You have a great substack! At about 80 days I had about as many subscribers as you did.
The best advice to me came from substack itself: even if you have only 10 subscribers, try to make an effort like you have 10,000 subscribers. This way, Substack said, you eventually will have 10,000 subscribers.
I pretty much only read subs!! More truth than one can handle some days!! Yours sir , is one of them. Kudos, Blessings, and I hope you kick some serious ass!!
"The growing number of readers who are putting aside a few minutes every week to read their favorite Substack authors is another example of this" A few minutes every week? Well, for the truth seeker such as myself - a much more accurate description would be - a few hours every day! I just upgraded my sub to paid! I'd been a "free subscriber" for less than a week until this piece sealed the deal. I have many Substack subscriptions - the majority are free but not because I don't value those Substack authors any less than I do those that I am paying to read. The truth is Substack has become my touchstone and if I had the money to pay for every single 'stack, all of whom are worthy - I would do so in a heartbeat. To say that I've basically had my eyes open to what's really going on in the world, and particulary with Covid - is an understatement. All it takes is one conversation with a friend or family member who remains addicted MSM to understand that there is a measurable and stark information deficit going on in the world. Lastly - I decided to pay you for the great work that you are doing on Substack because of where my own path has taken me. As a kid, there were only two things that I had ever seriously considered doing with my life. The first was becoming a "journalist" and the second was becoming a nurse. Ultimately, nursing was my true calling and, for 30 years, I had never regretted that choice. Up...until...Covid... My faith in the system that I have called my professional home for three decades has been shaken to it's core. Maybe some day, I'll take the road not chosen and put all of my thoughts about this system and what I have personally observed- in writing. In the meantime, Substack and it's talented, informed and obviously under-appreciated writers - will keep me going.
Thank you very much, Loofly. You are right - most of us are spending a lot more than a few minutes reading our favorite Substack authors. I hope one day you do start your own site. We need a lot more "citizen journalists" IMO. When you do this, promote the heck out of it at my site. That's another thing I like about Substack. Almost all of the authors are eager to help other authors grow an audience. We all have to help one another if we are going to compete with the "gatekeepers of the news" in the MSM.
I could have written every single word of this comment (except take out nursing and replace it with pharmacy--now a pharmacist--also been in the rx business for 35 years). I too just became a paid subscriber because it is important to me that I support my own Gen-X when I see them out there doing God's work--trying to open the eyes of the masses to the massive crime we are witnessing. We can't all do it alone!! I graduated from high school in 1986 Bill so we aren't quite the same age but close! I have a tote full of photos closely resembling your lede photo (red cups and all). OH! Let's not forget what lead me here--CFP nation--my first click of every single day and often the last one-just to check the pulse of what is happening. If only they would write less about Harry and Meghan (whom I despise and could care less about) they would be perfect. Congrats Bill! You deserve all the good things coming your way.
A few hours a day? I read at 4 in the an to 10 in the am. Lol. Luckily I can do that, for now. The rest of the time I try to get folks to listen!! Some success.
Great analysis! Thanks for sharing this relevant information. I spend hours on substack reading all the fantastic articles, I can hardly keep up. This is the new digital newspaper!! I’ve enjoyed your work, I’m happy for your success!!
I make a lot of comments at ZH. I always try to read Reader Comments, because you can learn a lot from them. One of my Substack articles from a few weeks ago was about a lady from the UK who had Covid in November 2019. As far as I know, she is the first known Covid case in the UK. She told her story in the Reader Comments of a Daily Mail article. She was sick as could be, had to be hospitalized and then tested positive for antibodies in late April 2020. I don't know why that newspaper doesn't try to contact her. They must have her personal contact info. They could verify her account.
I was on assignment in Lamont late spring 2020, and a few of the ER patients in hospital said they weren't worried about covid at all because the whole town had the worst flu ever back in Nov 2019. Interestingly the entire county of Lamont had 1 case of covid all summer while all the other surrounding areas of edmonton were orange and red zones because they had so many "covid" cases.
That was proof to me that the townsfolk were accurate saying they already had covid.
