My newsletter’s traction after year one

In last week’s newsletter, I posed two questions. Where do I have traction and how can I increase it? And, what distraction am I creating and how can I reduce it?

The distractions are many, but tiny. Social media. ESPN. Fantasy football. Emails. iPhone. And many others.

The areas of traction are few, but large. My health. Family. LegUp Health. Startup to Last. And my weekly newsletter.

It has been exactly one year since I launched the newsletter. So, I thought I’d share some details on the traction I'm seeing along with my plan to increase it.[1]

So far, I’ve produced 52 newsletters, published 51 articles, and posted 34 notes.

I spent an average of 4 to 12 hours per week producing each newsletter.[2] The time varied based on the complexity of (and my familiarity with) the subject. The vast majority of my time went into research and content creation. Very little went into promotion. I spent an average of 15 minutes each week sharing new articles and notes on social media.[3]

I spent around $100 per month. Almost half of that went toward technology (e.g. newsletter and website hosting), and I spent the rest on research (e.g. books and subscriptions).

In terms of goals, I started the newsletter to create a forcing function for my own continuous learning. So far, it’s worked. I’ve explored all sorts of interesting topics in the last year. Culture, leadership, and decision-making are a few examples.

In terms of key performance indicators (KPIs), I now have 127 newsletter subscribers (up from 0 last year) and nearly 2,000 monthly visitors to ricklindquist.com (up from 100 last year). While my primary goal is continuous learning (not audience growth), these numbers do matter to me. Each new subscriber increases the power of the forcing function because it increases the reputational risk of the newsletter.[4] (It also feels good.)

The most exciting traction has developed in the last few months. Here’s the Google search performance for ricklindquist.com over the full year.

As you can see, the consistent weekly investment is starting to lead to compounding growth in search results.[5] So, assuming I continue my consistent inputs, my subscriber growth should accelerate.

That’s the traction. But, how can I increase it?

I’m not willing to spend more time or money on the newsletter right now. So, my options are limited. I plan to try two things.

First, I’m going to try to free up a few hours each month by improving the weekly production process.

Second, I’m going to invest any freed-up hours into trying to increase my website’s visitor-to-subscriber rate.

I’m excited to see how this traction builds in year two.

Notes
[1] Here’s a link to my first newsletter from November 17, 2019.

[2] This is a total guess.

[3] I post new articles and notes to both Twitter and LinkedIn. I also try to answer at least one related question on Quora for each piece.

[4] For more on this concept, see forcing functions.

[5] Yes. This recent 3-month surge in search performance lines up with similar surges in website traffic and new subscribers.