🐴 10,000 subscribers, lessons, and announcements

A heartfelt thank you

Design with AI reached two milestones this week:

• Crossed 10,000 subscribers

• Became a Substack Bestseller

I’m very grateful for your support and I reflected a lot on what “10,000” and “Bestseller” really mean.

They mean trust.

I need to keep delivering value and living up to that trust.

10,000 also means 10,000 x 1.

I care about you as a unique individual with your superpowers, imperfections, and curiosity about AI and design.

You are not just a number or an email address on a list.

Design with AI’s subscriber graph

In today’s newsletter, I won’t be talking about AI and design, but instead:

• Lessons from writing this newsletter

• Announcements for free and paid subscribers

Let’s get started.

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Lessons

I get asked two common questions:

• What’s the secret of growing a newsletter this fast?

• What happened at the beginning of this year that caused the inflection point?

Honestly, I wish I had a tactic in mind that I could point to, “That’s the secret!”

But there’s one boring thing that comes to my mind:

That is “hard work”.

I don’t want to talk too much about how much effort I put into every newsletter, because it may sound crazy or hard-to-believe. The only people who know about it are my wife and kids.

That’s probably not a helpful answer, so I thought of some principles I believe in that may have contributed to the outcome.

1. Observe what I don’t like and don’t do it

There is a Chinese proverb that I think of often, “己所不欲，勿施于人”。

It means “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself."

I’ve subscribed to many newsletters, so it’s easy to tell the things I don’t enjoy:

• Paywalls

• Extensive ads

• Extensive self-promotions

• A lot of text, but lack of value

• AI-generated content without a soul

If I don’t enjoy them, then what would my subscribers feel if I do the same?

So I tried not to do them. But I also know that came with consequences:

• Paywall → Missed paid opportunities

• Extensive ads → Turned down about 10 sponsorships

• Extensive self-promotion → Missed opportunities

• A lot of text, but lack of value → Had to spend a lot more time to learn, experiment, summarize, and edit

• AI-generated content without a soul → Had to spend a lot more time to learn, experiment, summarize, and edit

But is it really worth it?

Honestly, maybe not. But as I was questioning this, I also noticed the rapid growth at the beginning of this year.

It was a timely encouragement, so I wanted to keep the momentum of doing what I had always been doing.

2. Design the reader’s experience

As a designer, I often feel like writing is similar to designing.

It’s essentially designing a good reading experience for the readers:

• Give an overview before diving into details.

• Address important things first.

• Remove unnecessary details.

• Break long paragraphs into smaller chunks.

• Use line breaks to create visual breathing room.

• Create a typographical hierarchy with font sizes and styles.

• Strike a balance of text and visuals.

I’m essentially designing a “story” and I try to put into the readers’ shoes to make their lives easier.

(Ironically, I don’t think I’m following above points well for the newsletter today… But I tried to when I had the time.)

3. Give much more than you ask

I grew up in an environment that valued humility and discouraged self-promotion.

I have to say it’s a limiting belief. And I’ve been working on becoming more comfortable with promoting myself. There should be no shame in self-promotion.

However, my gut feeling still tells me that their should be a balance in newsletters.

That’s why if you look at my newsletters, I still talk about myself, but I try to limit that as much as possible.

I always make sure I provide much more value than what I solicit.

“Ask” is for the short term.

But trust is built over time.

4. Only intrinsic motivation lasts

Numbers and status are extrinsic motivators.

Currently, Design with AI newsletter has over 10k subscribers with an average open rate of 42%–46%, which is already considered very high in the newsletter world.

There are many common tactics for growing a newsletter that I chose not to follow. They could have helped me grow the newsletter even faster.

But I know there’s never a true end to the numbers game. After 10k, there's 50k; after 50k, there's 100k; and after that, 1M, or even 10M. If my focus were only on the numbers, I’d never be happy.

It feels like running. Because running doesn’t stop at those milestones. Milestones are not destinations. Running is a state.

I often remind myself why I started writing in public in the first place.

I started writing in public because it helped me express myself, clarify my thinking, connect with people around the world, and, above all, provide value to the people I care about.

Writing is like a magnet. I cannot please everyone and I don’t have to.

I can only attract those who truly resonate with my writing and find real value in it.

5. Embrace the randomness

Some of my popular posts were ones I didn’t even think would perform well. They were not my favorite articles either.

But randomly, they performed well.

Take the third article above for example, I didn’t want to publish that initially. It was just a quick experiment and I knew it was not perfect. But I ended up publishing it anyway without overthinking too much (although I tend to overthink).

I also wrote about the same thing on LinkedIn and it sort of got viral (800 likes and 110k+ impressions). People say it’s not a good idea to include an external link in a LinkedIn post because it will have an negative impact on its reach. But I didn’t follow that tip. Another example of randomness.

We cannot control luck, but we may increase our chance of being lucky by delivering consistently over a long period of time.

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Announcements

Free Subscribers

I still keep my promise with what I wrote when the newsletter crossed 1k subscribers:

Keep the newsletter accessible to everyone.

I don’t like clicking on an article only to find out it’s for paid subscribers only, so I still don’t want to do that.

It’s a big commitment and it also means that I need to deliver extra value for the paid subscribers.

Paid Subscribers

I’ll send you all a separate email next week on two new offerings, so stay tuned:

• An exclusive offer for Magic Patterns

• An access to a private community

I reached out to Teddy from Magic Patterns as it’s a tool I really like. Teddy was very kind to offer a number of exclusive offers. I really appreciate his genuineness. He and his co-founder Alex are focused on building a great product for their customers.

Regarding the community, I was initially unsure about the idea of a private channel where people could share their work, exchange ideas, and support each other in the areas of design, product, and AI. After all, there are already many communities out there. However, after receiving this request multiple times, I’ve decided to move forward with it. And I want to make it a great.

Aside from the two above, all the other perks stay the same:

• Monthly Coffee Chat

• Periodical Resources

• Special Discounts

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Thank you for being part of Design with AI.

Immensely grateful. I don’t take your trust for granted.

See you next time,

Xinran

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P.S. I’d love to hear your feedback on the newsletter. Please let me know!