The last couple of months, the number of new subscribers has dwindled for me. I used to get up to 100 at a time, especially after one of my articles was reposted by a major blog— but recently only a few. How can I improve this?
I don't have much experience with Substack and the such. I do have a YouTube account but do not use it as medium, more like a memory of interesting Video's in sorted "playlists" and i noticed that some types of Video "disappear" without leaving a trace, so that kind of video's i copy to my own Server to be sure.
My Twitter/X followers are being kept stable by something that is called "Shadow banning" i assume.
i weekly gather between 35 and over a 100 new followers, but this mechanism makes the same number of followers also weekly disappear.
A tiny amount just unfollows me, which i can understand.
But the large amount is either "Suspended" or has "Deactivated" their account, Twitter says.
And my Number of followers moves stable up and down between 11,870 and 11,900 (just for half an hour today)
Maybe you are victim to such kind of algorithms ?
I have no knowledge in that area.
The things you know and see are important and seriously interest many in my Twitter-crowd.
But i seldom get more than 10 retweets by a Tweet i make. So either i cannot draw their attention to like and retweet them, or many don't see them at all.
Maybe you can try to shorten your articles ? You can contain links for those that are interested in those details, i do that often.
But anyway, i'll keep Tweeting your articles and retweet them at least once some hours later.
On twitter I have just 195 followers. Doesn't seem to change much. Here on Substack length doesn't seem to matter too much, For example, Simplicius as zillions of followers-- but writes very long articles, sometimes three or four times longer than mine. The difference is that simplicity is articles are reposted and referred to on various websites. This is only happened to me a couple of times. When it did, I got a lot of new subscribers. I really appreciate your treating my articles and retrieving them. My right hand is better but I still can't do much with it And I am still using dictation software.
On another subject, what you think about doing an article on autism?
It is a pity that your blog is losing subscribers, although many of the materials here are very thoughtful. More often bloggers list the characteristics of weapons, their number, as well as the number of mobilized troops. But is that what matters? It's not even interesting to me.
Or they discuss the speeches of "experts" from the State Department and the Pentagon. But is it interesting? The authors forget that as long as the State exists, so much Propaganda exists as a kind of mysterious glue fastening the State.
This has always been the case everywhere. And the US is no different from the USSR or North Korea. And I don't quite understand why it surprises some Americans.
Funny, you don't look 77:) I'm sorry you aren't attracting more interest. There are a lot of good sites and I haven't visited yours in a few months. I have no advice to offer but I'll buy you a coffee.
The great thing about smart phone selfies is when you take them inside. They don't show all those nasty wrinkles they show when you shoot outside. It's the lighting! Inside I look 67. Outside I look 100.
Your articles are always thought provoking and I enjoy them as one of your free subscribers... every now and again I try the paid subscriber option but I continue to get the 'stripe' error. OTOH I do buy Ichi (and yourself!) some coffee fairly often so that likely amounts to more catfood and medicine than a paid sub anyway.
77 eh, well done! I hope things pick up. Your comments on MoA and SONAR21 likely bring people across. And Southfront too perhaps. I happily wear my Southfront T-shirt here in Blighty.
I really enjoy your articles, but since I found you off platform and then got banned or left the mainstream sites I really have no clue who you are. Could you hearken back occasionally? It's hard to support people and know how to share them in the current media vacuum.
I find your articles very good and thought-provoking, Julian. But of course you are not alone. I don't go out of my way to find new bloggers to read - I have my work cut out keeping up as it is - and there is a surprising amount of serious competition out there. People like John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Paul Craig Roberts, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, Simplicius the Thinker, Big Sergei, C. J. Hopkins, Michael Hudson, John Helmer, Caitlin Johnstone, Dr Theodore Dalrymple, The Daily Sceptic, ... and the video shows like The Duran (frequently), UK Column (thrice weekly), Military Summary (daily at least)... and on and on and on.
Maybe there is less of a potential audience for longer, more in-depth articles like yours. I really appreciate them and all the work that goes into them. But the most limited resource, the ultimate bottleneck, is simply human attention.
I don't suppose any of that helps, but I offer it in the hope that you might find some useful ideas.
