Hello friend,

I passed the 30 newsletters milestone. This is the 32nd newsletter.

Considering that I publish one post per week, that means I’ve been writing these for the past 8 months.

I’m far from being an expert, and the purpose of my newsletter is not chasing big numbers, but rather being 100% personal and authentic.

These are some lessons and ideas to consider if you’re willing to start your own newsletter.

Let’s get it started, shall we?

TL;DR

• Defining the ICP takes a lot of effort, but once you do that, the writing process becomes way easier.
• I decided to write a personal journal like newsletter, and not use AI for it.
• Learning English while writing.
• Developing habits was my struggle. The newsletter helped me in that sense.
• Choose your format. I like longer posts.

Defining the Ideal Customer Profile

This took so much time, and I’m not even sure I finally have properly defined my ICP. But what is an ICP, you might ask.

Here’s a definition from TechTerms.io:

My purpose is to meet other entrepreneurs, learn from them, and to bring some light on the whole process of building and deploying the apps for the developers and other people that might be interested in this topic.

That made the writing process so much easier, because now I know who I’m talking to.

In order to achieve that, I came up with a category system for my posts. Each post should fit into one category:

• 🧑‍🏫 Inspiration - Sharing apps and features that caught my eye
• 🛠️ Building - Showing how I build my apps, design decisions and coding bits
• 📈 Marketing - Marketing and social media lessons, trials and errors
• ✨ Reflections - Personal updates and honest stories about indie making

I don’t use AI to write my posts

I use AI to spellcheck everything, and to make sure that the message is clear. So these posts are not AI generated or AI automated, even though that’s where the trends are going.

Some people even created all sorts of tools, frameworks and startups that allow you to upload couple of your posts, train the AI model, and it writes the posts for you. It replicates using your own voice and your own words.

AI can create more punchy lines, and, by leveraging AI you can create so much content.

I choose not to do that.

Getting better at writing in English

One of the goals I had in mind was to learn how to properly express myself in English. I’m not a native English speaker, and I don’t speak in English on a daily basis.

While I was doing freelancing, I had daily calls, I talked to my customer for hours, and of course that was helpful. But since I stopped doing that for almost one year, I didn’t speak that often.

Writing the newsletter is one activity that forced me to think and write in English. I became better at it. I still make mistakes, but I sharpened my skills over time.

In a way, it’s been the “get out of your comfort zone” type of thing.

The process isn’t obvious, it’s slow, but, after almost one year I can tell I’m grateful that I chose to pick the difficult route.

The power of habit

If you know me well, you know I tend to switch a lot between the projects. My wife said I was making great progress this year by finishing so many projects, and keeping everything rolling.

Previously, I was working on side projects out of enthusiasm. But when they started being a bit boring, I’d abandon them.

Starting something very difficult and rigid, keeping it for couple of months and quitting was something I kept doing.

But this year I choose discipline. Writing a weekly newsletter was the perfect way to teach myself to be more disciplined and organized. I had to book time in my calendar for writing and reviewing it. Doing it on a weekly basis did so good to me.

My posts are long on purpose 🥱

I like reading, and I like writing. I’m writing whatever I think it’s important and relevant. I write for whoever wants to follow my journey.

I’m trying to document my journey, and, if you ever built something, you know that the process might be boring at times.

The beauty of storytelling is not necessarily what happened or presenting the actual facts, but rather presenting things from my point of view.

If you read my posts, I want you to be in my shoes and to see the journey through my eyes.

In conclusion

Thank you for reading my post. I hope you were inspired!

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See you soon!