The storyHow they got there
Monica Lent built the Blogging for Devs free newsletter in Berlin, spending 12 months building a 5,000–10,000-subscriber audience before ever charging for anything. By the time she launched the paid course, she had a list of developers and technical founders who were genuinely invested in growing their blogs.
The first ten paying customers came from a pre-sale to existing newsletter subscribers. The first hundred came from a cohort launch with a countdown and waitlist — creating urgency and social proof simultaneously. Each cohort's graduates became testimonials for the next.
At maturity, the channel mix: the free newsletter driving ~70% of all conversions, Twitter and Monica's personal brand (~15%), SEO from Monica's own blog ranking (~10%), and word-of-mouth in developer communities (~5%). Paid ads were killed. The free newsletter as a long-term audience moat was doubled down on.
Unit economics: course price around $199–299 one-time, community membership around $15–30/month, CAC effectively $0 (newsletter list), LTV around $300–500. The cohort launch model with countdown and waitlist generated $30–50K in launch revenue from a list that most marketers would dismiss as too small. 12 months of free newsletter beats 12 months of paid ads.
Channel MixWhere the growth actually came from
Most case studies hand-wave channels. Here's the rough allocation — not in dollars spent, but in users acquired — across the routes that actually mattered.