Sup fellas? Did you read the new high agency essay from George Mack? It’s gold, I must say. Once you get what high agency is, this essay will help you with direction. But I have to warn you, there is a chance this could be a 45-minute mind masturbation if you’re not taking action later.

Anyway, I have been on and off with Cognition. I published good issues but not consistently enough to treat it as a business. I have been working around my systems and the bottom line is “I want to publish good shit, often.”

So I decided to publish monthly reports. I do a bunch of things: service business, Newsletters, Communities, No-code (these days vibe coding), etc. I will write about how each of these is performing, the numbers, and the strategies I use to grow.

That’s enough context - we’ll start now.

Service Business

I currently have three recurring clients.

I am growing a newsletter in the health category. Started this newsletter from scratch - right from the brand guidelines - and we are at 30k subscribers now. I love this gig. It’s fun, challenging, pays okay, and aligns with my goals.

I have two email copywriting clients. I get briefs every week and I send them emails in two days. That’s the deal - not super fun, I would love to spend more time with newsletters. But I am good with email copy, so this is one of those things I stay professional, do my best with the task, and maintain the revenue.^[1]

I also submitted an assignment to one of the leading AI newsletters with 100k subscribers. Fingers crossed to close this.

Action points for April? I made a list of people who are doing insane work in newsletters. I will pitch 10 of them.

Cognition

I only published one issue, excluding this one. I made plans to systemize content. You’ll be a happy reader and get value whenever I publish but I won’t make good money out of it nor will the newsletter grow if I only publish when my mood feels like it.

To treat it as a business, I will publish on the 10th, 20th, and 30/31st of every month. Two deep dives and one monthly report.

This is probably a good place to ask: Would you upgrade to a paid version at INR 1500 for a three-month subscription?

Please reply to this email and let me know. Be brutally honest.

*As of 27 March 2025 - applies to all numbers I mention in this edition.

Cognition Insiders

Cognition Insiders is a fun, unfiltered community for content marketers. We spend most of the time in online events (both fun and resourceful), convos around what’s happening in marketing, peer reviews on work, off-the-work topics, and deep work sessions.

It’s blissful to hang out with people - especially when you work remotely, alone.

We want to create a space that encourages fun and learning. Plus, it acts as a lead magnet for the newsletter (the community is subscriber-only).

Vikra’s Café

Like Cognition, the goal is to work on systems. Publishing dates are the same as Cognition and I will structure the content this way:

• Deep dive (Researched, long-form essay)

• Brain dump (Tiny thoughts on 3-5 topics)

• Monthly recommendations (from the best content I consumed in the month)

Caffeineletter

This is growing fast! It must be the most satisfying work of the month. We decided to grow Caffeineletter with ads - we’re growing at 12 subscribers a day at $0.09 CPA.

Our engagement is good (50% open rate), and we want to publish the best content on coffee + home brewing.

Our plan for next month is to expand our marketing channels. We’re also working on a couple of interesting products. I’ll save the suspense for later. All I can say is we’re aiming for much more than a newsletter.

Newsletter Case Studies and r/newsletterhub

This is my blog—a compilation of everything I write about newsletters. I am keeping this simple with one case study a week. This is to attract publications hiring newsletter experts; show them what I could do.

Once I publish it on my blog, I will cross-post it on the subReddit. I am passively building it with Chelsi and Mitesh to encourage conversations between newsletter operators, service providers in newsletter space, and developers building products.

Numbers: Blog had 95 unique visitors this month. SubReddit has 87 members.

Newsletter Hub

I made a website for readers to discover newsletters. I add 30 newsletters every month - all handpicked and approved based on a specific set of instructions.

I added 30 newsletters in March, and the newsletter hub now has 140 newsletters in total. This month, the website had 250 unique visitors.

Since most of my work is around newsletters, I plan to add auth(orization) and paywall to turn it into a monetizable product. I blocked my schedule 1 hour before I sleep to code a new website to host the directory.

Telugu Playlist

I spent 17 hours handpicking and curating a Telugu music playlist with ~900 songs.

This month, I partnered with SongDew, a platform encouraging independent artists to submit their work to playlists. If I like an independent artist's work, it will go on my playlist.

139 unique people saved this playlist on their Spotify. 12 new people this month.

Well, that’s everything I do.

If you’re interested in the blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, and movies I consumed this month, check out the recommendations in my personal newsletter (AND SUBSCRIBEEEE.)

My goals for April:

Footnotes:

[1] Taking gigs is okay, but most gigs are low-impact. I get money, I get to add it to my portfolio and that’s it. Once the gig is done, it doesn’t take me anywhere.

I can’t show this work and level up. To make this more precise, the health newsletter I’m working on is a high-impact gig. It challenges me as a marketer, and I can show it as proof of work to grab the next-level clients.

I am starting to believe once you level up, you must not work anything below it. If you are an Instagram manager for creators and you closed a 1M follower client, your next pitches must be in the 800k-1.5M range. Or if you close a $1500 client, you shouldn’t be accepting $300-400 gigs.

I made the mistake of levelling down and lost momentum. It might not be true for everyone, but I’d suggest this to my younger brother.