Case Study: The Curious Bunch - A Reliable System Lets Your Readers Tell You What They Want

FeedLetter Case Studies is a new series showing how FeedLetter users leverage the tool and thrive on the feedback they receive from their readers.

In the second case study, you’ll learn about how Vidya moved from relying on “reply to my email” to systematically getting feedback. Let’s skip the blurb and dive right into it.

1. Who Are You, and What’s Your Newsletter?

This is Vidya. I’m the curator behind The Curious Bunch newsletter. I’ve always loved reading books, blogs, and random articles. I enjoy going down rabbit holes and finding something either useless or absolutely wonderful.

When I was introduced to the Newsletter world, I had an idea to share these wonderful things I come across with a larger audience.

That’s how The Curious Bunch was born.

2. What Is the Newsletter About?

I write and curate about Productivity, Creativity, and Mental Models. Right now, I stand around 520+ readers.

I publish once every week on Mondays. Open Rate: ~45%, Click Rate: ~20%

2a. Do You Make Money With Your Newsletter? If so, How?

Yes. There are 4 ways I make money through my newsletter:

• Sponsorship Slots
• Classified Slots
• Affiliate Marketing
• Buy Me A Coffee link (Earned around $100 through support in less than 3 months)

3. How Did You Get Feedback From Your Readers Before Using FeedLetter? What Did You Try?

I’ve never tried any other platform before because every feedback platform offers a trial version but not a free version. That made it pretty difficult for me as a small newsletter that can’t afford it. I started by asking readers to reply to emails, but not many of them did it.

With Feedletter, I get at least 3-4 thumbs up every week and 3-4 replies every month.

4. What Insights Do You Get By Using FeedLetter?

I loved the format and every piece of content in your letter .

With this kind of feedback, I know the format and design of my newsletter are received well by the readers. This is not the only time I got compliments about the format and design of the newsletter.

Your multiple interests match my multiple interests. Plus your gentle writing style makes for a pleasant, slower reading experience which suits the content (and me). This is in contrast to the, ‘Whoooaaa, wossup guys?’ frantic shouting that seems so popular in YT videos :))

This feedback helped me understand that my writing is appealing to the readers. I always doubted my writing skills. This assured me that I’m improving and also reaching my target audience, who like my writing style. :)

5. What’s the Most Helpful Feedback You Got From a Reader?

Other than the density of ideas and content, I really like the way you’ve designed the newsletter with spacing, headlines, links, sections, etc. Very nicely done

I receive a lot of compliments and very rarely something that points to my flaws. This was really helpful for me to decrease the size of the summary I’ve been sending in my past 2 newsletters (before I got this feedback).

So, I started decreasing the size of the summary and it increased my CTR as well. Thanks to their honest feedback!

6. What Was the Harshest Feedback You Ever Got?

Surprisingly, I never got any harshest feedback. They were kind and helpful with my newsletter. Sorry to disappoint here haha.

7. Anything Else You Like to Share With Fellow Newsletter Creators?

Once you get the feedback on your newsletter, act on it. I’d totally recommend screenshotting them and sharing them on social media to drive growth.

Use the Wall Of Love and embed it on your Landing Page.

Do not paste the FeedLetter links as an afterthought but make it more personalized by genuinely asking them for feedback so you can improve.