My first Anniversary
Hello there,
Today is special! You know why? I turn one! (I mean the blog letter)
This started with my curiosity of expanding my self-knowledge base beyond my regular everyday stuff, beyond the news. And clearly, there’s a lot of us around with the same interests.
And, that was it. The plan was and still is - to grow my knowledge base and alongside wire it up to people with equal curiosity.
Man, it’s been a year. Wow, didn’t see myself still being locked inside back when I started it. If you’ve been with me since the start, you know I’ve slowed down. I could blame other life’s priorities, but tbh there’s no excuse to learning. I don’t owe anything to anyone, but I still gotta make sure I get my grip back.
You already realize this isn’t a regular Knowledge•Day issue with a new worthwhile fact to learn about. This talk is something I do on and off. Hopefully, you’re still gonna like it. Continue along.
This is one of my very few projects that I started without much upfront planning and work.
I understand a blog or a newsletter can be done with ease with so many platforms available. Maybe that was the reason I started it in the first place. But it is the fastest I’ve personally started any project.
Why do I call it a project?
This isn’t just a bunch of pages with my words on. This has incrementally grown to be a lot more than my non-technical blog. I’ve recorded my inspiration and mid-step plans in these issues: [1], [2], and [3].
I’ll quickly cover in case you’ve joined very recently:
- Started with Revue - a newsletter platform (now acquired by Twitter),
- Wanted it to be a blog letter instead of just a newsletter. So I started posting my stuff on telegrph (Blogging platform by Telegram)
- Created a newsletter app myself, with minimal features. It required mostly manual control for everything. (It has no UI)
- Realised telegrph doesn’t get much eyes, moved KD to Medium.
- Still wanted to own it. Found a decent Jekyll theme and switched over to my own domain.
- Improved my internal software meanwhile, now at least I don’t have to handhold it. I just give it the Markdown-formatted text, which I anyway use for the blog, and you get this good-looking email.
- Can’t ignore the other chores - logo design, marketing, setup the blog letter signups in static website…
Speaking of marketing, I’ve had Shoumya’s help with a couple of things. Thank you Shoumya for sticking along!
You see, all these points above don’t even talk about the main thing - The words that I try to convey with KD, and that’s what my point is - It’s not just a blog, is a project.
I have achievements to share
I’m not writing to a tree.
Sure I don’t have the visibility I aspired for this blog letter, I’ve had my moments of happiness as I saw some feedback from some of the visitors randomly.
- My third issue: “From Bitcoin to Mining to Halving, all explained like we’re five”, within 24 hours of sharing on Medium caught up the eyes of a popular medium publisher in Crypto space - The Capital, and the same is now published in that. (extra…)
- Issue 25: “Let’s talk about chocolates and benefits” caught the eyes of a CEO of a California-based Startup. He has a background in biosciences and praised the details and mentions of the scientific names of the acids. Man, I can’t describe how aweseome did it feel to hear that.
- And then there were motivating words from Vyshnavi especially. Thank you for sticking along, and thanks Ben as well for the support.
Future plans
Will all that said, I do agree things didn’t go as planned. And the enthusiasm isn’t the same as it was there when I started it.
I’m not thinking of shutting down the blog letter just yet, as there’s a lot to write about in my memo, and a lot to be done on the “project” side of it. Here are the things I think I can do to improve my contribution to KD.
- Gotta focus on marketing more, that has been negligible. We already have an Instagram and a Twitter page. I’ve got to increase activities on those.
Fun fact: This is issue #39, and on Instagram, I’ve so far posted about issue #11 in total.
- Earlier I had started a telegram group for discussion, knowledge sharing and, chills. It, unfortunately, didn’t take off, and I’ve decided to cancel it to limit the number of corners requiring my attention.
- This blog letter started with me sending 2 emails each week. I had the energy and the topics. But over time, the feedback loop has slowed down, and so did my frequency of sending this blog letter. Lately, I’ve decided to send it fortnightly, i.e., Every 15 days.
Now the plan is to improve consistency and send on 10th and 25th of every month. I know today is the 17th, but of course, exceptions would have to be there, today is the anniversary :-p - If you’ve been an early joiner, you’d know there were two variants of this blog letter - Knowledge•Day and KD Shots. KD Shots was down due to me mostly making it the same as the main KD.
There’s another idea I’m thinking of, I’m weighing the possibility of another variant of this blog letter, to be called KD TiLT. Details follow in the next issue, that is, on the 25th.
Request for support
You’ve read this far. You know you kinda like it.
Do you know what I like? More feedback, and more listeners.
I’d love it if you share with me your thoughts about this blog letter, if you don’t recall much, feel free to head up to the website for a recap. Just reply to this email, I’d use some feedback right now. I’m up for chit-chat too! :)
And, share with friends, they might like some or most of what I share.