Hello ?
You opened. Woohoo! The change to the subject line wasn’t a total disaster then.
Just hope you’re not the only one ?
(It’s issue 182, in case you’re interested)
Let’s go….
Last week’s most clicked on link was a good one: 43 Cold Email Subject Lines That Get Your Emails Opened Instantly. It was a close run thing.
Now for this week’s tools and articles…
? Tools discovered recently

Almanac | Turn knowledge into action
You might’ve seen this massive resource, doing well on Product Hunt earlier this week. If you already checked it out, skip this one. If not, you need to look at it.
Almanac is a comprehensive “playbook” for starting and running a business. No clickbait, search optimized articles – real blueprints written by people who’ve been there before. And it’s all free. You don’t even need to sign up to browse the documents
Milk Icons | 1,000 free icons for startups
I know how much you love free graphics resources ? These icons come in outline and colored format, are free for commercial use and there’s 1,000 of them. The restriction is you can only download as PNG. Works well for an MVP.
This one does what it says – checks your site for any dead links. If you’ve had a blog or resource site for a while then it’s likely that some places you’ve linked to will have disappeared.
It’s unhelpful for people using your site and doesn’t do any good for search ranking.
This tool will check up to 2,000 links on your site for free. I checked Startup Resources – I’ve got some work to do ?
Web Code Tools | Web code generator
If you’re as bad at coding as me… you need a little help from time to time. Simple resource that lets you configure what you need and then copy and paste the code into your project.
FocusOKR | Simple personal objectives and key results
I’ve been thinking about goals. Maybe because the end of the year is creeping up on me.
I need a better way to track personal stuff and wondering if OKRs could be the answer. I found this free, simple tracking tool that I’m looking at.
What do you use for tracking your own goals?
? Sponsor of the week
Get unstuck with advice from vetted growth mentors
In minutes, you’ll have access to 150+ vetted growth marketing and startup mentors, ready to jump on a call with you at startup friendly rates (or free!)
? Articles of the week

Not a single article but a selection of well written, useful case studies. As the name suggests, each article is an example of successful marketing strategies and tactics.
Perfect for getting inspired.
Ultimate Guide to Organic Quora Marketing
I believe businesses underrate Quora as a steady source of traffic. The focus is Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Quora gets forgotten.
But it has 620m visitors per month so there’s definitely a strong case for taking a structured approach to using Quora as a marketing channel.
This is helpful step by step guide.
If you prefer podcasts, I listened to an interview with JD Prater (Quora’s evangelist) about Quora for marketing. You can check it out on Social Media Examiner
How Hiten Shah turned an obsession with customers into Product Excellence
This is an interesting look at how Hiten and co founder Marie built their latest product, FYI.
The article covers…
- Early customer research
- Approach to competitive analysis
- Learnings from an MVP built in 5 days
- Optimizing the customer experience
- Product-led growth impact on the future of FYI
3 copywriting principles (for 2x revenue)
Case study from Copyhackers to redesign a sales page for an ecommerce product. A good lesson in laying out pages for selling products (doesn’t need to be ecommerce) with explanations why they made the changes.
The 3 principles used:
- Start with a messaging hierarchy
- Be specific
- Use calls to value, not just calls to action
Watch out for the pop ups on the article – Copyhackers is great but they really want your email address ?♂️
? Podcast of the week

Corey Haines – Head of Growth at Baremetrics
Marketing tips for bootstrappers. And a reminder for technical people to put time aside to do marketing ?
A good episode of The Product Business with actionable ideas from Corey Haines.
? That’s it for this issue
Enjoy the weekend, I’ll be back next Friday.
Paul