We have now crossed 50k readers 😍, but our CTR's are falling. 😭

Major Win 🥳🤩

1. I left everything to my team for the last three weeks and they managed it amazingly well. Because of all the travel, I could not pay attention to day-to-day operations but my team leveled up and delivered. Proud of them. ❤️

2. Our content quality is increasing phenomenally. We have been producing some of the best content on the internet and people are loving it. I am so proud of what we are building here.

3. We have now crossed 50,000 readers across publications. 🥳🤩❤️

Challenges

1. I don’t know how to monetize the newsletters yet.

   • Subscription fees are not an option, but I will still experiment with it next week. Hope we don’t fall flat.

   • I don’t want to sell courses ideally. It is like my last option, though the world, people around me, and the team is forcing me to do it. I don’t want to sell Hopium. I want people to stop learning and start acting.

     

   • I want to sell something fun or execution based. Probably a service as an Agency or toys, or goodies that I would love. But still unsure, don’t have a very clear idea.

     My stubbornness in not selling a course might lead us to bankruptcy. Haha. But would delay it as much as possible. 😅Breaking my head on this.

2. The brand partnerships are not converting in India. Either emails are exploited so much, or marketing managers don’t understand the concept of sponsored emails. We are not able to close any brand partnership deals. People are not even ready to try it out for free. 😢
   The current ads I am getting and through the Beehiiv ad network and they pay negligible.

3. Though our ORs are increasing, our CTRs are falling.

   

   Product Monk | Used to be 3-4%

   

   Marketing Monk | Used to 7-8%

   It is unclear to me if only clicks have reduced overall reading.
   Confusion:

   • If people are not reading, they should unsubscribe, or report spam or not open. But Open Rates are increasing. So they must like it.

   • If they are reading, why ain’t they clicking or acting? Is it they are used to links and psychologically ignore it and just rush to the main content?

   I will have to do some experiments and figure out.

4. I am still debating the idea of launching a podcast or not. I would love to do it, but it has a huge cost for production and want to be ready so that it doesn’t fall flat. But then, how do I ensure it will be successful and people will love it and it will grow? Ahhh! 🤯
   Next week, I will put my thoughts to structure and ask you folks, if you would love to listen to the podcast. You folks can guide me.
   Meanwhile, if any of you run a podcast, let’s get on a call and teach me things. Reply to this email.

Future Experiments 🤩

Would any of you be interested in building a newsletter together? A cohort kinda of setup. For a nominal fee, where we do some sessions, where I run you through everything I have learned so far, share resources and everything under the sky about newsletters, and get your newsletters up and running. A 2-week kind of execution-based program.
Outcome: You will have your newsletter.

If I get enough yes, I will try to put together a small 2-week - execution program with some of the best folks running newsletters. Not a learning program, an execution program. Let me know.

Meanwhile, feel free to play around in beehiiv and get a taste of how newsletters platforms work.

Stats ☕️

Product Monk → 31,845 Readers (↑ 5,237)

Marketing Monk → 14,065 Readers (↑ 3,501)

Adventures of India → 5,534 Readers (↑ 4,157)

Experimentality → 3,199 Readers (↑ 1,914)

Click Worthy 🔥 Worth Your Attention

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  3 years ago, I participated in the first cohort of Build by Prashant and I loved it and the experience. He is distilling that expertise into something everyone aims for! Check out The $100 Club!