Our rulers fear the ‘The Silent Minority’
My first fund-raiser was worth the effort, but this battle is much bigger than me.
In the interest of full disclosure (and because I think many people might be interested in anecdotes about Substack), I wanted to update the results of my first-ever Substack fund-raiser.
Note: If readers are not interested in my “telethon results” or a general meditation on Substack (and my recent terrifying trip to the grocery store), you can skip down to the Conclusion, which outlines my game-plan moving forward.
Quick re-cap: In my post Friday afternoon, I asked my free subscribers who are able to consider upgrading to “paid” status. My goal was to convert 2 percent of free subscribers to paid subscribers (which would be approximately 70 readers).
My main take-away is this project/appeal was worth publishing even though I didn’t reach my admittedly very-ambitious goal.
New paid Subscribers: 12
Comment: To these new paid subscribers, thank you very much! This show of support means a great deal to me. (Update: I’ve added at least nine new subscribers as of Monday morning!)
Here are some more key “metrics” for my newsletter provided by Substack.
N = 106 - My paid subscriber numbers as of May 4th.
N = 118 - My paid subscribers 25 hours later.
Note: The numbers of my paid subscribers increased by 11.32 percent in one day, which is my biggest one-day spike in seven months.
Substack also provides a screen shot that depicts projected “annualized revenue” from paid subscribers. This figure went from $4,580 to $5,140. In other words, I grossed at least $420 from my “telethon.”
Comment: This growth represents yet another positive “trend” for this fledgling Substack author.
(Just in case anyone missed my telethon Friday).
Other metrics:
N = 3,653 total subscribers.
N = 4 total number of free subscribers that signed up for my newsletter in 25 hours.
Note: I previously had 3,648 total subscribers so I netted five additional subscribers. Apparently several of my subscribers unsubscribed. (The Law of Opposite Effects kicks in again?)
19 - Number of “likes” my “telethon” post produced.
Comment: With recent articles, I’d been averaging more than 80 “likes.” One take-away might be readers aren’t fans of articles that ask for more of their (scarce) money. This is not surprising … and I can certainly relate.
0 - Number of “likes” this article generated on my Facebook account. As an experiment, I also post some of my Substack articles on my Facebook account, which is not technically “suspended” at the moment. Take-away: Either all of my 1,500-plus Facebook friends don’t like my articles … or Facebook doesn’t like Substack authors like myself.
A grocery store anecdote might be germane to this topic …
My wife and I recently went grocery shopping. The price tags of two items floored me. A regular sized bag of Ruffles potato chips was $5.49 ($6 with our local 10-percent sales tax). A regular-size box of Mrs. Stouffer’s lasagna, one of our family’s staple meals, was $7.40 (more than $8 with tax).
Per my shopping memory, not that long ago I could have gotten that same bag of potato chips for $2.50. The lasagna, if memory serves, was about $3.50. Per the Bill Rice inflation calculator, this is “food inflation” of more than 100 percent!
I’ve recently written several meditations on the subject of “fear.” One thing we all (justifiably) fear is rapidly-exploding price inflation.
A while back, I also published an article about the numerous “work-arounds” families must use to deal with soaring prices. One of the easiest work-arounds is cutting out (or cutting back on) … paid subscriptions.
This means that Substack - whose long-term future depends on paid subscribers - has stepped onto the media/independent journalism stage at the worst possible time.
A personal anecdote from my newspaper career …
About 25 years ago, my younger brother and I started our own weekly newspaper (The Troy Citizen) in our hometown. As publisher, I made the decision to print 13,000 of these weekly newspapers and throw them into the yards of virtually every home in Pike County.
My thought was we were going to make our money from paid advertising, and the advertisers would want to reach virtually every person in our county. Most importantly, I wanted our town’s five grocery stores to purchase weekly full-page ads and run them in The Citizen.
This did not happen. We didn’t get one grocery store to buy those key full-page ads. (If we could have just persuaded one grocery store owner or manager to buy those ads, I think all of the other grocery stores would have done the same thing.)
