Who am I and what was I trying to do?
I’m a behavioral scientist and I wrote a book—not a business one—so I needed:
A website
I came to the party with my own domain and I’ve used Canva and GoDaddy to build sites in the past (pipe down you snickerers, I’m a behavioral scientist who works in tech, not a content creator and absolutely not a designer)
A newsletter to marinate subscribers before my book launched
Some other marketing bells and whistles that would help me woo my digital friends
Did I have thousands of subscribers? No. (lol)
Did (does) it matter? No.
FWIW, I’ve worked in product and alongside dev teams for many years but I wouldn’t jump to call myself very technical, but I’m not staring at a json like it’s in Mandarin.
Though possibly more reflective of who I am as a person versus my technical chops, I’ve been using chat gpt to help me come up with code I can drop into beehiiv's custom HTML fields, like the current interactive game on my site Date, Mate, Donate (a variation a childhood game where the actions/name aren’t so PC).
Buzzing Around The Hive
I opted for the Max tier out of the gates so that I could pseudo immediately figure out if Beehiiv at it’s (nearly) most powerful would be a match for what I wanted and needed. More specifically, I wanted to test out beehiiv’s New Web Builder Experience (and removing beehiiv branding was icing on le cake).
A day in…
Thoughts I had?
Am I going to be able to get something serviceable up and running within a day or few days? Like many passion project-ers (sorry), I’ve had false starts that have taken me out of the race for longer than they should have.
How it played out
The experience is Notion-esque but with a few more guardrails to help ensure that non-technical, design delinquent folks can create websites that aren’t complete dumpster fires: intuitive, powerful, but I’m sure I’m missing (a lot of) things.
Generally the website templates are good, it didn’t take me long to find one that mimicked the design(s) I’d had in mind.
A week in…
Thoughts I had?
The site was serviceable and it was time to turn to my newsletter. I read a few newsletters and, as a behavioral scientist, I think a lot about the amount of content and information architecture in an email newsletter: could beehiiv find the sweet spot I was looking for balancing aesthetic and interest?
How it played out
The newsletter took longer than I’d anticipated to spec out; however (as below), it might be due to my preferred trial by fire nature versus taking the time to watch a few videos. Choices were made.
Longer than anticipated is really in terms of hours and maybe a day or two, nothing flabbergasting
The delineation between creating a newsletter and creating a post for my site was confusing at first but… a me problem, most likely.
Once I got the hang of everything, I was solidly satisfied with how my newsletter turned out and the ability to adopt design strategies I’d liked in the newsletters of others.
One of the reasons I’d opted for Max was to ensure that I had access to polls and surveys (also offered on Scale)
In retrospect, understanding how to work with polls and adjust their aesthetic took up a good chunk of time in building out my newsletter MVP
A month in…
Thoughts I had?
Regrets? None.
I’ve barely made a dent in my Max plan, I’m well aware, but my site is up and running and I can focus on the other tendrils of my book launch: specifically, driving people to my site to sign up as subscribers and to pre-order my book
How it played out
There’s a NewsletterXP Course sitting in my mailbox that I’m eager to get to since it’s only available to Max plan subscribers (see, scarcity works)
I recently had an advertising opportunity pop up via beehiiv Ad network without having done truly anything at all myself
This anecdote is a glimpse into the value of beehiiv’s engaged, collaborative (YAY) community that I’m honestly quite confident will help me ‘get to the next level’ (whatever that means 🙂 but it’s going to be fun)
Finally, A Bit of Feature TL;DR:
Does the New Web Builder Experience feel like it’s in beta, no, truthfully not really.
The Slack Community Access is a great safety blanket: when you’re first getting started, it’s comforting to know there’s a community of others chattering away in real time, working on similar things. Honestly, I’ve referenced the community less than I imagined as I work (at a breakneck pace) to get things up and running, but anticipate spending more time there in the future.
I’d like to customize the UI/UX of my polls a bit more and find the current capabilities someone limiting.
Admittedly I’m not one to spend time upfront watching tutorials or demos. Instead, I prefer to try to figure it out myself, get irrationally frustrated, and then search for a resolution… only to then watch tutorials and demos.
Beehiiv’s tutorials and documentation are very good; you’re probably (more) rational and planned to use them anyways, here’s my bit of social proof to catalyze that good idea.