[AlchemistCamp]

It's worth pointing out that it's an Alexa 300k site already (prior to this HN post's effect), which is some objective evidence that author is skilled at building a site and/or community.

[ZephyrBlu]

She has 12.5k Twitter followers which kickstarted her newsletter and subsequently led to this paid community.

[mlent]

Hey there, OP here - yes, that's true.

If it's helpful or somehow relevant since you brought up Twitter followers, I started with about 9K when I launched the newsletter.

Wrote about that process here, though maybe you've seen it already? https://bloggingfordevs.com/launch-a-newsletter/

[ZephyrBlu]

I skimmed that article and your PH launch one :).

I brought up your Twitter followers because it seemed relevant to your accomplishments in this post, given that they were directly responsible for ~1/4 of your email list and likely indirectly responsible for many more subscribers (Signal boosting your PH launch, for example).

Having an audience seems to be the most important thing for a lot of product launches, so I'm always curious about how people built their audience.