In retrospect, before we’d published our first edition, I’d probably made the wrong call as it cost a ton of money to print 13,000 newspapers every week (and pay 12 newspaper carriers to throw them).
The good news is most local readers loved the content, news, photos and feature stories we put into our newspaper.
After about a year, I made the decision to change from a free newspaper to a paid-subscription newspaper. I then hired a man who specializes in doing one-week subscription drives and, before you knew it, our newspaper had about 3,000 paid subscribers.
So the revenue I never got from grocery stores, I made up with annual subscriptions. I also saved thousands of dollars by printing 10,000 fewer editions every week. I could now “throw” our newspapers with four or five carriers instead of 12 (and I took one of these paper routes).
On top of this, as a “paid-subscriber” newspaper (after 12 months), the government said we could legally sell “Legal Advertising” (foreclosure notices, divorce announcements, government announcements, etc). Most people don’t know this, but “legal advertising” probably keeps many newspapers in the black.
So, as you can see, I dramatically changed the game-plan or strategy for operating my first business. Basically, my “work-around” for the fact I couldn’t persuade one grocery store owner to run full-page ads was to go the “paid subscriptions” newspaper model.
Quality content - and not being afraid to ask for the sale - matters and we converted approximately 23 percent of our free subscriptions into paid subscriptions. This allowed me to keep The Citizen in business for eight years.
I also had another idea that - surprise! - actually worked and allowed me to keep making payroll.
Once a year, our staff produced a special commemorative issue that focussed on local history, an important niche of our newspaper.
I called the special edition “Reflections.” This “keep-sake” edition was full of old pictures and articles about the most memorable or fondly-remembered elements of growing up in Pike County.
I remember the first Reflections issue very well.
My bankers were starting to get worried about me paying off my notes and said I needed to write them a check for $XX thousand by a certain date. Talk about motivation.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got this great idea for a special publication that’s going to bring in $25,000 in one month.”
Well, the edition brought in $30,000. A typical edition of The Citizen was 16 pages. Our first “Reflections” was 84 pages and 60 percent of it was ads!
I personally sold at least 90 ads, most of which were at least a quarter-page with many half-page and full-page ads from organizations that normally don’t buy ads (the City, Chamber, churches, college, trucking companies, etc).
“Never stomp on enthusiasm …”
In my last column, I noted I had extensive sales experience. But I wouldn’t call myself an exceptional sales person … except for those times when I was ultra-enthusiastic about the product I was selling. On those occasions, I might have been the best sales person in America.
When I sold radio commercials for Cumulus, I was told I would be doing a very good job if I signed up eight new accounts a month.
Sales reps really only expect to convert about 5 or 10 percent of their sales calls into “buys.” With my Reflections’ sales effort, my “close” batting average was probably 90 percent. (Even the locally-owned grocery stores bought big ads).
A couple of valuable take-aways flow from this anecdote:
There’s no substitute for enthusiasm or sincerity. If you believe in your product, you can sell it to others (if your prospects also share your view that you’re doing something original or important).
You’ve got to go see and talk to the the business owners and not be afraid to ask for the sale. In other words, you have to sell your “vision.”
It helps to have a good or original idea you’re presenting to customers.
Which brings me back to Substack (my current “business”) …
I believe Substack is a great and important idea or innovation in our media world.
For readers, this content platform is really simply a “work-around” to the sorry, captured mainstream press we have today.
For writers, it’s a “work-around” for those of us who feel we have something to offer … but can’t get our point of view published in our local newspapers or Internet sites that publish “freelance journalism.” (We can’t do this because our point of view almost never supports the “The Current Thing,” aka the authorized narrative).
When Substack writers try to sell their newsletters, what they are really selling is the fact they are producing content the “official” news organizations won’t publish.
Still, this is a very “tough sale” as most people are tapped out and correctly fear rising prices they know will continue to eat into their disposable income. Plus, they can get these stories for free at most Substack sites.