Good! And thanks for the acknowledgement. I wish I could contribute money, but as a pensioner I am currently trying to get my family budget back into the black. I really appreciate being able to read your work even as a hanger-on!
Read your post and thought that perhaps I can be of some help.
I am almost finished with a Google certification in Digital Marketing so perhaps we can help each other ? We would need to establish a coms channel and spend some time talking about your goals and Social Media profile etc.
Its not so much just the content you post, but where and how you post it that can boost views.
😄I'm not either! But it's hard to compete with. When it's in everyone's hand/face. The lure for quick info and move along to the next story vs. waiting/revisiting the story for completion or analysis is a David-Goliath battle. Epic scale at least.
The upside, though, is that you don't have those mental problems trying to reconcile their deficit of understanding in your comments.
Looking forward to reading your work! I have done a few pieces (kind of early on and likely rather rough) on South Africa in particular. But a lot on Africa more generally. I style myself as making the war understandable to nonfollowing international news folks in a half hour (3/4 tops!)/week. And showing the narrative warfare as primary. But I have only been doing so for eight months. Watching pros is a big part of my infant stage development. 🙂
There are amazing writers on Substack but many popular ones are mediocre. People flock to a shared idea more often than a quality lesson. For that reason, I will occasionally write something divisive in order to lose wishy-washy subscribers. Often, the longform article will be ignored, so it makes sense to summarise (even if I don't obey). And just like YouTube, those who began on Substack early have an advantage over (sometimes better) writers who came late. It's like life everywhere. Nothing infantile about an article of yours I just read... unless I subscribed because I'm a baby too :)
As Caitlin Johnstone (another excellent writer) has stressed, an ounce of narrative usually beats a ton of facts and figures. We humans are fatally attracted to a good story, and most of us are only too happy to overlook or dismiss what appear to be small discrepancies. The word "myth" comes from Greek "muthos" which originally meant, simply, a story.
I make a point of trying to satisfy my appetite for stories by reading fiction, so that when dealing with reality I can see it clearly and unemotionally. Currently I am reading Gregory Benford's "Cosm" for narrative, and Michael Hudson's "The Collapse of Antiquity" for facts. Both recommended, but be warned - Hudson reveals antiquity to have been even more dismal than you probably thought. The Romans appear to have been almost exactly like today's American neoliberals: grasping, entitled, lying, avaricious, pitiless swine.
The Rising Tide Foundation has some excellent lectures and the reads about political history by Cynthia Chung is so accurate for understanding how we arrived at this moment in history.
Your just finding your audience.
I have no answer how to increase your subscribers!
Sounds more noble than when I weakened my arm by falling off a bicycle cause my shoelaces got caught in the spokes, and then fell again, within a week, when my jersey got tangled. My wrist was fractured in a bunch of places. I recovered beyond expectations because I couldn't stop blogging. For a couple of weeks, I cried each time my finger, and then two fingers, touched the keyboard. Those fucking politicians I wrote about were my therapy.
Hia Julian...
I have been seriously thinking about that.
I don't have much experience with Substack and the such. I do have a YouTube account but do not use it as medium, more like a memory of interesting Video's in sorted "playlists" and i noticed that some types of Video "disappear" without leaving a trace, so that kind of video's i copy to my own Server to be sure.
My Twitter/X followers are being kept stable by something that is called "Shadow banning" i assume.
i weekly gather between 35 and over a 100 new followers, but this mechanism makes the same number of followers also weekly disappear.
A tiny amount just unfollows me, which i can understand.
But the large amount is either "Suspended" or has "Deactivated" their account, Twitter says.
And my Number of followers moves stable up and down between 11,870 and 11,900 (just for half an hour today)
Maybe you are victim to such kind of algorithms ?
I have no knowledge in that area.
The things you know and see are important and seriously interest many in my Twitter-crowd.
But i seldom get more than 10 retweets by a Tweet i make. So either i cannot draw their attention to like and retweet them, or many don't see them at all.
Maybe you can try to shorten your articles ? You can contain links for those that are interested in those details, i do that often.
But anyway, i'll keep Tweeting your articles and retweet them at least once some hours later.
Keep up the good work,
and i hope your finger grows slowly better.
