What percentage of your Substack subscribers have a ★★ or lower activity rating? For me, it’s 65%. Maybe I’m a horrible newsletter writer and that’s why no one reads my publication?

Or maybe Substack greased the wheels to drive subscriptions and give the illusion that they’re a coveted source of enthused readers? This is straight from the social media playbook as detailed by Cory Doctorow’s concept of Enshittification:

First they lure users onto their platforms, then attract businesses who might profit from this newly formed public, and then finally squeeze both for their own profit. Tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, draining profit at the cost of user experience. In the meantime our public squares have turned somewhere between the mall and a dumpster fire, that is unfit to deal with the problems of our times.

I was looking for a free place to start a newsletter back in 2021. The Recommendations feature rolled out in early 2022. I got lots of subscribers from that! Then Substack Notes came in April of 2023 – like Twitter, but “nicer!”

The subscriptions flowed like water, like a fire hose!

Until it didn’t. I used to get 25+ new sign ups a day, but as you can see above (that 65% of my email audience if dreadfully unengaged), what did that really get me?

I remember Facebook doing this in 2015, when a post could yield 50,000 clicks. Then the algorithm changed and those clicks dropped to 5,000 or 500. I had many writer friends back then lose work because of that change.

It wasn’t Facebook’s best interest to keep sending out free traffic, so I bet at some point Substack will allow publishers to “turn on” that firehose again, much like the other “Boost” features on other social media platforms. For maybe $10/mo your publication can be recommended during the sign up process of other publications.

Again, a desperate chase for growth, for list size, for audience. We chastise the mega-corps for their insatiable appetite for more while mirroring the same mindset (it’s the biggest question asked in my Email Guidance offering – “how do I grow my audience?”).

Growth is just one metric, but the people you serve don’t care about your list size. What if you just watered the garden that’s right in front of you? What if something clicked, and just 1% of your total audience decided to invest in your work?

How can talking to your fans, audience, and readers be a waste of time?

Setting a timer for 15 minutes and communicating with real people five days a week will probably get you more results than the hour you spend making one Reel for 153 “people” to see (and which will never be seen again after 12 hours).

Does it scale? Fuck scale, do the work.

That’s from my post, “Maybe you don’t need more subscribers,” where I suggest that paying more attention to the people who’ve already signed up might reveal the path you’re seeking.