The more I think about these realities, the more I appreciate the tiny percentage of Substack readers who are paying for one or more Substack sites.
From emails received from Substack’s founders, I’ve learned that 35 million people subscribe to Substack. However, only 2 million people in the world are paying for Substack subscriptions.
Also, the people who are paid subscribers often pay for subscriptions at several Substack sites.
That is, the universe of people who have discovered Substack (as a percentage of the world population) is still very small. And from this small pool of loyal Substack readers, maybe only two to five percent are supporting multiple Substack writers with paid subscriptions.
The “Silent Minority” …
I think it was President Nixon speech-writer Pat Buchanan who coined the term “the silent majority.”
With Substack and within our current media environment, we actually have a “Silent Minority” who are pushing back against false or dubious narratives by supporting the growing number of independent journalists who are writing stories The New York Times will never publish, or CNN will never air on TV.
As I see it, two things must happen for our side to win this battle for the truth: Substack (and the best “alternative media” sites) must continue to grow and reach even more people who are fed up by the “journalism” they’re receiving from corporate-owned sources.
And more people, who have the means, will need to financially support at least a few of their favorite journalists and contrarian writers.
This means if someone is not currently paying for any subscriptions, he or she might consider subscribing to one or two of his/her favorite sites. If someone is already subscribing to five sites, this person might consider boosting his support to six Substackers.
In sales, we’re taught to tell prospective clients, “What this means to you is …”
The answer with Substack is simple: It means you have chosen to put some of your money into this fight … that you now have skin in this game, which is really not a “game” anymore.
It doesn’t even have to be a lot of money. It might be the equivalent of one bag of Ruffles potato chips per month.
At the current rate of potato-chip inflation, that same bag might cost $10 in 18 months. This continued price spike might occur because nobody in the mainstream press is really addressing the real causes of price inflation.
Substack authors are and will continue to do so, which - who knows? - might actually lead to a grassroots’ movement to elect leaders who can fix the run-away inflation problem (and address all society’s other “elephants in the room.”)
Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the growing roster of Substack authors can play the pivotal role some of us think is possible.
If enough Substack writers can’t make enough revenue to keep working 8 to 12 hours a day producing the content they’re producing … this “easy” possible solution might also fail.
In the future, we might have a Substack platform where (primarily) only independently-wealthy citizen journalists publish important articles.
This is probably the result our “1 percent” is pulling for and is betting will happen.
That is, they are betting that 3 to 5 percent of Substack readers will NOT donate to their favorite Substack authors and this platform will fade away as a potential counter-measure to their nefarious initiatives.
However, if just 1 in 50 Substack readers hit the “upgrade” button in the months and years to come, their plans for the world (and our children’s future) might, finally, hit the all-important “cease and desist” status.
My last two columns highlighted my own micro picture - my selfish story - but I hope readers can tell I’m also interested in the Bigger, More-Important Picture, which is the future … and perhaps the easiest “solution” to change our collective realities for the better.
In Conclusion … Moving forward …
At least for six or so months, I’m done writing fund-raising appeals. My next goal is to get back to publishing even more original investigative journalism and stories that require deep research.
I think that’s what the Substack “market” really wants. For example, my next in-depth article will show that “influenza-like-illness” (Covid-like-illness) was “severe” and “widespread” in America months before the novel coronavirus was supposed to be spreading in America.
But nobody should think this story is about flu-like symptoms in a given “pre-Covid” 5-month period. The real story is that our trusted experts and authorities are covering up the real important stories.
The New York Times or USA Today aren’t going to publish a story like this. But this Substack author will … And 10, 20 … 50 others like this in the months and years to come.
And I’m certainly not the best Substack researcher or journalist.
The Silent Minority that continues to support these authors might end up changing the world for the better. In my opinion, these concerned citizens are the real unsung heroes of today’s world.
Enjoy your articles even though I'm, at the moment, just a subscriber as I contemplate what and who I read on substack or elsewhere.
