From 0 to 737 subscribers in 30 days

How I bootstrapped Remoteur with €53 and no existing audience

Remoteur is a bi-weekly newsletter of remote jobs for pros based in Europe. This is the story of how I built and launched it.

Tuesday, 27 June

Idea

Remote job boards are mostly US-centric, how about Europe?

My research on Google Trends, Google Search (specifically in “Searches related to remote jobs”), Twitter, Quora and Hacker News convinced me to build an MVP. At first I thought at another job board, then I decided for something quicker and easier to launch: a newsletter.

Name

First things first: I needed a short, meaningful and memorable name.

The Big Tuts experiment (some kind of “Quora meets Kickstarter” short-lived platform I launched with Massimiliano and Adriano two years ago) made me extra cautious with cheeky names, so after combining “remote” with “Europe” I came up with an innocent and french flavored “Remoteur”.

Well, Marc, you made your point. Lesson learned: U is next to I on a QWERTY keyboard :)

Domain, Twitter and Revue

After I recovered from the surprise of finding that remoteur.com was available, I bought an hosting plan on Serverplan for just €29 and opened an account on Twitter and Revue.

I chose Revue over Mailchimp & Co for its simplicity and focus on community: I was pretty sure they would help me to increase my newsletter visibility. And last but not least, I found a coupon code to get three months of the Pro plan for free (normally it’s $5 a month).

Logo

Next step: the logo. I’m not a graphic designer, so I downloaded a free ready-to-go logo from logodust.com, courtesy of Fairpixels (thanks to Justin Jackson and his Tiny Marketing Wins for the tip).

Downloaded from logodust.com — Free & open sourced logos

Friday, 30 June

Value proposition

After setting up my custom domain and having made sure the DNS records were updated, I wrote this value proposition:

Remote jobs in Europe delivered to your inbox bi-weekly. First issue goes out July 4

I chose and announced a close date for two reasons:

to make a public commitment and launch without second thoughts (“Just Fucking Ship” as Amy Hoy would say);
to instill a bit of fear of missing out (FOMO) something “real”. First issue would be sent at the latest within four days.

1 subscriber (me) and 0 issues, not exactly social proof numbers: I would have hidden those if only Revue would allow it

Designer News and Reddit

Time to spread the word: first step, Designer News. My post got 6 upvotes, no comments and a tweet to their 14K followers:

But here’s the best thing: the lack of competition - I chose to post on Friday, the least competitive workday - allowed me to stay on the Designer News front page for the entire weekend.

The lack of competition allowed me to stay on the Designer News front page for the entire weekend

Good thing, because my post on Reddit was basically ignored by the 46K readers of the Digital Nomad subreddit.

Quora

Next platform, Quora. I found these related questions:

I answered with a quick post been viewed 1K+ times so far:

Check out a free bi-weekly newsletter called Remoteur: every other Tuesday I go on a treasure hunt and share some of the best jobs for Europe-based remote workers.

Twitter and Slack

Remoteur’s first tweet to 1 follower (me)

My RT to ~600 followers

I posted the link to Remoteur’s tweet on Unicorn Think Tank, Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré’s Slack community of CRO and marketing experts I joined in May, and wrote this message:

Hey guys! I’m launching Remoteur, a free bi-weekly newsletter with remote jobs for pros based in Europe. First issue goes out July 4: it would be great if you could subscribe, share and/or show some love. Thanks!

Nichole and Jes kindly helped me gain some exposure on Twitter:

Monday, 3 July

Hacker News

I posted on Hacker News, got 3 upvotes and no comments. As for Reddit, I’m not involved in that community, so I didn’t expect to get much traction.

Cold messages

I sent a cold email to Jane Portman and a similar DM on Twitter to Heidi Pun, two european pros I chatted with on Product Hunt:

Hi Jane/Heidi,

I hope everything is fine! Maybe you remember me as the maker of Big Tuts on Product Hunt. By the way, I’m launching Remoteur, a free bi-weekly newsletter with remote jobs for pros based in Europe. First issue goes out tomorrow, it would be great if you could show some love.

Here’s a handy pre-populated Tweet to help me spread the word:

https://ctt.ec/K6GEo

Thanks! :)

Fun fact: they both tweeted!

Tuesday, 4 July

5 days later at 11am CEST I sent the first issue to 224 subscribers, here are the (very good, according to Mailchimp and Upstart.me) stats:

48,66% opened
66,97% clicked
0 unsubscribed

Remoteur’s first issue

Another cold message

Less than two hours after sending the first issue I wrote a cold email to Revue, basically asking to be featured in their gallery of hottest newsletters:

Hi guys,what a breeze! Just sent out to 224 subscribers the first issue of Remoteur (remote jobs in Europe): http://www.remoteur.com

It would be an honor to be featured in your gallery, any chance?