The explanation why Lamont county had next to no cases was that the entire town was already immune.
I came here from CFP. I read your Fauci article linked in CFP a couple months back and consider it a fine summation of one of the most provocative and valuable non-fiction books (RFK Jr.'s book) ever written. Whatever happens, know that you have contributed to healthy community discourse and positive change, which is remarkable in this age of toxic activism and deceit.
That Fauci book review was my big break. Thank you for reading it and coming back. There's a back story to that story. It took me weeks to finish the book (because I kept getting so irate and could only read 10 pages at a time). I was also marking up text in the book because I knew I was going to write a book review and penning a little outline where I highlighted certain pages or topics I wanted to mention. I finally wrote the review and sent it to the media company that asked me to write it in the first place... and they wouldn't run it! Said it might get them sued or something.
So, skip forward a few weeks and I finally start my own Substack site ... and now I can publish my Fauci book review myself. And Citizen Free Press loves it. It got a ton of reads. I thought it was a good piece all along. I also did a sidebar piece that was just 18 excerpts from the book. That took me forever to write. Nobody would run that either ... so I published it at my Substack site and it did very well.
I'm so glad to now be my own publisher.
But there's a great lesson here. I was very disappointed and depressed when my original book review was rejected (after all that work and high hopes). But it turns out that story was my big break with Citizen Free Press, which has really made my Substack site take off a lot faster than I thought it would.
Come back often for more babbling in the Reader Comment Section!
Dec 12, 2022·edited Dec 13, 2022Liked by Bill Rice, Jr.
Thank you for being the kind of hard working journalists that the world needs. You have the stones to tell the truth even when it's hard. Please tell your wife thank you too. You are making a difference and THAT matters.
Congratulations on your success to date; I'm sure more will come your way. Funny that you used the word "pecking" in today's piece. I used it twice in mine. Unreal. I agree with your thought on competing with the mainstream media and would also extend it to the alternative media, the difficulties we wrote each other about in the past. Today was another one of those days for me. I gave mainstream a chance at something original but got shot down. I had my reasons to attempt it but decided the hell with them, that's why I have a Substack page. Now I'm only going to tell you once; stop reading my mind and stealing my words. Hahaha.
I recall enjoying your writing in a comment on another stack post, and I recall you have written for UncoverDC. So glad to see you have your own growing enterprise. The one and only complaint I have about Substack is that I can’t keep up!
My riposte to detractors is, it’s actually possible to view posts from different viewpoints here, unlike legacy outlets.
I know. I worry if there are there too many Substack sites. I subscribe to about 20 sites (about 12 free and about 8 paid) and can't read them all. But when a headline grabs my attention. I do go read the article. And there's a few people I check almost daily just because I just like their writing style.
Wow. Thanks. The story on Derek is very important to that family and it turned out to be very important to me. I'm going to do more like that - just straight news feature stories. The clot embalmer lives 40 miles from me. A reader gave me his name and phone number so I'm going to try to interview him soon. I think I'm also going to soon interview Naomi Wolf.
If I’m remembering correctly, I saw one of your comments on Coffee & Covid, found it to be thoughtful, perhaps even erudite, and clicked on your name to find your site. From blogging for several years on Blogger (just for fun but hoping to gain an audience for future endeavors), I learned that the more sites I visited and commented on, the more followers and comments I “earned” for my site.
Thank you very much. I think one of my advantages in starting my own site is that I had been such a prolific poster at so many other sites. When I should have been writing freelance articles or doing research, I was making posts! However, that ended up building a tiny "brand" for me. A few people had heard of me - not because they had read any of my articles, but just because they had read some of my posts. You can actually become semi well-known by making posts in Reader Comments sections. That's why I'm such a fan of any site that still allows Reader Comments.
I think a lot of mainstream news sites abandoned Reader Comment sections because the smart posters kept making their writers look stupid. And just as many people were reading the Comments as the articles.
Agreed. I was a frequent commenter for years prior to writing articles starting in 2016. One just morphed into the other. I still comment frequently and tweet, which become the basis for some articles.
