Hail and farewell to free readers
Good evening, my friends.
I have some things to say about Trump and the fallout from Iran, as well as a bit of funny stuff that will be in a Tales From the Road post that happened today. But, before I do that stuff, I have some information regarding changes to my substack.
The “free readers” game on Substack
First, as many of you who are writers know, the game here on Substack is to get as many free subscribers as possible and then try to monetize a certain percentage of them to earn enough to make a living or even to make a lot of money. That has worked well for some writers, but not for me and not for many other people.
In my case, my overall number of subscribers became stuck around 1850 -1875 and more or less vacillated back and forth for months. I do not know why, though I suspect some bullshit on Substack’s part. I didn’t see the unsubscribes even listed in the stats report, but it just seemed to veer up and down within a predetermined range.
This initially caused me a great deal of trepidation and frustration, but I no longer care as I decided to free myself from it, as you will see below.
A massive discount and a minuscule response
I recently sent out a MASSIVE discount offer to all of my free subscribers (more than 1600 people), and only about 12 people took me up on the offer. I must admit that this shocked me because the offer was as cheap as I could make it. I did this to let people comment since I only have paid comments now because of spammers, etc.
Anyway, since so few people took me up on that offer, I mulled it over and decided to make some changes to how I manage my substack. The other day, I went into the controls and booted more than 1600 free subscribers from my mailing list. Yes, I removed them as I will no longer play the “free readers” game that is so prevalent here on Substack.
I must be the only writer on Substack who has deliberately lowered his subscriber numbers. 😂
However, just so you know, I have no animosity toward my former free readers whatsoever, I wish them well wherever their Internet journey takes them. Godspeed, free readers, godspeed! 🫡
I’ve moved to paid-only content
I have also decided that I will no longer publish any free content on Substack. All of my content is paid only, and if you are able to read this article, you are either a paid subscriber or someone I comped.
Now, all of this might seem harsh to some of you, but I finally realized that trying to play the “get as many free subscribers as possible and monetize as many as you can” game was not working for me, not at all. So why play that game? I do not need the ego boost of having “thousands” or “tens of thousands” of subscribers. I understand quite well that I am a small fish in a big pond that is getting bigger by the day.
So what I’ve decided to do is to focus on writing for my paid subscribers. As I write this post, it is about 209 people. I am happy and content to write for them here on Substack, and if anybody else wants to read my content, they can pay me for it.
Aaaah, and now we come to the money end of this. What am I charging? I decided to offer all free readers a full year of content for 50% off, which means $2.50 per month or $25 per year. I think that is a great deal, and I also understand that if somebody isn’t willing to pay that much for my content, then I am not the writer they should be reading. Thankfully, there are a zillion writers on Substack and so there is a writer for every reader.
Note: If you are already a paid subscriber who wants the 50% off deal, just tuck this link away and then use it whenever you wish:
https://morgthorak.substack.com/4be2820c
I also used to feel obligated to put my content out for free for at least two weeks or a month or whatever before it went behind the paywall. I felt that way because I had so many free readers on my mailing list, and I felt like I owed them something. Well, I do not owe anyone anything for free, do I? 🤔