Thank you and big ups for Revue, really loving it!Best from the city of Romeo and Juliet,

Silvio BompanFounder @remoteurdotcom

Revue’s founder Martijn de Kuijper replied a week later:

Hey Silvio, thanks for reaching out! I just added your newsletter to our Explore page!

I was so happy that when Martijn asked me to check Revue’s italian translations I couldn’t help but say yes :)

Thursday, 6 July

Facebook

I opened a Facebook page just to spend €20 for this ad:

“Next issue goes out July 18” on a July 6 post, not the best use of the urgency/scarcity principle. I mean, really, what was I thinking?

My target audience was 18-45 aged people living in Europe and matching (at least) one of the following:

InterestsDigital nomad, Smashing Magazine, Web developer, Web design, Marketing, Growth hacking or Copywriting
BehaviorsSmall business owners
EmployersWork from home
Job titleSearch Engine Optimizer (SEO)
Life EventAway from hometown

The results? 27.747 impressions, 521 clicks and less than 20 newsletter subscribers: I’m sure there is considerable room for improvement.

I’ll need:

a more persuasive copy;
an eye-catching image;
a book/course on the subject (“Facebook Ads Manual” by Mojca Marš seems to be a legitimate candidate).

Product Hunt

Product Hunt is an integral part of launching a new product these days.

Mindful of the unsuccessful launch of Contento (a now-defunct Big Tuts pivot), I wanted to ask someone with a larger followership - and able to submit products directly, without having to go through the review process - to post Remoteur for me.

I came across this tweet from Bram Kanstein, dutch maker of the most upvoted product of all-time, Startup Stash:

and replied with:

Then I waited… and nothing happened.

Monday, 10 July

Established that Bram wasn’t kidding about being selective (or maybe he was just busy), I found out that Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré, who is - among many other things - moderator at PH, has a “Submit a product for review for Product Hunt” form on her site.

Here’s what I wrote, asking to be posted the following Friday:

Hi Nichole,as you surely know remote job boards are mostly US-centric. That’s why I decided to go on a treasure hunt every two weeks and share some of the best jobs specifically for Europe-based remote workers.

Launched 10 days ago, first issue went out to 224 subscribers on July 4 (http://www.remoteur.com/issues/remote-jobs-in-europe-issue-1-63661), next one is scheduled for July 18.

Remoteur has already been on Designer News front page, being featured on PH would be a blessing :)

Thanks for your time!Silvio

She replied a few hours later:

Hi, I’d be happy to post this product for you on Friday.

That’s me after Nichole’s email

Friday 14 and Saturday 15 July aka “OMG Product Hunt”

Just before lunch I got an exciting mention on Twitter:

A note about that 12:35pm CEST

The Product Hunt leaderboard resets every day at 12:01am Pacific. So if you want to get the best initial traction you should submit you product early in the morning, and that’s exactly what Nichole did:

Nichole (who’s from Tampa, Florida) posted at around 6am! I’ll never be able to thank her enough :)

I tagged the Product Hunt post with “Hiring and Recruiting”, “Nomad Lifestyle”, “Email Newsletters”, “Tech” and “Website” to get a chance to appear as an alternative of famous remote job boards like We Work Remotely or Remote | OK, then I added a couple of screenshots and wrote a greeting comment.

I asked to be included into the PH collection “Find a Remote Job”, but I was late to the party: “Collections are closed” Jake Crump of the PH community team told me, “but we do encourage you to make your own and promote it! Get creative, PH retweets cool collections”. Anyway, being included in Raffaele Gaito’s “Italian Products” collection has at least cheered me up a bit.

At 1pm CEST I reluctantly sent an email with no value for my 330 subscribers to celebrate the Product Hunt launch, trying to be extra cautious not to directly ask for upvotes (it’s against PH netiquette).

I reluctantly sent an email to my 330 subscribers just to celebrate the Product Hunt launch

Here are the stats:

52,73% opened
18,97% clicked (29 clicks on the Product Hunt image link)
5 unsubscribed

Remoteur’s second issue

I published this post on Facebook and spent €4 to promote it:

My target audience was 18–40 aged people living in Europe and interested in Product Hunt. The results? 741 impressions and 12 clicks.

In the afternoon Adam Davies came out of the blue telling me I’ve been featured on INBOXME:

You flatter me, Adam!

More good news came while I was sleeping, first with a tweet from Product Hunt to their 281K followers:

20 likes, not bad :)

Then with this:

Fun fact: PH upvotes doubled since launch day

Unfortunately Remoteur has been “only” the 8th most upvoted product of the day, so I couldn’t get extra visibility with PH newsletters: a product has to be in the top 5 for the daily version, top 6 for the weekly one.

By the way, Remoteur subscribers doubled thanks to Product Hunt!