"You can actually become semi well-known by making posts in Reader Comments sections. That's why I'm such a fan of any site that still allows Reader Comments." EXACTLY. But there needs to be balance e.g. some Substack writers are just as bad as the MSM when it comes to criticism by restricting comments to only paid subscribers all the time... Then you have an echo chamber...
"the smart posters kept making their writers look stupid" - saw comment sections start disappearing when Trump was elected... The only reason I and many others looked at Yahoo was for the comments. It was clearly a STUPID business decision on the part of publishers to cede comments and the huge amount of traffic they generate to Big Tech (FB-Twitter) but the decision was clearly NOT made for business reasons... 😀
Back at you, Brother. If I could just tap into the Sigma Nu market I might be set! I only have about four or five personal photos saved in my "upload" files. Most of them are photos I've saved from website where you can grab photos. When I went looking for a picture to run with that story, I stumbled across that one and said, "What the heck. That'll do."
You have a great substack! At about 80 days I had about as many subscribers as you did.
The best advice to me came from substack itself: even if you have only 10 subscribers, try to make an effort like you have 10,000 subscribers. This way, Substack said, you eventually will have 10,000 subscribers.
Thank you, Igor. A lot of my readers came from me plugging my site at your site! We need a lot more Igor Chudov's ... and we are starting to get them.
Not well organized as I just dump links etc to interesting sites and useful resources as comments as I come across the site: https://covidsteria.substack.com/p/community-covid-resources/comments
I like your site. Lots of good and original resources.
I pretty much only read subs!! More truth than one can handle some days!! Yours sir , is one of them. Kudos, Blessings, and I hope you kick some serious ass!!
It is hard not to get terribly depressed or irritated some mornings. Especially when the truth is so obvious and the solutions are so simple.
"The growing number of readers who are putting aside a few minutes every week to read their favorite Substack authors is another example of this" A few minutes every week? Well, for the truth seeker such as myself - a much more accurate description would be - a few hours every day! I just upgraded my sub to paid! I'd been a "free subscriber" for less than a week until this piece sealed the deal. I have many Substack subscriptions - the majority are free but not because I don't value those Substack authors any less than I do those that I am paying to read. The truth is Substack has become my touchstone and if I had the money to pay for every single 'stack, all of whom are worthy - I would do so in a heartbeat. To say that I've basically had my eyes open to what's really going on in the world, and particulary with Covid - is an understatement. All it takes is one conversation with a friend or family member who remains addicted MSM to understand that there is a measurable and stark information deficit going on in the world. Lastly - I decided to pay you for the great work that you are doing on Substack because of where my own path has taken me. As a kid, there were only two things that I had ever seriously considered doing with my life. The first was becoming a "journalist" and the second was becoming a nurse. Ultimately, nursing was my true calling and, for 30 years, I had never regretted that choice. Up...until...Covid... My faith in the system that I have called my professional home for three decades has been shaken to it's core. Maybe some day, I'll take the road not chosen and put all of my thoughts about this system and what I have personally observed- in writing. In the meantime, Substack and it's talented, informed and obviously under-appreciated writers - will keep me going.
Thank you very much, Loofly. You are right - most of us are spending a lot more than a few minutes reading our favorite Substack authors. I hope one day you do start your own site. We need a lot more "citizen journalists" IMO. When you do this, promote the heck out of it at my site. That's another thing I like about Substack. Almost all of the authors are eager to help other authors grow an audience. We all have to help one another if we are going to compete with the "gatekeepers of the news" in the MSM.
Thank you so much Bill for the encouragement and the advice!
Hear! Hear! It's a team effort and we are the "Good Guys."
I could have written every single word of this comment (except take out nursing and replace it with pharmacy--now a pharmacist--also been in the rx business for 35 years). I too just became a paid subscriber because it is important to me that I support my own Gen-X when I see them out there doing God's work--trying to open the eyes of the masses to the massive crime we are witnessing. We can't all do it alone!! I graduated from high school in 1986 Bill so we aren't quite the same age but close! I have a tote full of photos closely resembling your lede photo (red cups and all). OH! Let's not forget what lead me here--CFP nation--my first click of every single day and often the last one-just to check the pulse of what is happening. If only they would write less about Harry and Meghan (whom I despise and could care less about) they would be perfect. Congrats Bill! You deserve all the good things coming your way.
