Dear Readers
Thank you for your continued patronage and support for the Peasant Times-Dispatch! SUBtember was a great success, but not in the ways you might think. Because you put up with me soliciting your support for the month, it is only fair that I report back to you on how the subscription drive performed, what I learned from it, and what changes I am making.
Let’s Talk Stats
I don’t remember whether I have mentioned to you, but in my day job I am an accountant. This means I consider myself something of an excel wizard, and I was reluctant to make spreadsheets for Substack but when it came to my plan for SUBtember I needed to have some way of measuring success. So, I created some crazy spreadsheets to track what I considered important statistics. I built the spreadsheet in early August and went back as far as May to get data, so I would have a start point.
I had 8 metrics I used for comparison.
Average Daily Visits: I tracked visits for each day of the month and then divided by the number of days in the month, to give myself average daily visits. In August, my newsletter was visited 21.1 times per day, my goal was to improve that number by 10% in SUBtember, to 23.2 visits per day. In SUBtember I actually received 30.6 visits per day! This is a huge win—and the one of two metrics which were a success. It’s worth noting that my own visits are also counted, so it’s hard to say how decisive a win this really is.
Views Per Post: If you click on each post, it tells you the number of views each post has, along with a number of other stats which I also tracked. In August, each post received an average of 45.4 views, so my goal was to improve that by 5%, or 47.7 views per post. In SUBtember, I actually received 49.9 views per post! Another win! Given that SUBtember had a few extra posts for the solicitation, I was able to split the SUBtember posts and the regular posts, and by the regular posts I actually did a little worse than that at 48.3 views per post (but still a win!). It is fair to say that the SUBtember appeals did in fact drive views, if only a few.
Open Rate: Another per-post stat is the open rate. In August, my average open rate per post was 43%, so my goal was somewhat arbitrarily just to top that and shoot for 45%. In SUBtember, I actually received a 39% open rate! This was a material decline and it’s hard to say what drove it, especially because even if I ignore the SUBtember appeals they performed about the same.
Subscriptions: I ended August with 52 subscribers, and was shooting for the moon for 60 subscribers during SUBtember. I am ending the month with 56 Subscribers—which is…good. There was significant churn though which was less good—I maxed this month at 57 subscribers, so I lost a few and gained a few. In order to get a better point of comparison, in August I received one subscriber every 1.82 days, and in SUBtember I received one subscriber every 7.25 days, so this metric was down month-over-month too.
Paid Subscriptions: I began SUBtember with zero paid subscriptions and ended the month with the same. My goal was 5, which was set arbitrarily (and aggressively). This tells me that people are not seeing a value for the paid content, which means I need to mix things up or promote more. I don’t want to promote more, but I am contemplating collaborations and other creative means to get this newsletter in front of eyeballs. And, yes—you heard that right, the Times-Dispatch is open to collaborations, leave a comment if you are interested in something!
Referrals to Other Newsletters: A major part of my SUBtember appeals were pointing readers to other newsletters I think are worthy of their attention, and which are part of my little sphere which I would like to promote and build up. I had made 8 total Referrals by the end of August, I hoped to make 15 total by the end of SUBtember. I actually was able to make only 10 Referrals—so only two new referrals this month. This makes sense, given the best tickler for referrals is new subscribers and the new subscribers metric was low for this month.
Likes: I really hoped to increase engagement with my newsletters by promoting likes and comments. Likes, I hoped to get 2 likes per post, having ended August with an average of 1.2. I received 1.5 Like per post this month, it was even 1.5 if we exclude the SUBtember Appeals. While this wasn’t a win exactly, it was a month-over-month improvement so I will take it.
Comments: Likewise, with comments, I hoped to get 2 comments per post, having ended August with 2.2. This was one of my more modest goals, given the prior month, but I actually had 0.3 comments per post month—just 2 comments overall, one of which was my own reply to a thoughtful commenter!
A Note Regarding Seasonality: I hadn’t considered this, but at a recent Office Hours some other newsletters also observed a downtrend. There may be a seasonal element to reader behavior, and the only way to quantify that is to track data over many years. It’s impossible to say how much my data observations are driven by intentional user behavior (I’m tired of your newsletter!) or unintentional seasonal behavior (I’ve been so busy!). We will see!
Why I am not sad I didn’t reach my goals
You might think this is depressing—Scoot, b’yeh, you missed the mark, lad! Maybe so, but what I did get was lots of juicy data. What conclusions can I make about the Peasant Times-Dispatch given this data?
First—I’m not generating enthusiasm or conversation. I’m generating curiosity—lots of people looking in to see what I’m about—but not discussion. People are finding minor reasons to visit but no reasons to stay, in other words. This is something I need to work on. What interests people? Who is my target audience? How am I speaking to them? Where am I going to find them? Does my target audience even know I exist? These are the kind of questions I am thinking about after SUBtember.
Second—my paywalled content isn’t interesting enough of a draw. Up until now it has been my fiction and other books behind a paywall, which people can only see a little excerpt of but not the whole thing. I need to restructure my offering. You may have noticed earlier in September—before the month even ended—I introduced some new sections into the Peasant Times-Dispatch. This is how I am going to restructure my offering: The base content will stay the same—a monthly reflection, open thread, and podcast, all of these free. The Peasant’s Library will be my home for fiction and other poetry or prose, which will be available early access with a paid subscription and then available to everyone else later on. The Discourses will be where I write articles on “advanced Peasantry”, which will be subscriber only content with a paywall lure. I’ve also included the Editor’s Desk, which you are reading here, so I can write a little more personably to address you and talk about what’s going on in the world and in my life and in the life of a peasant.
Third—community. The Peasant Times-Dispatch is not just a philosophy, it is not just a place for opinion. It is a community, for people like you and me, who want to live our lives simply, love God deeply, and appreciate God’s creation sincerely. We need reinforcement, a place to report on our own peasantly lives. I’m used to, at my Wordpress, shouting into the void and not caring who hears me or whether anyone shouts back. The Wordpress blog is for me. This newsletter is not that—here I am trying to reach out to you and share a tool—the Peasant Life—that has helped me tremendously. It takes a community to make it work. I need to put more effort to invest in that.
Thank You
So even though by the goals I set for myself, SUBtember was not a success, to me it was still successful because I was able to learn about myself and really think deeply about what I’m doing here and whether the product I am offering is actually serving you in the way you need or want.
Thank you, for being here and reading with me, thank you for giving me this good data driven lesson, and thank you for sticking with me on this journey. There’s a lot more to come and I am really excited to learn and grow in the months to come!
God bless you all!
-Scoot
Ad Jesum Per Mariam