go to hell”

There seems to be lots of people on the internet who believe this.

But I found advice that said the opposite from other, experienced newsletter builders.

So… don’t use double opt in, just create a list cleaning sequence instead.

3/ Your welcome email can be simple, but it must include these 5 things

Welcome email copy is mostly ignored, which makes no sense since its your first meeting with a new sub.

It makes sense to leave a good first impression. If you don’t, they probably won’t open your emails.

But for the love of god, please don’t use boilerplate copy. And definitely don’t use the cookie cutter “confirm subscription” email that comes default with most ESPs.

Here are the 5 things your welcome email must include:

1. An amazing subject line (don’t just write “welcome to blah blah”, everyone does that and you can say it in the email copy. Do something different instead*)

2. Tell them what to expect (keep is short and sweet)

3. Tell them to move your email into the primary folder

4. Ask them to reply to your email (eg ask them to say “OK”)

5. Make them click a link (a social link if nothing else)

The point of all this is to help leave a good first impression, yes, but also to increase the odds of your future emails landing in the primary tab. Which is a big deal.

*Here are some of my favorite welcome email subject lines:

Justin Goff - Application Received…

The Hustle - look what you did you little jerk

Justin Moore - 🧙‍♂️ Welcome + 5 Sponsorship Pricing Mistakes (Don't Do This)

Daniel Throssal - The Dark Room (the world's most unusual welcome email)

What I’m doing for next week

• Shipping another newsletter

• Diving deeper into the ‘Facebook ads for newsletters’ rabbit hole (I have no idea what I’m doing here, so I need to learn)

• Learn how to optimize the current FB campaign (again, no idea)

• Learn and launch an Incentive-based lead generation campaign (which means I’ll need to create a lead magnet)

I’ll have some numbers to share on subscribers costs, open rate and click through rates too.

I’m aiming for subscribers <$1 for next week, a 50% open rate and a 10% click through rate.

That’s it for this week.

Questions? Feedback? advice? I want it all….please hit reply right now and let me know!