The First 50 Subscribers Are Harder Than I Expected

A few days ago I wrote about setting goals for projects.

One of the goals I shared was simple:

50 email subscribers in 30 days.

At the time, the project had 7 subscribers.

Today the number is:

14 / 50

Still far from the goal.

But it also means the number doubled.

And honestly, this experience is teaching me something interesting.

Getting people to visit a website is difficult.

Getting people to try a project is even more difficult.

Getting people to voluntarily subscribe and ask to hear from you again is probably the hardest part.

That's why every new subscription feels meaningful.

The number itself is small.

Fourteen subscribers is not something that will impress anyone.

But behind that number are fourteen people who decided the project was interesting enough to follow.

And for a small open source project, I think that matters.

Building software is one challenge.

Building an audience around it is a completely different challenge.

It's also making me appreciate how difficult it is to grow a project consistently over time.

The growth is rarely dramatic.

Most of the time it happens one person at a time.

So to everyone who subscribed:

Thank you.

I genuinely appreciate the support.

And if you're building your own project, I'd be interested to know:

Do you track goals like this, or do you prefer to focus only on building?

Current Goal

14 / 50 subscribers

Final Thought

Small numbers can still represent meaningful progress.

Sometimes it's easy to focus on how far away a goal is.

But it's also important to remember how far you've already come.

Useful Links

If you'd like to follow the project:

• Subscribe for updates: https://debugprobe.dev
• Documentation: https://debugprobe.dev/docs
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/DebugProbe/DebugProbe.AspNetCore