2023 Unwrapped, Holidays and a Surprise
Unwrapping my 2023, announcing a 2 weeks pause + a Surprise!
2023 was an incredible year for me. I began writing this newsletter in the third week of January 2023, and since then, I have never missed a single week.
Maintaining this consistency has been extremely rewarding, but it has also been quite energy-consuming. For this reason, I have decided to take a two-week break and resume writing in the third week of January.
This will not only help me maintain the publication's consistency with its original start date but also give me a couple of weeks to breathe and think about how to improve this newsletter.
Since today also marks a year since I started this publication, today's issue is special, and I'll go through what happened and what's next in 2024.
In particular, I'll cover:
📈 Some Statistics about 2023
🏆 Best Articles of 2023
📋 What My Plans are for 2024
🎁 A End of the Year Gift! (for paid subscribers only)
📈 Some Statistics
As engineers, numbers are always interesting. So, even though they are not everything and always have to be put in context, I'll provide you with some.
15k Subscribers!
When I started writing this newsletter on Jan 16th, 2023, I didn't have any particular expectations, and it was more of an experiment than anything else. The only goal I set was to reach 1k subscribers by the end of 2023, and to be honest, it wasn't a strict goal since, knowing myself, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have kept it up for so long. I can't count how many blogs I've started and abandoned in my life.
So, when I look at the stats of this newsletter today, they are simply unbelievable to me.
14.6k Subscribers
300k+ views of my articles
50 articles written this year
75 paid subscribers
$6K+ ARR (Annual Recurring Revenues)
What is most incredible to me is that until July this year, I had only 400 subscribers, and I was already happy with that!
So, how did I add up 14k subscribers in the last 6 months and more than 5k in the last month?
Three key elements:
🕺Social Presence
👥 Community
🎨 Visuals
Building Your Brand
While one of the most important things when writing a newsletter is consistency, consistency alone is pretty much useless. You want your articles to be read as much as possible, people to subscribe to your publication, and you to be recognized as an author.
Being on Substack, with its recommendation system, is useful (for instance, today The Hybrid Hacker is recommended by 42 other publications). However, without a well-known presence, getting recommendations from other newsletter authors can be challenging.
That's why, after accumulating 400 newsletter subscribers between January and July, I decided to focus and invest on building my brand. This involved:
Creating a community of digital creators where we could support each other.
Finding a distinctive element for my newsletter to be recognized among others.
Not everything was successful. Currently, my Instagram account (where I collect all my visuals) has very little engagement, with the majority of followers being accounts attempting to sell likes. Additionally, my X account has not seen much engagement, though I must admit that there has been some growth in the past couple of weeks.
The real game-changers, however, have been LinkedIn and Visuals.
As you can see, I had an almost inactive Linkedin account with 3k followers when I started at the beginning of July. In the last 6 months:
I added 15k followers
I wrote 140 posts
These posts generated 6M+ impressions!
How did I achieve that?
Again, consistency is important, but this is where building a community of people who support you and adding some distinctive traits to your content (visuals in my case) helped a lot.
I've put together a private community of 60+ digital creators focused on Engineering Leadership and Career Growth. With these people, we exchanged opinions, discussed content strategies, co-wrote newsletter articles, and much more. This not only was very helpful during difficult moments when my enthusiasm or energy levels were low, but also helped amplify my reach and connect with other people who then became part of my network of peers.
Adding visuals (over 100 in the past six months) gave a personal touch to my content. This contributed significantly to building my brand and becoming recognized by people.
🏆 Top Articles of 2023
Initially, this newsletter started as a simple link curation, but it quickly evolved into a series of original essays, each ranging from 1500 to 2000 words, on specific topics.
Writing these essays requires hours of research, which I regularly conduct throughout the week, followed by 5-6 hours of compiling my findings and translating them into a format that is easy to read and digest.
Although I always strive to maintain high standards in my writing, sometimes I'm particularly satisfied with the result.
This is my personal Top 5:
📋 What's Next in 2024?
While 2023 was already great, my commitment to writing great content and adding value for my readers remains high. Here are a few things I'm looking to do in 2024:
Chat: I have recently started using the chat feature on Substack to listen to your feedback and write about topics you'd like to hear more about. In 2024, I'd like to receive even more of this valuable feedback.
Video: those who know me are aware that I'm a bit reluctant when it comes to joining podcasts or recording videos. I'll be honest; it's one of my biggest weaknesses, as I simply dislike public speaking. However, videos are an excellent way to deliver content, which is why in 2024, I'm committed to working more on this kind of initiative.
Interviews/Collaborations: this year, I've already begun collaborating with some other great professionals, bringing their stories to this newsletter. I believe it adds significant value, and I plan to do this more often in 2024. If you have interesting stories about Engineering Management, Leadership, Career Growth, or Productivity and would like to be featured here on The Hybrid Hacker, please feel free to contact me.
Visuals: creating visuals requires considerable effort, but it's also one of the best ways to convey complex concepts or make lengthy articles more enjoyable. In 2024, I'm looking to invest more in visual content creation and improve its quality.
👥 Introducing the HH Slack Community
There's one more thing.
I had originally planned to launch this in 2024, but as a sign of appreciation to all the 75 people who have supported my work until now, today I'm launching The Hybrid Hacker Slack community in beta!
One thing I always dreamed of when I was growing in my engineering career was to have someone I could ask questions, discuss my doubts or concerns, and receive feedback quickly.
The idea is that all my paid subscribers will have access granted to my private Slack community, where I will be able to support them. It's a sort of live coaching that you'll have permanent access to.
But there's more. In the last six months, as I already mentioned, I've come to understand the power of having a small community where people can support each other, and that's exactly what I'd like this community to become. A place where people can talk freely and share their experiences with the aim of helping each other.
Even though Slack is not the best tool for building this kind of community, I decided to go with it because the majority of us use it every day for work, and I'm sure this will help with engagement.
At the moment, this is more of an experiment than anything else, so I'm really open to any kind of feedback. If you are already a paid user, you can join the community today.
If you are not a paid subscriber yet, there's no better moment to become one and start supporting my work. Until the end of the year, you can benefit from a 35% lifetime discount!
🎉🎆 I wish you a fantastic 2024, filled with chances to grow, improve yourself, and have fun adventures. May you reach your goals and dreams, and also take time to relax, find happiness, and spend time with your loved ones!
✌️ That’s all folks
That's all for today! As always, I would love to hear from my readers (and if you've made it this far, you're definitely one of the bravest). Please don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn and send a message. I always respond to everyone!