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Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Growing a newsletter and a website to 35K subscribers and 100K visitors per month in 2 years. AMA πŸ‘‡

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Hi everyone! I'm the founder of Ness Labs, a platform to help knowledge workers achieve more without sacrificing their mental health. We publish evidence-based content around productivity, creativity, and knowledge management. Our weekly newsletter is read by 35,000 subscribers, and we have around 100,000 people visiting our website each month. We monetize these through sponsored interviews with founders of tools for thought. Past sponsors include Notion, Obsidian, and MindMeister. We also run a paid community for knowledge workers with 2,500 members. Finally, I'm experimenting with a YouTube channel β€” still very new and definitely out of my comfort zone! I sent the very first newsletter two years ago. You can see the Product Hunt launch from 2019 here and my first AMA here. It's been an amazing journey, with now two employees and a team of freelance writers. Ask me anything about starting a content business from scratch, building an audience on Twitter, managing a community, or anything else you want to know more about :)
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Ash
Hi @anthilemoon I appreciate you taking the time to do these AMA's and talks. Lots of respect starting the new YouTube channel as well! Great to see you always learning, growing and being an advocate for mindful creating 😊 Question around the Ness Labs community: In your observations, how are values of kindness and 'paying it forward' best cultivated when growing a community? How do you go about creating a community that supports each other and makes time regardless of their many personal commitments?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@modernafflatus Hi Ash, so good to hear from you! I'm glad you're enjoying the YouTube channel despite the obvious fact that I am way out of my comfort zone when it comes to recording videos :) Regarding your question: I'm a bit biased, because the Ness Labs community is genuinely one of the kindest, most generous ones I have ever had the chance to be a part of. This is probably due to the topics we explore together, such as mental health, mindfulness, creativity, etc. I think the two key ways to build a community that supports each other are (1) attracting members that feel joy when helping other people; (2) actively highlighting the benefits of contributing to the community. For example, we let any member of our community host workshops and talks around topics of their choice. What's in it for them? Well, for most of them, it's the very first time they'll have the opportunity to give a talk. They'll get constructive yet kind feedback from the community, as well as practice time and the ability to say they gave a talk at Ness Labs, which can be great for their career. And the rest of the community can learn from their expertise. Everyone wins :)
Vim Girl
Hi there Anne! I'm a big fan of your newsletter. It was actually one of the few women-lead newsletter that I drew inspiration from when starting my own newsletter. My question is...did you ever have days where you weren't able to send out an issue? Or was it a pretty smooth journey? If not, what were some challenges you faced when trying to deliver content on a super consistent schedule?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@v1mg1rl1 Thank you so much, I'm so glad you find the newsletter helpful! I have missed three or four editions since I launched the newsletter. All of them were planned breaks as I was on holiday, except for one when I learned that my grandma passed away as I was typing the introduction to the newsletter. I try to practice flexible consistency, mostly sticking to the schedule, but not beating myself up when life happens β€” or, in this case, death.
Travis Northcutt
@anthilemoon I just want to say congratulations! Two years ago you posted "I've started writing Maker Mind in July and it has grown to 2,300 subscribers and almost 100K visitors, all organically." and now you're up to 35,000 subscribers! That is crazy awesome πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘ [https://www.producthunt.com/disc...]
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@tnorthcutt Thank you so much, Travis! I really appreciate it :)
Andy Dent
I'm a big fan of Ann-Laure and the community. My only regret is I don't have enough time to engage with them!
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@andydentperth1 Thank you, Andy! It's okay, the community is not going anywhere :)
Jen Sako
Hello! I'm a big fan of your newsletter. As far as creating free resources to get people to sign up for productivity newsletters, what have you seen that's been the most successful?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@jen_sako1 Thank you, Jen! I'm really glad you enjoy the newsletter. We have a few lead magnets for the newsletter, but really what works best is when other readers recommend the newsletter to friends they think may enjoy the content. That's why we have links at the bottom of each edition to share the newsletter on Whatsapp or Twitter :)
Aleksi Halsas
Hi! What are the main channels that you get visitors from to your website? And have you done any link building to your site?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@aleksi_halsas1 Hi Aleksi! The two main channels are Twitter and search engines. We haven't done any proper link building (that's on my long to-do list of improvements I want to make on the website) but I do try to always link back to older articles when I publish a new one. Our SEO is pretty decent at the moment, but it could be much better!
Jeremy Bradley
Hi Anne-Laure! How much content do you include in each newsletter release? And how do you decide what's relevant? I suppose it must have been challenging in the beginning.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@jeremycbradley Hi Jeremy! We include 2 original articles + 1 YouTube video + 3 interesting tweets. I have always followed my curiosity when it comes to selecting topics: if I'm finding something interesting, I'm hoping our readers will find it interesting as well :)
Alexey Shashkov
Hey, Anne-Laure. Thank you for this AMA. Much appreciated. How to build an audience on Twitter? Where do I start?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@shashcoffe I'm not an expert, but I'd start by defining your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to learn from other people, promote your work, establish your expertise - or maybe a mix? Then, I'd try to figure out who "your people" are - in my case, it's knowledge workers who are prone to burning out. It means they are a bit geeky, curious, love trying new things, and also ambitious, driven, and could definitely benefit from taking care of their mental health. What about your tribe? Finally, you just need to consistently engage with your people :) Contribute helpful thoughts under their tweets, re-share anything interesting they have posted, and add to the intellectual wealth of your tribe by sharing your own thoughts, asking questions, etc. Do this for long enough and you'll have more than an audience: you'll have a tribe.
Alexey Shashkov
@anthilemoon Thank you so much, Anne-Laure. I can’t thank you enough. πŸ™ These are really cool questions. I wrote it down, and I'm going to answer.
Komal Narwani
I love Ness Labs! You guys put in some real hours for amazing quality research. As we're building a tool for thought - it's a godsend. Thank you! πŸ™
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@komalnarwani Thank you so much, Komal! I'm so glad you find Ness Labs helpful, it's a labour of love indeed :) And please keep us posted when you are ready to launch your tool for thought!
Komal Narwani
@anthilemoon Absolutely I will do, we're almost ready to launch following our pivot. Check out HTTP://www.weavit.ai!
Adiraj Gupta
This is so awesome! Do you monetize any other way than sponsored interviews? Like partnerships with products etc!
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
@adirajgupta Thank you, Adiraj! The two main ways we monetize are (1) sponsored interviews; (2) the paid community. I also sometimes do 1:1 coaching but that's a negligible part of our revenue.
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