A few hours a day? I read at 4 in the an to 10 in the am. Lol. Luckily I can do that, for now. The rest of the time I try to get folks to listen!! Some success.
Bless you. if my economic situation were to change, I would gladly pay for your quality work.
I understand. I'd also like to pay for many more subscriptions than I'm now paying for. I appreciate all my subscribers, paid or unpaid.
Great analysis! Thanks for sharing this relevant information. I spend hours on substack reading all the fantastic articles, I can hardly keep up. This is the new digital newspaper!! I’ve enjoyed your work, I’m happy for your success!!
ZH was my introduction to real media. then when drudge got bought off it was from a ZH comment thread that I found citizenfreepress
I've learned so much from commenters. Sometimes more than the articles.
I make a lot of comments at ZH. I always try to read Reader Comments, because you can learn a lot from them. One of my Substack articles from a few weeks ago was about a lady from the UK who had Covid in November 2019. As far as I know, she is the first known Covid case in the UK. She told her story in the Reader Comments of a Daily Mail article. She was sick as could be, had to be hospitalized and then tested positive for antibodies in late April 2020. I don't know why that newspaper doesn't try to contact her. They must have her personal contact info. They could verify her account.
I was on assignment in Lamont late spring 2020, and a few of the ER patients in hospital said they weren't worried about covid at all because the whole town had the worst flu ever back in Nov 2019. Interestingly the entire county of Lamont had 1 case of covid all summer while all the other surrounding areas of edmonton were orange and red zones because they had so many "covid" cases.
That was proof to me that the townsfolk were accurate saying they already had covid.
The explanation why Lamont county had next to no cases was that the entire town was already immune.
I came here from CFP. I read your Fauci article linked in CFP a couple months back and consider it a fine summation of one of the most provocative and valuable non-fiction books (RFK Jr.'s book) ever written. Whatever happens, know that you have contributed to healthy community discourse and positive change, which is remarkable in this age of toxic activism and deceit.
That Fauci book review was my big break. Thank you for reading it and coming back. There's a back story to that story. It took me weeks to finish the book (because I kept getting so irate and could only read 10 pages at a time). I was also marking up text in the book because I knew I was going to write a book review and penning a little outline where I highlighted certain pages or topics I wanted to mention. I finally wrote the review and sent it to the media company that asked me to write it in the first place... and they wouldn't run it! Said it might get them sued or something.
So, skip forward a few weeks and I finally start my own Substack site ... and now I can publish my Fauci book review myself. And Citizen Free Press loves it. It got a ton of reads. I thought it was a good piece all along. I also did a sidebar piece that was just 18 excerpts from the book. That took me forever to write. Nobody would run that either ... so I published it at my Substack site and it did very well.
I'm so glad to now be my own publisher.
But there's a great lesson here. I was very disappointed and depressed when my original book review was rejected (after all that work and high hopes). But it turns out that story was my big break with Citizen Free Press, which has really made my Substack site take off a lot faster than I thought it would.
Come back often for more babbling in the Reader Comment Section!
Initially found you at UncoverDC and again at Brownstone Institute. Finally connected the dots to Substack and subscribed. Keep up the great work!
Thank you, Martha. The Brownstone Institute is doing vital work. I'm flattered they have published a few of my articles.
Thank you for being the kind of hard working journalists that the world needs. You have the stones to tell the truth even when it's hard. Please tell your wife thank you too. You are making a difference and THAT matters.
Good luck and May 2023 be your BEST Year yet!
Congratulations on your success to date; I'm sure more will come your way. Funny that you used the word "pecking" in today's piece. I used it twice in mine. Unreal. I agree with your thought on competing with the mainstream media and would also extend it to the alternative media, the difficulties we wrote each other about in the past. Today was another one of those days for me. I gave mainstream a chance at something original but got shot down. I had my reasons to attempt it but decided the hell with them, that's why I have a Substack page. Now I'm only going to tell you once; stop reading my mind and stealing my words. Hahaha.