Sander
Thank you Sander,
On twitter I have just 195 followers. Doesn't seem to change much. Here on Substack length doesn't seem to matter too much, For example, Simplicius as zillions of followers-- but writes very long articles, sometimes three or four times longer than mine. The difference is that simplicity is articles are reposted and referred to on various websites. This is only happened to me a couple of times. When it did, I got a lot of new subscribers. I really appreciate your treating my articles and retrieving them. My right hand is better but I still can't do much with it And I am still using dictation software.
On another subject, what you think about doing an article on autism?
Hello Julian!
It is a pity that your blog is losing subscribers, although many of the materials here are very thoughtful. More often bloggers list the characteristics of weapons, their number, as well as the number of mobilized troops. But is that what matters? It's not even interesting to me.
Or they discuss the speeches of "experts" from the State Department and the Pentagon. But is it interesting? The authors forget that as long as the State exists, so much Propaganda exists as a kind of mysterious glue fastening the State.
This has always been the case everywhere. And the US is no different from the USSR or North Korea. And I don't quite understand why it surprises some Americans.
Stay Julian.
Not to worry. I will stay no matter what. My blog is not actually losing subscribers--just not getting new ones.
Funny, you don't look 77:) I'm sorry you aren't attracting more interest. There are a lot of good sites and I haven't visited yours in a few months. I have no advice to offer but I'll buy you a coffee.
The great thing about smart phone selfies is when you take them inside. They don't show all those nasty wrinkles they show when you shoot outside. It's the lighting! Inside I look 67. Outside I look 100.
Thank you I appreciate the support!
Hi Julian,
Your articles are always thought provoking and I enjoy them as one of your free subscribers... every now and again I try the paid subscriber option but I continue to get the 'stripe' error. OTOH I do buy Ichi (and yourself!) some coffee fairly often so that likely amounts to more catfood and medicine than a paid sub anyway.
77 eh, well done! I hope things pick up. Your comments on MoA and SONAR21 likely bring people across. And Southfront too perhaps. I happily wear my Southfront T-shirt here in Blighty.
QK
Yes, MoA and Sonar 21 are great sites.
And I love the Southfront people
You picked up on the MacQueen link War Peace and 911 so kindly posted by Julian? It’s a treat without suffering the madness listening to his story
Keep at it - maybe some collaborations if possible. Great photo by the way
Collaborations are a great idea.
I really enjoy your articles, but since I found you off platform and then got banned or left the mainstream sites I really have no clue who you are. Could you hearken back occasionally? It's hard to support people and know how to share them in the current media vacuum.
I'm not sure that I follow. You found me off platform? What do you mean by off platform? And how did you get banned? Good to see you here,
Maybe go on the interview circuit with Noor Bin Ladin or Tom Luongo etc or do your own interviews on Rumble
Guess I would need a camera for that.
I find your articles very good and thought-provoking, Julian. But of course you are not alone. I don't go out of my way to find new bloggers to read - I have my work cut out keeping up as it is - and there is a surprising amount of serious competition out there. People like John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Paul Craig Roberts, Dmitry Orlov, Andrei Martyanov, Simplicius the Thinker, Big Sergei, C. J. Hopkins, Michael Hudson, John Helmer, Caitlin Johnstone, Dr Theodore Dalrymple, The Daily Sceptic, ... and the video shows like The Duran (frequently), UK Column (thrice weekly), Military Summary (daily at least)... and on and on and on.
Maybe there is less of a potential audience for longer, more in-depth articles like yours. I really appreciate them and all the work that goes into them. But the most limited resource, the ultimate bottleneck, is simply human attention.
I don't suppose any of that helps, but I offer it in the hope that you might find some useful ideas.
Actually, this does help
Good! And thanks for the acknowledgement. I wish I could contribute money, but as a pensioner I am currently trying to get my family budget back into the black. I really appreciate being able to read your work even as a hanger-on!
Try submitting an article to Zerohedge
I wrote them
Excellent idea. Thank you.
100 subs?? !!!
Have you thought of doing a stand-up comedy routine ...
