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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Cutting Room Floor Text ....

What’s Causing this? Readers opine ….

I enjoyed perusing the many Reader Comments my first article generated. The consensus view seems to be that Substack readers might have reached a “saturation” point on Substack articles. Many readers report they already subscribe to far more Substacks than they could ever read. In recent months, “Covid fatigue” might be starting to kick in at greater levels.

In a nutshell, Substack might be a victim of its own success. People were very interested in reading alternative points of view at one point, but have now apparently become over-subscribed and have curbed their enthusiasm.

Regarding this POV, I can only say this all rings true to me. However, the purpose of today and yesterday’s article is to provide possible data that something else is also at work here. Basically, it’s hard for me to believe that the core universe of Substack readers all reached a kind of tipping point pretty much at the same time …. And, pretty much, all in the last few months.

Even with many people becoming burned out on Covid topics and perhaps reducing the time they spend reading articles every day, it seems to me my new subscriber numbers wouldn’t have reversed as dramatically as they have in recent months.

After all, Substack should be adding X millions of new readers every year or month, right? We know the mainstream media is Dead Man Walking, which should be a great trend for Substack and its non-captured writers.

Some commenters noted that I might be approaching the peak of people who are interested in the topics I write about. Another point was that many articles are redundant and seem to cover the same material. This is probably true as well, but, from my perspective, I know I've barely tapped into the market for “contrarian” articles.

For example, Alex Berenson just wrote an article where he mentions his newsletter has 250,000 subscribers. I have 5,555. This means approximately 244,500 Alex Berenson readers (theoretically) could become Bill Rice, Jr. readers. If I could persuade just 10 percent of Alex’s readers to sign up for my Substack, you’d see me dancing a Little Two-Step. And a dozen famous Substack Covid writers probably have subscriber numbers of more than 100,000.

Several posters opined that they’d like more variety in their Substack content, which is music to my ears as I can easily segue into non-Covid taboo topics (and, in fact, already have with numerous articles).

This said, there’s still 50 or so Covid threads I’d like to do my part to help tie together if, for no other reason than someone needs to do this.

It also occurs to me that the Big Stories of the World probably haven’t even struck yet. Ever the contrarian, I think the people who have already discovered Substack will, largely, stick with Substack when, say, our leaders pull the trigger on digital currency or try to rig/steal another presidential election.

I don't think I'm ever going to run out of captivating and important topics to write about. What concerns me is the prospect that I might produce quality content on these subjects, articles that don’t translate into sustainable subscriber growth. Thus this series of articles.

If Substack authors don’t critically cover these topics, who will? The New York Times? And if Substack authors only get 1 subscriber for every 2,000 reads they generate, will they/we continue to produce this copy?

I don't know, but probably not.

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SteelJ's avatar

In addition to what I posted earlier (a lot of your "reads" are from people who CANNOT subscribe because they are subscribers already), I was going to mention the obvious other possibilities, but unsurprisingly, you already wrote about:

"Covid burnout or Sustack subscription saturation "

Exactly.

You wrote an article months ago wondering whether the COVID topic had the legs to keep Substack as dynamic as it's been. And, if other topics would resonate as well. My opinion is Sort Of, and No. The trouble with the COVID topic isn't burnout (which to me means being sick of it) - those who see through it are as interested as ever. But so much has already been said. New developments are happening, but not at "warp speed", so I find myself skimming, or only partly reading articles I'd have devoured a few years ago. I'm sure others do similar. I hope you keep going though, we all do.

I'm NOT discounting the possibility of something nefarious contributing, or even as the main cause.

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