Friday Notes #43 — Losing Subscribers

Looking beyond the emotions of losing subscribers. Easier said than done.

Photo credit: Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

This week, on Wednesday, to be precise, I published issue #14 of my monthly newsletter. In the following hours, I lost many subscribers. Then, after accepting a few emotions to take over me, I wrote this thought on Twitter:

 Observer @apple_observer

The ongoing challenge of maintaining a newsletter: each sent issue shouldn't be a reminder for the readers to unsubscribe, but to ask for more. 😔 #writer #blogger #newsletter numericcitizen.substack.com/p/2021-09Numeric Citizen Introspection Newsletter #14This is my introspection summary on my numeric life for 2021-09. A new iPhone iteration came to be with great photography upgrades. Remembering 9/11 too.numericcitizen.substack.com

September 29th 2021

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I subscribe to many newsletters. For anyone of them, a new issue is in fact the occasion to rethink my subscription status. Either upon receiving the newsletter issue in my inbox and reading the newsletter title or at the end, after spending a few minutes glancing at the newsletter content. Obviously, losing subscribers doesn’t trigger the best feelings in the writer’s mind. It’s even worst if each subscriber is seen as the reward for creating great content. That’s the way I see it, anyway.

I read many times that we should write for ourselves, not for others. I understand the motivation behind such a thought. Yet, my feeling is that It doesn’t apply to all sorts of content and all types of writers. I do love getting new subscribers; it’s a good indicator of being good enough at what I’m doing, good enough for someone to spend some time of his life reading my work. I guess the best attitude is to keep focusing, keep doing it to the best of my abilities.

Thanks for reading.