Checking in with my readers (that’s you!)

Let me know how I'm doing here

Photo by Fabian Barral / Unsplash

The reason everyone’s hyping up newsletters right now is because they fundamentally change the relationship between a writer and their readers.

Quick history lesson for you: back in the good old days, newspapers and TV channels and magazines and radio stations would make money from selling adverts. Those adverts were pretty expensive, so all these media businesses made good money, and could pay decent salaries to writers, as well as everyone else involved in the business — the fact checkers, the copy editors, the executive editors, etc. etc.

Then some guys in Silicon Valley turned everything upside down. Social media allows brands to advertise directly to consumers, without the need of a newspaper or magazine to act as a middle man. The same goes for Google — the search engine puts products right in front of peoples’ faces, so there’s no need to spend money on an advert running in the break between TV shows or on the back of a magazine. That’s been catastrophic for the media business — local newspapers, TV channels, cinemas, radio stations, magazines, you name it, they’re all in a tough place financially, if they haven’t already gone under. 

Needless to say, the situation sucks for pretty much everyone working in the media business, and for the art of writing in general. The internet age has devalued the written word so much that it feels almost impossible to make a living from it, unless you’re lucky enough to get a job at one of the few places that still makes money.

That’s where Substack comes in. The idea is that by skipping the whole advertising thing, writers can make money by building a direct connection with the people reading their work. The format is ultimately a relationship between a writer and their audience — and like any relationship, communication is key. Now that I’m six months into my newsletter, it feels like a good time for what therapists call a relationship check-in — to talk a bit about how I’m feeling about this space, and give you the opportunity to do the same.

A huge downside to working solo is that it’s quite hard to get feedback on your work. Apart from the numbers on the Substack dashboard, I don’t know much about how my readers feel about my writing. Is it too long? Too short? Too in-depth? Not in-depth enough? Should I interview more people? Talk about myself more? Go deeper into the issues I write about already? Go wider to incorporate other topics?

Seriously, your feedback is so, so helpful here — whether it’s positive or negative or kinda neutral, just hit me. I don’t care if you’re a paid subscriber, on the free list, someone I’ve comped, whatever — I want to hear from you!

The only real insights I have on my audience are the hard numbers I get in the backend of the various platforms I use — Instagram, LinkedIn, Shopify (where I sell my book) and of course, Substack, the platform I use to write this newsletter. But beyond the raw data — the countries people are from, what age they are, that kinda thing — I don’t know much about the people who read my work, and more importantly, why they read it. 

So, what do you like about my writing? Why is it worth paying for, instead of a different newsletter or a podcast or a streaming service or just like, one more coffee? 

For the free subscribers, what could I write about that would make a paid subscription more attractive? 

I’ve got a few hints myself, but thinking I’ll leave this one a little open ended and follow it up with more of my own thoughts next week.

I’ve been working in fashion for over ten years now, but I’ve only really been active online since I went freelance, almost exactly five years ago. I’ve tried to be chill about it, I’ve never really been into the idea of being internet famous, but despite that this newsletter is still going really well — six months into launching paid subscriptions and they’re enough to pay my rent and health insurance, and the numbers are steadily climbing up. But I’m very aware of the fact that there’s a lot of newsletters out there, and even more subscription services, and I want the people paying for my work to feel like they’re getting some real value out of it. So, let’s talk!