COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. I listened to a podcast by Alex Banayan. He talked about how he wanted to understand how people like Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and others were able to become great. There wasn't a book that answered the questions he had. So, he wrote the book.
Anything that I've created that I loved always have this ethos: to create the thing I want to see. Any time my brain leans towards "What would they think about it," it never works.
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Sharing one of my favorite articles I read this week, by Tom Orbach. This post is packed with helpful ideas for marketing.
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How Pickleball Explains American Culture
This is a good read, though I would argue the baseball chart is a little bit of a moot point (even though I don't care for baseball). How many 50+ year olds play baseball vs. how many 50+ year olds play pickleball? Very different sport/mentality toward age-ism.
Pickleball is definitely the most dominant right now, however, when it comes to actually playing and widespread appeal. I'm skeptical of translating it to consistent television revenues as a pro sport -- and I say that as someone who knows multiple pro pickleballers too.
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ANALYTICS
I’m currently using PostHog for analytics on indiethinkers.com, and I’m encouraged by these numbers. They are obviously low, but what I’m paying the most attention to is the quality of interactions when people do finally discover the site.
Every metric is an improvement over last month (that’s what those green numbers mean). On average, 72% of visitors don’t just bounce after viewing the first page.
Also, not listed here, 27% of visitors click on an external link.
This is important because one of the main goals of the forum is to drive traffic to essays that are shared. We want to help other writers grow, and we can’t do that if people are visiting their websites and publications.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
We announced paid subscriptions last week, and I’m stoked that we immediately got some contributors. I know most writers would be devastated to see only 5 paid subscribers, but people don’t just give you money because you’re a good person or have a good idea.
Even if both of those things are true, you still have to earn it.
Now, “earning” it doesn’t mean you need to offer a long list of perks in exchange for money. You could simply offer someone the opportunity to support a vision.
To support the work you already do with no expectation of more “things.”
But you still need to have real conversations with human beings, directly.
Most of the paid subscriptions we received came after 1:1 interactions.
A phone call, email, and even iMessage threads with friends.
When you’re trying to measure success or failure, it’s helpful to focus on active subscribers and consider benchmarks as well.
If only 23.5% of our subscribers even saw our announcement email last week, then we only had an opportunity to convert 260 people.
Well, ok, what’s a good conversion rate?
Indie Thinkers falls in the general interest/lifestyle category.
However, this can be a bit misleading because most commonly reported conversion rates are based on total subscriber count, not active/engaged subscribers. If your overall list conversion is 2%, your engaged subscriber conversion might be 4-6%
Alright, so let’s say I should be able to convert 4% of the 260 active subscribers. That’s 10 paid subscriptions, and we’re halfway there.
We will certainly need more active subscribers to achieve our short-term goal of 50 paid subscribers, and we have a number of ideas to help us get there. More on this next week.
QUESTION
Let’s talk about open rates.
23.5% 😅
Well, a lot of our subscribers are on Substack and are probably using the app. This means they might not ever actually receive an email from us.
I’m considering kicking out subscribers who haven’t “opened” an email in the last 90 days. What are your thoughts?
Here’s my question for the week:
Are open rates dead? What metrics actually matter for newsletters?
Talk soon,
Daniel
"I’m considering kicking out subscribers who haven’t “opened” an email in the last 90 days. What are your thoughts?"
That ain't yer business, just keep writing haha