Long Tail Writing

My mailing list is an amazing resource that I look forward to building into a multi-prong tool. The goal would be to deliver different types of value to those who most desire it. In October I tried out that approach but haven't found a good way to separate this. (Several of the "potential paths" that would have led to segments in my mailing list had few people click on them.) However, I took a few moments and built a summation of how my mailing list is doing since I revived it this year. Here is the five-month summation of my list: It is currently growing by about 4.8% per month (after uninterested are removed). These are more actively engaged (the typical author mailing list has 40% open, 10% click. We have 50% open, 15% click) which means 1.5x better results than typical author. [So that 4.8% growth is really 7.2% growth] On the flip side, I was curious how my growth (with brutal removals of inactive users) compares to more relaxed removal of inactive user...

I was recently thinking about what I want from each component of my author platform. I think this was the result of paying for Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads that didn’t come anywhere near paying off. I keep hearing that the market is “pay to play”, and that this is the gateway to play, but I simply have found walls here… not doors. I realized that this wasn’t a pay to play situation. Instead, it was a way to drip pay for advertising research. That’s great, but not exactly what I was expecting. If I am going to pay for advertising, I want to be given access to unique ecosystems that thrive on niches. Amazon feels too combined for me on that. In addition, they have been known to have horrible stat problems (not updating correctly, incorrect information, etc). I don’t think Facebook is much better, because they make it seem like there is a lot of action around each dollar you spend, even though it’s not real action. “Having an interaction” with an ad is not just seeing it ...