Q. What happens when you put your hand in a blender?
A. You get a handshake.
Q. Good moms let their kids lick the whisk blender
A. Even better moms turn it off beforehand
Q. What’s red and green and goes 60 mph?
A. A frog in a blender.
:-)
Ouch
But seriously, and with concern, I hope you have not been in too much discomfort and that healing is going well.:-)
Hello Julian
Read your post and thought that perhaps I can be of some help.
I am almost finished with a Google certification in Digital Marketing so perhaps we can help each other ? We would need to establish a coms channel and spend some time talking about your goals and Social Media profile etc.
Its not so much just the content you post, but where and how you post it that can boost views.
I'd like to learn more about that. Thank you.
I find as you grow older you need to think more about what you do !
It’s a blessing to be able to think and so practical!
Few politicians have this luxury I’d say , constantly entangled by shoe laces in some ones passing bike’s spokes.
Gosh, a hundred subs at a time. My page is in the Dark Ages. Welcome :)
Mine too. Just passed 100 total. Thankful for those. In today's market click bait still rules, I think.
You mean I need click bait? I'm not that pretty!
😄I'm not either! But it's hard to compete with. When it's in everyone's hand/face. The lure for quick info and move along to the next story vs. waiting/revisiting the story for completion or analysis is a David-Goliath battle. Epic scale at least.
The upside, though, is that you don't have those mental problems trying to reconcile their deficit of understanding in your comments.
I'm near 500, a long way from my past life elsewhere. Google skipping links is easy proof of our manipulated world.
Looking forward to reading your work! I have done a few pieces (kind of early on and likely rather rough) on South Africa in particular. But a lot on Africa more generally. I style myself as making the war understandable to nonfollowing international news folks in a half hour (3/4 tops!)/week. And showing the narrative warfare as primary. But I have only been doing so for eight months. Watching pros is a big part of my infant stage development. 🙂
There are amazing writers on Substack but many popular ones are mediocre. People flock to a shared idea more often than a quality lesson. For that reason, I will occasionally write something divisive in order to lose wishy-washy subscribers. Often, the longform article will be ignored, so it makes sense to summarise (even if I don't obey). And just like YouTube, those who began on Substack early have an advantage over (sometimes better) writers who came late. It's like life everywhere. Nothing infantile about an article of yours I just read... unless I subscribed because I'm a baby too :)
Over on medium where I used to post. I saw people with thousands of followers who were total idiots. It made me wonder.
As Caitlin Johnstone (another excellent writer) has stressed, an ounce of narrative usually beats a ton of facts and figures. We humans are fatally attracted to a good story, and most of us are only too happy to overlook or dismiss what appear to be small discrepancies. The word "myth" comes from Greek "muthos" which originally meant, simply, a story.
I make a point of trying to satisfy my appetite for stories by reading fiction, so that when dealing with reality I can see it clearly and unemotionally. Currently I am reading Gregory Benford's "Cosm" for narrative, and Michael Hudson's "The Collapse of Antiquity" for facts. Both recommended, but be warned - Hudson reveals antiquity to have been even more dismal than you probably thought. The Romans appear to have been almost exactly like today's American neoliberals: grasping, entitled, lying, avaricious, pitiless swine.
Kardashianism is an ideology. Be afraid.
Like 'serendipity', Google sent me an email congratulating me on 20 clicks to my substack page. The throttling is hilarious.
The Rising Tide Foundation has some excellent lectures and the reads about political history by Cynthia Chung is so accurate for understanding how we arrived at this moment in history.
Your just finding your audience.
I have no answer how to increase your subscribers!
Sharing the views of others you find appealing isn’t so bad.
It’s an analysis through a different nature rather than saying what the answer is
I like your playtime of the kitten the skunk not even asking “who am I”?
I’ve found the truth often meets with silence as it’s thought about.
Glad your fingers are healing.
I stepped out to go pee in the wilds and broke my neck. Bring old isn’t for the faint of heart!
Sounds more noble than when I weakened my arm by falling off a bicycle cause my shoelaces got caught in the spokes, and then fell again, within a week, when my jersey got tangled. My wrist was fractured in a bunch of places. I recovered beyond expectations because I couldn't stop blogging. For a couple of weeks, I cried each time my finger, and then two fingers, touched the keyboard. Those fucking politicians I wrote about were my therapy.