After hearing about @JanelSGM from @csallen, I spent the past few hours digging into her Twitter feed to see how she has been building Newsletter OS in public, from ideation to launch.

Here are some highlights in chronological order and what you can learn from the process:

1/ August 5 2020: Janel digs into '50+ newsletters' (note the number to build credibility) and creates a thread to discuss the lessons learnt. She also mentions that this is for a side project, which raises awareness of something she may be working on.

https://t.co/v8KdezZEge
2/ August 5 2020 (cont): Each tweet in the thread is focused on a key message, with clear pointers for newsletter writers to consider.

https://t.co/K49DYbYNc8
3/ September 1 2020: Janel tweeted about #buildinginpublic (note the hashtag) with @pabloheredia24 for @makerpad's challenge. While the project is https://t.co/tMb1qCnxVY and not NewsletterOS, Janel is getting in the reps on how to build in public.

https://t.co/Ge9yQ6Su3E
4/ October 18 2020: Janel hints at building her new product using @NotionHQ and @gumroad. But instead of telling the audience directly what the product is, she invites her audience to take a guess.

https://t.co/n2Y9cU8UUR
5/ Note that @JanelSGM also entices her audience to make a guess via offering a free copy for the first person who guesses right. This adds in the 2 elements of scarcity- volume (only 1 copy!) and time (first person who guesses right).
6/ October 19 2020: Janel announces her purchase of a domain. Further preempts her audience by telling them that more details will be announced soon.

https://t.co/Q4vNMnYQte
7/ October 20 2020: Officially announces the pre-sales of Newsletter OS. Note the clear and concise structure of the tweet:

- Headline (what is being launched?)
- Who is this for?
- What is the problem?
- What is the solution?
https://t.co/uhJNKtmHK1
8/ In the same thread, she gives a quick peek into the product, such as objectives and key results page, email boilerplates. Note that these are just screenshots of Notion pages, which do not necessarily require much time!
9/ Introduces scarcity to pricing- $10 for the first 30 copies, then raised price to $15, then to $29 once $2k sales were crossed.
10/ Then shared what she has learnt launching Newsletter OS to @IndieHackers. Do you see the pattern? Launch -> learn -> share learnings -> launch.

https://t.co/kohw7rusFf
11/ Give your audience 'deadlines' to move them along the sales funnel! Mentions how price will be increasing from $15 to $29 at a specific timing, and how that price will likewise further increase to $49 at launch.

https://t.co/B7tuun8uV7
12/ Videos showing workflows of Newsletter OS! A short GIF is used to exhibit the idea. Most people also like the idea of learning from frameworks of others.

https://t.co/EhdbRTrUL0
13/ October 30 2020: @JanelSGM announces how she is almost done with Newsletter OS product. Note the quick turnaround of 12 days- while she had to do more of brushing up + improving her existing workflow, she was very conscious of building the product in a quick and effective way
14/ Another feature of Newsletter OS- assets for newsletter directories. Instead of trying to do this alone, she relied on @Mike_Andreuzza for the design.

https://t.co/MiXYi5SSM0
15/ Make the launch interactive! Info-products are not necessarily interactive by design. But Janel manages to add interaction to the launch by having her buyers look for Easter eggs and post them on Twitter. Reward? A 30-min newsletter consult with her!

https://t.co/CBoRVGAeR3

More from Twitter

A big part of my tweets are inspired by other people's content.

I bookmark everything that looks interesting and go there when in need of inspiration.

This is a thread-recap of the best-saved tweets from 2020 (for me at least) and what you can steal from each one. 🧵👇


The year chart by @jakobgreenfeld

What to steal: the idea and the design

Create a chart with the key moments of your growth. It's a great reflective exercise for you and it can be a great learning experience for your


Let's collaborate by @aaraalto

What to steal: the idea.

Creating a blank piece of content (could be a sentence, a design, a video...) that your audience can later


Advice to first-time info product creators by @dvassallo

What to steal: the insight

This tweet was one of the sparks for me writing the Twitter Thief ($1,3k revenue says it's good


How to be a better writer by @JamesClear

What to steal: the insight

A world-class writer giving free writing lessons. The tweet is from 2019 but I discovered it this
This is why I'm not a critic of "cancel culture." It's crucial to impose social costs for the breech of key social norms. The lesson of overreaction is that we need to recalibrate judgment to get it right next time, not that we need a lot more bad judgment in the other direction.


Obviously, people will disagree about which norms are important, about how bad it is to violate them, and thus about how severe the social cost ought to be. That's just pluralism, man, and it's good.

It's important to openly talk through these substantive differences, which is why derailing these conversations with hand-waving moral panic about "cancel culture" is obnoxious and illiberal.

Screaming "cancel culture!" when somebody pays a social costs other people have been fighting hard to get others to see as necessary is often just a way to declare, with no argument, that the sanction in question was not only unnecessary but in breach of a more important norm.

It's impossible to uphold social norms without social sanctions, so obviously anti-cancelers are going to want to impose a social cost on people they see as imposing unjustly steep social costs on others.

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