[TotoHorner]

I've been writing an email newsletter on backend dev for the past few years - https://quastor.org/

Basically, I look through all the Big Tech engineering blog posts and look for interesting posts. Then I'll write up an article talking about the tech stack and the main takeaways.

I've been learning Adobe Illustrator + After Effects recently and am now starting to add some visualizations + graphics to accompany the articles.

I make more than $500 per month but this is more of a passion project and the income is honestly not competitive (at all) with what I earn as a dev.

It also gives me a way to learn about marketing/growth + monetization. Hard to learn that stuff w/o doing.

[kaeruct]

Thanks for your newsletter, I have found out about many interesting tech because of it. I think I found it here in HN :)

[pighive]

For the curious, OP's blog: https://blog.quastor.org

[consumer451]

If you don’t mind me asking, how did you grow your readership?

[TotoHorner]

Sure! Newsletters get shared on HN + Reddit. I'm also posting on LinkedIn.

I've also done some paid ads using Facebook ads and doing ads in other newsletters.

[precompute]

Just signed up, awesome resource! Thanks a lot!

[curious_baldy]

How do you earn money? By selling customer emails?

[TotoHorner]

No, I've never shared customer emails and doing so would obviously be grossly unethical (and illegal!).

I sell sponsorships to tech companies (ex. PostHog, InfluxData, Hubspot) + have a premium version of the newsletter that is $12 a month.

[mettamage]

I just subscribed to the newsletter. I found out that there's a pro content section on the site.