Please give this post a 💓, 🦄, or 🔖 if it gives you some ideas for your mailing list!
After starting my dev email list about 6 months ago, I have b...
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Thanks for sharing Nick! What would you say is the biggest driver to your mailing list? I've recently picked up blogging more and I'm starting to see just a tiny bit of Google traffic coming in. I'm hesitant to post on Reddit and don't think I'll be doing YouTube – publishing on my site and cross-posting to Dev.to are the only things I'm doing right now. But if Reddit and YouTube are big drivers, I might need to reconsider.
On Reddit: To be totally honest, Reddit has been a really large source of both traffic and also emotionally draining. I'll get thousands of hits in a day if a post does well on r/javascript, r/webdev, or r/learnjavascript. Having some popular posts on Reddit seems to have increased up my pagerank on Google, so it definitely helped and continues to help drive traffic to my site. I just continue to be saddened by how toxic Reddit is.
On YouTube: YouTube has largely been a positive experience, but it takes a lot of work to push out high quality videos. I'm more than happy to share some tips if you're looking to get started.
My take on all of this is the more places you can create, crosspost, promote content, the better. There are different people on every platform so you ultimately get more eyes by diversifying where you post things. The real issue is if you have the time and energy to go to all these different places and, in some cases, deal with the negativity.
Thanks for the inside info! Yeah, I'm doing this on the side of a full-time job, so I have to be very critical in the platforms and time-investments I choose. I don't think I can make YouTube work in the short term due to the time (and gear) investment, but I am interested in it so if you want to share tips that'd be great (I'm sure other people would love some tips as well). I think the YT community is way healthier than Reddit so that's a plus.
I'll write something up!
By the way, I think we both just subscribed to each other's mailing lists... Buttondown for the win!
That's cool, thanks for subscribing!
Yeah, Buttondown is great. Justin is great with support too. I just started using them (not even on a paid plan yet) and he's been very helpful with two minor issues I had.
I admire your consistency in writing. Thats the most important thing IMO. I think that web platforms that have downvoting or similar, and use dark patterns to keep you on their website 👀🤑, have more cynical communities. If you post there, you will invariably get negative feedback.
Thanks! One of my "ah-ha" moments was essentially that you can really write about anything and post it to your blog and some people might find it interesting or insightful. I don't necessarily email every post out to my mailing list subscribers because I do feel some of the posts are more trivial than others.
If you write about things that you find interesting, whatever it may be, people will tune in eventually. You can choose to look for topics that are more trendy and appeal to the zeitgest to get a bigger audience, but it just depends on your objectives. I follow some bloggers because of their tech writing, and they post recipes and random photosets and book reviews, I don't mind that, as long as there is a central focus!
Great post Nick! I started posting on Dev.to a few weeks ago and I've been really enjoying creating content. A mailing list is a great idea I will implement as well. Thanks for all the good advice!
Awesome! I use (and really enjoy) Buttondown (buttondown.email). You can write posts with markdown and you get the first 1000 subscribers for free.
Do you think there's a point where paying for the mailing list will not become worth it? e.g. if you managed to hit 20k and you were paying $100 a month.
(Also the link on your DEV profile links to your old typeofnan mailing list)
Yes, there's probably a point where I'd start exploring other services if this didn't scale well. If my mailing list does get to that level of popularity, I'd probably also try to monetize somehow to offset the cost.
I really don’t get people on reddit. So god damn rude 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks, Nick! Only three weeks into my newsletter, so these tips will definitely help!
Thanks for sharing the insights. I'll definitely try to implement this strategies.