$2000/Month in 6 Months Writing About Software

Mahdi Yusuf writes about his success building Architecture Notes, a freemium newsletter 📫 about software architecture.

The inspiration for the project…

There were few explainers available when I first started programming software; instead, most information could be found in books or on obscure message boards.

The concept was to explain things and couple them with detailed infographics that illustrate them.

Mahdi hit a bit of a home run right out of the gate. His first post was about the engineering behind Datasette, “a tool for exploring and publishing data.” He interviewed the creator, created some infographics and wrote up an in-depth explainer 🧠

That post was shared on Hacker News (here) and did very well, gaining Mahdi ~1000 email subs.

Mahdi monetizes his newsletter with a premium membership. That costs $89/year and gives subscribers access to more content. He has about 25,000 subscribers total, and probably less than 40 are premium.

I reckon there’s a good blueprint here for any complex topic you might be familiar with. Something like 👇

• Interview key people in the industry
• Create clear explanations based on those interviews
• Publish as a newsletter
• Share posts in industry forums / subreddits
• Offer subscribers a premium upgrade

You don’t necessarily need to be an expert to do any of that.

But even though $2000/month after six months is impressive, expect it to be “tons of work” as it has been for Mahdi.

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