This is a weekly email (the one you are reading right now) that goes out every Friday. I share my thoughts, findings and learnings each week, with a results update at the end of each month.

The updates take around 90 minutes, and any additional guides or articles take around two to three hours, so I spend roughly eight to ten hours creating content for this publication each month.

Results this month:

Thoughts:

I actually got up to 55 subs this month, but had two unsubscribes, knocking me back down to 53 (which is still an increase on last month). I’ve changed the content recently, making my emails and posts more about content marketing in general rather than just summaries of my weekly activity relating to the experiment. That may have attracted new interest, but also put some people off.

Open rates have dipped slightly and have fallen below my target of 50%. I’m not sure if that is down to the change in content, if people are losing interest, or if it’s just a blip. We’ll have to see whether it picks back up next month or not.

In terms of earnings, I still haven’t had any new members sign up through this platform. Ad revenue is still minimal, and I haven’t been sent nearly as many ad opportunities this month (some weeks I haven’t had any).

Focus for August:

I still haven’t had much luck growing my subscriber list for this publication, and I’m not really sure why. It got a fair bit of interest when I launched, but it seems to have stagnated the last few months, and I really need to get it moving again.

I’d love your thoughts on these emails, so please do hit reply and let me know what you think. Do you read the emails? Are they too long? Not interesting enough? What topics would you like me to cover? Have you lost interest? What would make you more likely to open them? I need your input!

This is a monthly newsletter that goes out every Monday. It has replaced my old daily emails and my LinkedIn newsletter.

I create one weekly email which includes a ten-minute task and some anagrams. The tasks and anagrams have all been pre-written for the year, so just need pasting in each week. The body of the email takes me around 30 minutes to write. I also write a weekly web-only post, which takes around 60-90 minutes. Altogether, I spend around six to eight hours per month on content for this publication.

Results this month:

Thoughts:

This is the newsletter that I probably push the most, but I only seem to get one or two new subs per month, which is frustrating.

However, I finally got around to setting up Google Analytics so I can monitor traffic, and the site is getting visitors, so that is good news. I’d prefer those visitors to turn into subscribers, but at least I know my content is attracting interest.

Focus for August:

I’ve just set up a new Pinterest board relating to this publication, and I’ve started turning some of the content into pins (which I’m also using on socials too). So I’ll be doing more of this and continuing to reshare the posts on Medium.

This is a monthly newsletter where I share my most recent blog posts and dates for the upcoming New Brew Networking events.

I write a top five post and a monthly roundup newsletter every month. I also add between one and three additional posts per month, depending on what we’ve been up to. So I spend anywhere between three and eight hours per month on content.

Results this month:

Thoughts:

No changes with this publication, and it is still purely a passion project. I think I’ll probably remove it from the results emails going forward, as it’s not going to make any money (certainly not shortly anyway) and it’s always going to be my lowest priority in terms of growth.

This is my most recent publication, with the free version going live at the start of March. The paid membership went live on April 1st.

I write one blog post (available to anyone) each month, and I write and record one member-only audio post each month. I also write two emails per month - one for free subs and one for paid. So I probably spend around eight to ten hours a month on content creation.

Results so far:

Thoughts:

I wanted to love Substack, but I just don’t. I’m going to give this publication year, but I’m not sure it will run much past that, as I find Substack hard work. There is so much noise on there, and I don’t think I have the energy for what feels like yet another social media platform.

Focus for August:

I’ll continue sharing my free and paid content and posting notes, but I don’t think I’ll be pushing the publication outside of Substack. If I can’t grow the newsletter and paid membership from within the Substack community in the next few months, I’ll move the paid subs over to one of the other platforms and just run the free version of WWL.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with the results. It’s not about the money - that was never really the goal of the experiment (although it would be nice if I were being rewarded more for my efforts). But money aside, I am surprised at how slow the growth is.

I’m constantly seeing people talking about hitting 1000 subs in a much shorter time than it’s taken me to not even reach 100. And while I do know that some of them are buying lists or scraping data, they can’t all be bullshitting. So even though I’m pretty happy to be growing organically (however slowly), I do occasionally wonder if I’m doing something wrong.

Maybe I’m not pushy enough. I’m not constantly ramming my content down people’s throats. Who knows? But I need to figure it out because I’d like to finish the year with a bit more to show for my efforts. I’m not sure anyone will buy a book called: How to Build an Email List of 50 People in 12 months.

I think part of the problem is that growing my email list isn’t my main focus. I have to promote and do the stuff that pays the bills. But because I’m marketing the other stuff, I can’t focus all my attention on promoting these emails. So it’s a chicken-egg situation.

Maybe one day my membership will be big enough to pay my mortgage, but that day isn’t today. And, honestly, even if (or when) that time comes, I don’t think I’d want to stop doing the copywriting training, one-to-one work or bespoke support because I genuinely love doing it.

Thank you for following my progress so far. I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to email me letting me know whether you find this content useful and what else you’d like to see.

And if you’d like some help with your marketing strategy, you can book 90 minutes with me for only £150.

That’s it for this week and the month. I’ll be back next week with more updates. Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts - I reply personally to every response.

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