Just a thought though on the diet/health side of things. Perhaps you and familia could switch away from Ruffles and Mrs. Stouffer’s stuff.? After heart surgery, I learned just how bad the 'Standard American Diet' really is...if pharma is bad, so is the food industry and their so called regulators.
"If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago
I was a lobbyist for two decades in state legislatures. Purely and simply there hasn't been enough money to pay for lobbyists who can spend all day, every day of a legislative session and outside of the legislature at events in the community, developing relationships and trust with lawmakers, monitoring and advocating for freedom, individual liberty and rights for as long as I worked in that arena, and for decades before. It was citizen activists, volunteers for freedom and liberty who came down to testify on issues as they could, and the niche areas those volunteers cared most about. But they were handicapped from the start, most votes were already counted and outcomes determined long before the public hearing and testimony portion of a legislative proposal was held. By lobbyists representing special interests that rarely had freedom and individual liberty in mind.
Lobbying this system of government is an investment that a return is expected for. ROI. The return on investment in freedom and individual liberty is assumed, presumed to already exist, assured by the US Constitution. Except it doesn't. Not under a "living, breathing constitution" philosophy that most jurists hold in 2023. Olympic-level gymnastics in linguistics allow for the Constitution to say whatever a skilled linguist wants it to say. Enabling a Gov. Newsom to declare that California is the land of the free, while Florida is ruled by a dictator. Or that Obamacare is constitutional.
Law = Words. Linguistics. There's a reason that a leading Marxist revolutionary, Noam Chomsky, chose linguistics as the most important weapon to succeed in a revolution against a constitution written to protect individual liberty and restrain collectivist authoritarianism, training an army of Marxist linguists to make collectivist authoritarianism constitutional.
Until enough people are informed and engaged in what has happened, is happening and will happen to our system of governance, our Constitution will not mean what they believe the plain language of it says it means. And the current system has no intention of informing citizens otherwise. There's no ROI on that.
We do on Substack what those few volunteer activists who showed up at state capitols when I lobbied did. Who kept trying, no matter what the odds against them were. Every once in a while the lawmakers were persuaded by what they had to say, made amendments to legislative proposals that went against the special interests who were pushing them. Because they are human, too. And care. And soft spots can be found in them to do the right thing. And the more volunteer activists the better. It's really the only path forward that doesn't involve a dangerous escalation by authorities as citizens come to understand what's happening and their voices continue to be ignored through normal channels, as courts remake the US Constitution that the free people in this nation take for granted to embody the content of the Communist Manifesto.
We do what we do to try to help people understand that which we/they were unaware of before. To help them reframe their thoughts and emotional understanding that what is happening is wrong into ideas and concepts that are more tangible and more actionable. More easily communicated to others who we interact with. Those who are good with memes and metaphors that are easily understandable and relatable are the most valuable communicators. Many of us who break down and share complex subjects into lengthy dissertations for others to interpret have our roll. The meme and metaphor makers are best at taking very complex issues that we've broken down into less complex issues into even less complex presentations of them.
We are ants trying to take down an elephant. It can be done. The most important revolutions, or counterrevolutions as you will, have been done that way. Each of us a tiny ant performing our roll. As our numbers grow - and most all of our efforts must be to grow our numbers - we become more and more capable of taking down this elephant that is stomping out the very life force that our nation was founded upon and which made it great.
Only when the incalculable value of freedom and individual liberty is given a value because sufficient people love freedom enough and gain awareness of the real situation will they invest in changing the system of governance we live under. More people volunteering to be activists in state capitols, county seats, city hall's, there regularly, developing relationships with the people who have been given power in them, giving them information like what we share on Substack to help them understand what we understand. They don't know most of us. They know the lobbyists and special interest leaders who are there regularly. And make public policy that helps get them their return on investment they are making with their time and advocacy dollars.
That's reality. The sober reality of it. The challenge of our times. How much do we love freedom? We're aware of the real situation. Not enough are. Will we learn from history? Or will we purely and simply deserve everything that happens in the future?