Indie Hackers Interview

Blogging Guide Featured on Indie Hackers-Blogging Insights

Hey everyone,

Recently, Blogging Guide was featured as part of the Indie Hackers interview series, which shares the stories of entrepreneurs and the online businesses they’ve built.

For those not familiar with Indie Hackers:

Indie Hackers is a website and community focusing on helping entrepreneurs become profitable while remaining independent.

Indie Hackers is without a doubt one of my favorite online communities. I think it is valuable from a personal brand-building perspective, as well as a source of tremendous entrepreneurial insight.

I’ve done a few interview before, but this interview goes into fairly specific details explaining how I started writing on Medium, why I started Blogging Guide, and my digital marketing strategy going-forward.

I think many of you will find some of the commentary useful. Below are some excerpts from the full interview.

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Hello! What's your background, and what are you working on?

My name is Casey Botticello, and I'm an entrepreneur, digital marketing consultant, and private equity investor. I'm a partner at Black Edge Consulting, a strategic communications firm, specializing in online reputation management, digital marketing, and crisis management. I'm also the founder and former president of the Cryptocurrency Alliance, an independent expenditure-only committee (Super PAC) dedicated to cryptocurrency advocacy. I previously worked at a tech startup, a lobbying firm, and in real estate development. I'm a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania.

Recently, I have been focused on building a Substack newsletter and online community called Blogging Guide.

Blogging Guide is a premium Substack publication which helps writers navigate the digital publishing landscape and shows them how to monetize their content. Blogging Guide was awarded the Substack Independent Writer Grant for 2020. Blogging Guide has over 150 paying subscribers, and roughly $500 MRR.

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What motivated you to get started with Blogging Guide?

I've always been fascinated by the digital publishing world. I'm both a blogger and an avid observer of any new and emerging platforms developed to help creators.

One of the toughest things about becoming a blogger is trying to navigate through the sea of vague and dated articles and guides. I was writing on Medium about a variety of topics, but I was also curious about how platforms like Medium actually worked, how product managers made decisions, and how writers selected which platform they would trust to host their content.

After writing a number of articles deconstructing every minute detail of writing on Medium, through my publication Medium Blogging Guide, I knew there was further demand for this type of practical and useful content.

I decided to focus on the larger digital publishing industry (as opposed to just one platform like Medium), and I later created the Blogging Guide newsletter.

While I knew I had created a lot of valuable content specific to Medium, I was initially worried that my writing may only be financially successful under Medium's partner program. However, I admired the business model Substack was just beginning to promote, and decided to launch Blogging Guide on Substack, as a newsletter/blog hybrid with an associated online community for writers.

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What went into building the initial product?

When I first had the idea for Blogging Guide, I was writing part time on Medium and focused on my consulting business for the majority of my income. However, I was excited at the potential to combine two of my passions: writing and creating a new business.

While I originally thought I could repurpose a lot of the content from Medium to Substack, I quickly realized that if I was going to do a premium newsletter, the content would all need to be 100% original. This meant I'd need to produce a lot of new content.

So I started drafting potential posts in my spare time while I tried to figure out at least a vague content calendar and editorial direction for the newsletter.

I surveyed some of my Medium readers and members of a few of the related writing Facebook groups I ran, and received a lot of positive feedback. I think the next steps are best explained in a timeline.

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What's your tech stack?

In terms of the products I used for Blogging Guide, the set up was actually quite simple.

• Substack: Underlying subscription newsletter architecture

• Medium: Amazing audience reach and SEO

• Gumroad: Facilitating digital downloads of my products

• Slack: Communication

• Notion: Content calendars, workflows, and general organization

• Indie Hackers: Support and inspiration as entrepreneur

• Canva: Creating images for posts

Because all of these are free products (or at least offer key features for free), Blogging Guide didn't actually require almost any initial funding. As is the case with most of my digital entrepreneurial ventures, it required me investing my time. While I value my time highly, this is advantageous because there was almost no overhead, limited financial risk, the newsletter model is perfectly scalable, and I didn't need anyone else to run Blogging Guide.

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How have you attracted users and grown Blogging Guide?

I monetized an audience I had already spent more than a year building. Blogging Guide was the natural next step for me. I'm fortunate to have engaged with and helped many bloggers in the months and years leading up to this, effectively building my own audience.

I won a writing grant from Substack which helped boost my visibility and gave my newsletter some additional credibility.

I actively promote Blogging Guide across many of my social media platforms. This could consist of reposting key lead-generating articles or simply including my newsletter URL in various profile bios.

I've continued to manage online communities of related users (mainly my Medium Writing Facebook group). These are some of my biggest supporters and the people I have interacted personally with the most.

I've written some related guest posts to help expand my audience, been a guest on a few podcasts, and was featured on a YouTuber's channel, with over 1.5 million followers as a Subject Matter Expert on blogging.

For tips on growing your Substack newsletter and converting free sign ups to paid subscribers, I'll recommend this article I wrote which covers this topic in great detail.

For those who are on the fence about creating a subscription newsletter (on any platform), my general advice is to give it a shot if you have a decent following (on any platform or online forum) or you are really passionate about a niche topic.

Subscription newsletters have technically existed for a long time, but there's never been an easier time to create one without any tech savvy. Not to mention that the process of using a platform like Substack is infinitely easier than having separate sites/platforms (such as your own website, hosting, third party payment processor correctly integrated into your site, using Mailchimp or some other costly email marketing system, etc).

Subscription newsletters are not only a great way to earn some extra money, but the flexibility and scalability of digital publishing allow for a single content creator to effectively leverage their limited time. Subscription newsletters also act as a portfolio of work, and can be used to help promote your related products, companies, or even articles on other sites.

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What's your advice for indie hackers who are just starting out?

Don't be deterred by a lack of tech skills. Anyone can become a successful entrepreneur with the suite of no-code tools and user-friendly software that is now available.

Perfection truly is the enemy of success. This is something I still grapple with personally, but I think people tend to overlook this advice.

There are really only two ways to make money directly through writing: having content that's useful or entertaining.

Don't fall into the trap of writing for yourself if you are primarily concerned with making money.

Explore every free tool you can get your hands on! Almost all the tools I utilized to create Blogging Guide (and many other profitable businesses) were 100% free. You don't need to spend a fortune on enterprise solutions or software intended for larger users. Many of the amazing free tools that I discovered actually inspired what I ultimately created.

I'm not a proponent of "Hustle Culture" at the expense of your health. Conversely, being an entrepreneur requires enormous amount of time, and it's rarely conducive to a healthy work life balance. Which is why passion for your projects is so critical. Be prepared to work hard. Regardless of whether you're successful or not, you will almost certainly invest a massive amount of time just exploring and developing a new product or service.

Don't get caught up trading time for money performing a task similar to your entrepreneurial venture.

For example, if you are a writer looking to create a newsletter or some sort of community, you'll get a lot of offers to perform freelance work as you get closer and closer to success. Not only will the number of clients increase as your standing in your niche community rises, but the rate that clients will pay you will increase. A lot of people "sell out" at this point, take the higher wage, and abandon their passion project. I've seen this happen many times. If you make it that far, don't settle for a higher paying version of freelance work.

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Until next time!

Casey

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