Tuesday, 18 July

Four days after the Product Hunt launch I sent the issue No. 3 to 656 subscribers. Here are the stats:

42,6% opened
56,99% clicked
1 unsubscribed

I didn’t mention the PH launch in the intro, I tried to promote the Facebook page with the P.S. trick instead

Automated DM? No, thanks

One week before I set up Crowdfire to automatically send a direct message to each new follower of my personal profile on Twitter:

Hi there, thanks for the follow! Interested in getting a bi-weekly digest of remote jobs in Europe? Subscribe for free: http://www.remoteur.com

I’m an introvert and I easily (and erroneously) feel guilty for being too pushy, but this time I knew I wasn’t wrong. In fact Darius Groza replied with this DM:

Already did that organically, stop automating everything man

Not the best way to start a conversation, but after I apologized we ended up chatting about vacations in Italy, free drinks and british humour: as I should have imagined, people discover my profile from Remoteur, not viceversa.

People discover my Twitter profile from Remoteur, not viceversa

No more annoying and useless automated DMs from me, I promise!

August

August is the busiest holiday month of the year, but I decided to stick to the original plan, sending every other Tuesday three regular issues with 20 jobs each.

Issue No. 4

Sent on 1 August to 737 subscribers:

38,32% opened
54,61% clicked
1 unsubscribed

4th issue’s long intro: probably too many CTAs, in hindsight

Remoteur subscribers and I are in the same niche, so I thought it would be a good idea to share the books I’m reading. Best of all Matt Isherwood agreed to offer my readers a coupon code, and Alessia Camera willingly spoke about Remoteur on her Facebook page dedicated to Startup Marketing:

Issue No. 5

Sent on 15 August to 774 subscribers:

34,88% opened
50,37% clicked
5 unsubscribed

5th issue’s short intro. Yes, this is the Medium post I was talking about :)

Issue No. 6

Sent on 29 August to 795 subscribers:

34,34% opened
46,52% clicked
2 unsubscribed

6th issue’s intro

I experimented a couple of things:

I changed the mail subject from a generic “Remote jobs in Europe — Issue #6” to a more specific (and hopefully catchy) “#6: Remote positions at Github, Jungle Scout, Super Spicy Media and others”;
I advanced the idea of a giveaway to get people to tweet about Remoteur.

Along with this I edited the welcome message from Revue’s default:

Thank you for subscribing to Remoteur!

You will receive updates straight to your inbox, but you can also check out the profile page for past and future issues.

Oh by the way, I wouldn’t mind if you gave my digest some love through Twitter or Facebook :-)

To this one:

Hooray, you’re subscribed to Remoteur!

You’ll receive updates straight to your inbox, but you can also check out remoteur.com for past issues.

Thanks again for subscribing, much appreciated. I send every other Tuesday, so look for the next issue very soon.

Best from Italy! — Silvio

P.S. Here’s a handy pre-populated tweet to help you spread the word about Remoteur :)

Recently I’ve edited the P.S. part, mentioning the giveaway:

P.S. I’m planning to do a little giveaway once we cross the 1000 subscribers line, feel free to share Remoteur with anyone you think might find it useful :)

Finally, I changed the “Join me in following this newsletter? Remoteur http://www.remoteur.com” pre-populated tweet into “Join me in following Remoteur, a newsletter of #remotejobs in Europe http://www.remoteur.com”.

What’s wrong and what’s next

Slow growth

With about 3 new emails per day, subscriber growth has been pretty slow but steady since the initial launch spike. Open and click rates are decreasing, but I guess it’s a normal physiological response in August: I’ll find out soon if I’m wrong.

Subscriber growth has been pretty slow but steady since the initial launch spike

3 new subscribers per day since the Product Hunt spike

Poor Google ranking

Remoteur’s WooRank score is only 54.7, so there’s considerable room for improvement. But I’ll have to replace Revue’s landing page with a custom one.

O Remoteur, where art thou? :(

Few RTs

Most of the companies I mention on Twitter ignore “their” tweet: honestly, I would have expected more retweets. Maybe I could make my posts more “visual” with tools like Canva or Pablo, but I’m afraid it would take too long.

Relax Jungle Scout, I’m not talking about you :)

What’s next

Here’s what I’m going to do in the short term:

a book giveaway to celebrate 1000 subscribers;
a custom landing page to get 100% control and overcome Revue limitations in terms of SEO, analytics and unfurling (the way Remoteur previews look on social media and messaging platforms);
I’ll consider advertising on Facebook (again) and/or sponsoring an email newsletter relevant to Remoteur’s niche;
I’ll try to promote Remoteur and participate regularly in 1-5 targeted Facebook groups I’ve joined recently.

Thanks for reading!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, please share your comments below. And if you’re a remote worker based in Europe, check out Remoteur.