SK and I have shared many war stories on having our previous articles go unpublished.
SK, what is your substack? I found Bill’s in the comments of another stack, as I’ve found at least half of those I subscribe to.
stevekarpmd.substack.com
I recall enjoying your writing in a comment on another stack post, and I recall you have written for UncoverDC. So glad to see you have your own growing enterprise. The one and only complaint I have about Substack is that I can’t keep up!
My riposte to detractors is, it’s actually possible to view posts from different viewpoints here, unlike legacy outlets.
Looking forward to more.
I know. I worry if there are there too many Substack sites. I subscribe to about 20 sites (about 12 free and about 8 paid) and can't read them all. But when a headline grabs my attention. I do go read the article. And there's a few people I check almost daily just because I just like their writing style.
2000 of our followers clicked on Derek's story. That's pretty good even with Facenazi shadowbanning us. It was of local interest to us so that helped.
If you have more similar stories send them directly to us.
Info@rocksandcows.org
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0ibQcTfanNxnhVtgyepDRPDZWBfPdrEQDTCUf3aSfYNrgn79kUM44Gyj9LiSVCB3Ml&id=100068873063819&mibextid=Nif5oz
Wow. Thanks. The story on Derek is very important to that family and it turned out to be very important to me. I'm going to do more like that - just straight news feature stories. The clot embalmer lives 40 miles from me. A reader gave me his name and phone number so I'm going to try to interview him soon. I think I'm also going to soon interview Naomi Wolf.
If I’m remembering correctly, I saw one of your comments on Coffee & Covid, found it to be thoughtful, perhaps even erudite, and clicked on your name to find your site. From blogging for several years on Blogger (just for fun but hoping to gain an audience for future endeavors), I learned that the more sites I visited and commented on, the more followers and comments I “earned” for my site.
Btw, you’re one of my favorite Stackers. 😉
Thank you very much. I think one of my advantages in starting my own site is that I had been such a prolific poster at so many other sites. When I should have been writing freelance articles or doing research, I was making posts! However, that ended up building a tiny "brand" for me. A few people had heard of me - not because they had read any of my articles, but just because they had read some of my posts. You can actually become semi well-known by making posts in Reader Comments sections. That's why I'm such a fan of any site that still allows Reader Comments.
I think a lot of mainstream news sites abandoned Reader Comment sections because the smart posters kept making their writers look stupid. And just as many people were reading the Comments as the articles.
Agreed. I was a frequent commenter for years prior to writing articles starting in 2016. One just morphed into the other. I still comment frequently and tweet, which become the basis for some articles.
Me too, SK. Many of my Reader Comment posts I later develop into articles proper.
TheRightScoop.com is where I enjoy reading and posting comments. Great people [psting articles, Scoop and Fred T, and lots of great commenters.
Thanks Bill for this article. I am reading thru CFP.
"You can actually become semi well-known by making posts in Reader Comments sections. That's why I'm such a fan of any site that still allows Reader Comments." EXACTLY. But there needs to be balance e.g. some Substack writers are just as bad as the MSM when it comes to criticism by restricting comments to only paid subscribers all the time... Then you have an echo chamber...
"the smart posters kept making their writers look stupid" - saw comment sections start disappearing when Trump was elected... The only reason I and many others looked at Yahoo was for the comments. It was clearly a STUPID business decision on the part of publishers to cede comments and the huge amount of traffic they generate to Big Tech (FB-Twitter) but the decision was clearly NOT made for business reasons... 😀
Congratulations ❤️ I have shared your articles ... ❤️☘️ great work.
I’m here from CFP. Congratulations!
Love, truth and honor, Brother Rice! Delta Rho (Colorado State University) 1339. Love the EN photo you published!
Back at you, Brother. If I could just tap into the Sigma Nu market I might be set! I only have about four or five personal photos saved in my "upload" files. Most of them are photos I've saved from website where you can grab photos. When I went looking for a picture to run with that story, I stumbled across that one and said, "What the heck. That'll do."