Thursday! 2-43: If You See This but Don't Want to Read This, Please Read This -- a Strange Plea.
V2, I43
I’m going to do something a bit different with this week’s issue of Thursday! that almost no one who writes a newsletter does with theirs. I’m going to ask you to unsubscribe.
Don’t look at me like that! I promise I’ve not gone completely around the bender nor am I ending Thursday!1 In fact, I want you to share Thursday! and become a supporting Patron. In fact, here’s one of those requests now!
[I would like your support, very much. Each monthly backing of $2, $5, or $20 is a vote for my ability to write interesting and evocative stories and poems and a positive push in the direction of my impossible dream.]
You’re back? Good! I’m glad! Let me explain what’s going on. Nearly every “newsletter guru” you’ll find out there in the big, wide world gives very similar advice and pushes toward very similar goals, namely:
Get as many subscribers if you can, preferably by using a free piece of “content”2 to bait them in. Once they’re in your Funnel O’ Sales, you can further bait them in and put them on more special mailing lists until WHAM! They give you money and Bob’s your uncle!3
You must flog your newsletter as every possible turn. Put it everywhere. Write guest posts where you casually note that you have a newsletter and, oh my stars and garters4, whatever did I do with that pesky subscribe link! Oh, here it is!
The purpose of a newsletter is to point people to your website. The purpose of your website is to sell stuff. Books. Master classes. Commemorative thimbles. Your precious bodily organs and fluids. Whatever.
Did I mention subscribers? Get them. However you must. Collect them like Pokémon!
I hate that advice, for a couple reasons. First, I am not a very good salesman. Second, you are not marks to be gulled by my sales formula. If the main purpose of my newsletter is to grab you and shove you down the sales tube toward ChaChingTown, then my newsletter is crap. You’re going to hate it and I’m going to hate writing it. That’s why I’m in no rush to push Thursday! to all corners of the world and why I don’t care all that much how many subscribers I have. In fact, let me reveal that number to you right now, after almost 100 weeks of Thursday.
56.
That works out, roughly to one new subscriber every other week. My last new subscriber came on board almost two months ago5 and I’ve added five subscribers since I started here on Substack. I’ve bailed out of Facebook, at least for the time being and my Twitter presence is intentionally small. I’m not leveraging anything, anywhere. As a result, by any popular “success” metric, Thursday! is a failure.
Not to me, though. See, I look at another number called the “open rate”, which tells me how many people open up and read at least part of my newsletter. Usually, my open rate hangs around 60 percent6. That’s 33 or 34 people who read my newsletter out of all the people who get it. Ideally, I’d have an open rate of 100 percent. I want everyone who asks for my newsletter to want it, look forward to it, and devour it when it arrives. I want every reader eager and interested.
Of course, that’s not likely to happen because human beings are human beings, right? We forget and we lose track of things and our interest waxes and wanes. Make no mistake; I am very happy with an open rate of 60 percent or better! I’ll take that over any guru’s “sales funnel” crapletter with barely any actual readers beyond the first couple issues.
Lately, though, fewer folks are reading Thursday! -- down around 50 percent. Thattells me fewer people are interested in what I have to say — call it 28 or 29 out of 56. For most who write newsletters, a drop of 5 readers isn’t a big deal. Imagine, though, that you had worked your own newsletter to 500 subscribers7. A drop from 60 percent to 50 percent means that 50 people suddenly stopped reading, for reasons you will never know.
And that’s the real issue, at least with me. I could attribute the drop off to vacations or some August slump, except I didn’t have a slump like this last year. I could attribute it to the change in my platform, but I had been running as high at 70 percent a couple times after the changeover to Substack, so I don’t think that’s the issue.
I think the issue is I’ve gotten boring to some of you and you’ve decided I’m not worth your time anymore.
That’s fair. I’m not upset. How can I be? Interest waxes and wanes. Seasons come and go. The stuff I wrote a year ago is a bit different than what I’m writing now and it makes sense that you might read Thursday! and decide it’s not for you anymore. This newsletter is a bit of an odd duck and always has been. Sometimes, though, the duck gets a bit odd even for lovers of odd ducks. It’s happened to me a few times. I’ve subscribed to a newsletter, liked it for a while, then simply didn’t anymore.
If that’s happened to you, if Thursday! hits your mailbox like a soggy sack of diapers8 and you delete right away or, worse, let it sit there for a month before finally tossing it into the bin -- scroll down to the unsubscribe like and let it go. It won't bother me. You don't even have to tell me why. Honestly, you'll be doing both of us a favor.
As it happens, I can see who reads Thursday! and who doesn’t. I do spot checks every once in a while and I see who has gotten all the issues but who hasn’t read one in a couple of months. I even quietly unsubscribe people who haven’t read an issue in three or four months. It’s not a thing I prefer to do, but remember, I’m not chasing subscribers but readers.
I want you to read Thursday! as eagerly as I write it. I want you to love it and share it. I want it to be useful and entertaining and uplifting and thought-provoking9. I do have things I want you to buy, but they won't ever get the hard-sell like you'll see in other newsletters. I want to be different and welcome.
If I’m neither one, that’s okay by me. We can part as friends, deal? Besides, if a bunch of you leave, I’ll know what I’ve done lately isn’t working and I can try something else. Maybe you’ll come back and like what I’m doing so much you’ll join back up. That’d be very cool!
What I Wrote Last Week
Pretty sure this newsletter will continue to the heat death of the universe with each week’s edition starting out with something like: “Well, it’s certainly getting colder isn’t it? Ha Ha! Anyhow, I wasn’t sure what to write this week, so here’s a thousand words about cold.”
I can not tell you how much I hate “content” as a replacement for “pamphlet” or “collection” or simple “gift of creativity”.
This is my favorite British-ism. If you answer that phrase with “But surely Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle”, you are one of my people.
Another great phrase we all should use more often! Honestly, I’d be happy if we all spoke like geriatric neighbor ladies from a 1960s sitcom or hippie jazz musicians from episodes of Perry Mason.
Hi! You know who you are!
Hubspot, which I generally think of as reputable, tags the average open rate at 20-ish percent with a high average of 28 percent. I’ve seen other places report higher averages of 40, which I think is kind of voodoo. My open rate of 60% is very, very good!
Whoa! Nice job!
Ew. Also, the person who delivers your mail must hate you.
Not all at once, of course, because that’s a lot. But half? Yeah, I want that every week.