1 Year of Silly Earth Tales
To celebrate, I reread all sixty articles. They vary wildly in format, content, style, length and effort, but I am pleased with them all.
A quick reminder of why I’m here
From my Profile:
“I'm a teacher at heart. I write a few things to help process the madness of the covid era. I started writing for myself, but now I find it pleasing to imagine something I write resonates with someone else and helps in some small way.”
I’m also largely here because I read authors whose work deserves to be amplified. I cannot count the number of times I have referred to Robyn’s work in comment sections across the interweb. I sigh with delight at Richard and Phil’s elegant phrasing. Etc. Etc.
The half yearly report has a more detailed explanation.
Anyone who is writing about the state of the world now deserves credit. Anyone who is trying to support themselves by doing so deserves your spare media budget.
Hence, the thing I am most pleased with are my references/hyperlinks. Buuuut ….. the click rate of those is about 0-15%, which suggests that is not why you, dear readers and subscribers are here.
Transparency is fun
Perhaps then, it would be best to celebrate a birthday by sharing some stats, because I would find it interesting, so hopefully you do as well:
72 Subscribers
52% in Australia, 35% from the U.S & A.
The emails have an ‘open rate’ of around 50%, and 28% of those ‘engage’ in some way (like, comment, share, or read to the bottom)
Subscribers have 30-40% ‘overlap’ (also subscribe) with these substacks: Empowered, Igor’s Newsletter, Unacceptable - Jessica Rose, Steve Kirsch Newsletter, Eugyppius: A Plague Chronicle, Bad Cattitude
I quickly reached a steady 50-gradually-increasing-to-100 views of each article, except this one which got 555 views. (I have no idea why)
Hidden Gems
I dumped a lot of articles on when I started this thing, which the stats say have close to zero views. Some of them have aged like the finest of wines, so in the interests of not keeping genius hidden from the world, descriptions of the topic and easy links are below for any treasure hunters out there:
People who believe the narrative unwittingly believe crazy conspiracy theories
A Covid version of Animal Farm - Fiction
My initial thoughts on reading the Pfizer trial
Pfizer shareholders angry at wasteful safety testing (Satire)
Hypocrisy of the unvaccinated persecution (Satire)
Congratulations on your Stackiversary Shane!
I'm absolutely fascinated by the overlap section. I subscribe to all the stacks you mentioned except Igor's (I often read his posts when they're cross-posted by others; he's absolutely brilliant but I had to draw the bloody line somewhere on subscriptions, otherwise I'd have so much to read each day, that I'd never get anything else done!!!!).
Well done. The stats are interesting (maybe because I like stats :) ) I rarely open a hyperlink to ‘check’ what people have written , and if I do, probably don’t do the linked article/ substack justice... there’s just not that much time available. That said, I’ll open quirky ones. Whatever that means. And I find I no longer have the concentration span I used to.