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Growing an email newsletter to 16k+ subscribers whilst validating your startup idea

Creator Club
Growing an email newsletter to 16k+ subscribers whilst validating your startup idea
By Sam Dickie at Creator Club • Issue #2 • View online
Hey 👋
So this month I seem to have the writing bug. I put out a couple of new pieces of content this month and made a point to promote it more. I’m terrible at spending days writing a piece of content and not spending the time to drive traffic towards it.
A few handy tips I found. Firstly, Medium allows you to manually add canonical URLs in their post settings. This is important as duplicate content can hurt your SEO. Now i’m writing content on my personal site I want to ensure search engines know the content on my site is the original content and not Mediums. So I get all the SEO benefit but get exposure via Mediums traffic.
Secondly, be sure to consider submitting your post to a publication. I published my latest piece below and got contacted by ‘The Startup’ (Medium’s Top Publication) and now my post get even more exposure - including all their 680k followers, socials and newsletter
Lastly, I identified a list of platforms to promote my content. This includes Hacker News, IndieHackers, Subreddits, Medium, LinkedIn and Twitter. This great piece of content by Harry Dry inspired me.
If you don’t promote it how will people know see it?
Right, let’s get to it - time for this months roundup below 👇

Articles
Growing an email newsletter to 16k+ subscribers whilst validating your startup idea
Growing an email newsletter to 16k+ subscribers whilst validating your startup idea
Unlike most user interview strategies Dan decided to publicly publish his interviews and insight. To do this Dan created a newsletter. Now he has 15,000 subscribers.
www.samdickie.me  •  Share
Creating a new coffee brand like a software product
Creating a new coffee brand like a software product
Instead of developing the recipe and brand in a somewhat closed-loop, Michael brought some of his previous 8 years of experience in creating software at Facebook and applied lean and agile principles developing his recipe and brand.
www.samdickie.me  •  Share
How to take advantage of the new iOS 14 Widgets
How to take advantage of the new iOS 14 Widgets
With the recent announcement at this years WWDC 2020 keynote, Apple unveiled the long awaited iOS14 update. But are we overlooking something huge as product creators?
www.samdickie.me  •  Share
Links 📓
The Guide to Unbundling Reddit
The Guide to Unbundling Reddit
I’m currently obsessed with unbundling. Once you understand what it is you can’t stop noticing it. I have been working on a post around this for a while but this unique take about creating business and communities by unbundling Reddit is fascinating.
latecheckout.substack.com  •  Share
High Output Founders' Library
High Output Founders' Library
As a founder, you have dozens of decisions, worries and demands at any given time. There’s simply not enough time each day. This comprehensive library of curated resources from around the web to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. 
www.notion.so  •  Share
How MSCHF built a business out of squeaky chicken bongs
How MSCHF built a business out of squeaky chicken bongs
I’m slightly obsessed with MSCHF and their approach to building viral products. This is the company behind Jesus Shoes and Puff The Squeaky Chicken works. This post provides a rare insight. Spoiler: it’s a lot harder than it looks.
www.theverge.com  •  Share
How to 👨🏼‍🏫
Product Managers - It's time to create a Product Lab. Here's why.
Product Managers - It's time to create a Product Lab. Here's why.
As Product Managers, how can we create new features and improvements to our products whilst also balancing the trade-offs of user experience and foster a community? In this post, I’m going to be discussing a new approach I’ve been watching closely.
www.samdickie.me  •  Share
Products 📱
Previewed - Mockup Generator
Previewed - Mockup Generator
A while back I curated a list of mockup generators and got it to the 1st page of Google. So I have tested a lot of mockup generators but this has to be the most customisable one I have used.
previewed.app  •  Share
Create Headlines Like Copywriting Experts, Without Writing Them
Create Headlines Like Copywriting Experts, Without Writing Them
I’ve been using this handy tool to generate landing page headlines. It so easy to use and has a generous free tier to try.
headlime.io  •  Share
Personal Update
Last week I was writing a piece of content about the new iOS Widgets feature coming later this year and decided I would have a shot at creating a mockup of a Product Hunt Widget. A few days later Ryan Hoover (founder of PH) retweeted it 🤯
Let me know what you thought of this newsletter by hitting reply. 
Sam | @thisdickie 👨‍💻
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Sam Dickie at Creator Club

I’m Sam and welcome to my once-a-month newsletter. Each month I share the latest digital products, fascinating articles and resources from some of the best new and established online creatives.

This isn't your typical newsletter! I'm not going to send one if I don't have anything interesting or of value to share.
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