Subscription Milestones

Growth in free subscriptions has accelerated

By the way, would any paid subscribers like to get together Monday evening at 8 PM NY time for a free-for-all discussion? I haven’t lined up any guest speaker.

I regularly check the total number of subscribers, which includes free and paid (mostly free). On April 16 of 2021, I began with 1000 total subscribers, who came over from my blog. It took until May 10, 2022 to reach 2000 subscribers. By January 12, 2023 it reached 3000 subscribers. We hit 4000 subscribers on April 16, 2023, exactly two years after I started.

Recently, Substack stopped giving me the ability to automatically echo my posts to Twitter. I imagine that I could do it manually. But I have not noticed any drop in growth since the change, so apparently Twitter was not generating many subscriptions.

Still, I am not happy with Substack picking a fight with Twitter. Again, I see it as a great chef trying to go after the fast-food market. Let Twitter be Twitter.

I have not made any conscious effort to write for an audience. I attribute most of the growth to Substack’s efforts to encourage cross-recommendations among authors and to overall growth of Substack readers.

Recommendations by other substacks account for about 1000 of my total subscriptions. When a writer with a lot of subscribers recommends my substack, I get a noticeable increase. My own recommendations for other substacks have generated a total of more than 1000 subscriptions, although less than 100 to any individual substack.

When I taught high school, I told students that my goal was to have them come back years later with memories of what they took away from class. I have a similar goal here. I think of myself as playing a long-term game.