A note to subscribers

Help spread the word

Hello Running, Probably readers. I hope this note finds you well. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve truly been enjoying this space. Working on these pieces has helped me find my writing voice that I misplaced a while back. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if it’d ever return. So, thank you. I’ll always be eternally grateful for the audience you all have provided. 

Rest assured, this is no solo trip. The best thing about launching this newsletter is connecting with so many runners of all abilities, ages, and backgrounds. The word community gets thrown around an awful lot, but that’s what it feels like we’re building here. It’s inspiring to hear so many of your stories. 

While I’ve been fortunate to learn a lot about some of you over the last few months, my relationship with the vast majority of RP subscribers is little more than an email address. Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Oh, and while I’m at it, what brought you here? (Just hit reply if you’d like to say hello.) 

You don’t have to answer any of these questions right away, or ever, really. That’s one of the interesting things about this platform. It’s mostly a one-way street. I write, you read or don’t, maybe you comment and I answer, and then we go about our business until the next time I publish. 

Sometimes I look at the subscriber list and wonder, are people digging this? Are they looking for something else? There aren’t a lot of metrics available to us substackers, and even if there were, direct email publishing isn’t the kind of platform that encourages a lot of give and take. All feedback is most welcome. 

Some of my friends who started newsletters warned me about this dynamic. Self publishing is a lonely road, and kind of a grind. As a runner, I don’t mind either aspect. Grinding on the lonely road is who we are! Still, at some point you want to know whether you’re getting somewhere, or merely spinning your wheels. 

The other thing everyone warned me about was that no one seems to have any real ideas about growing your audience beyond hoping enough people notice your work. After a wonderfully validating rush of early signups, the subscriber count has slowed considerably. They warned me about that too. 

Interestingly, the number of people reading these posts always exceeds the subscriber count by several hundred. If you’re one of those people who read RP regularly from my twitter feed or some other avenue, kindly do me a favor and hit that subscribe button so I can have a more accurate account of its reach. 

That brings me to the money part. (You knew this was coming, right?) 

I’m in the process of building a freelance business. My hope/goal/dream is to make RP my main source of income. That would enable me to give it the vast amount of my attention and begin phasing in features like reported pieces, as well as bringing in other voices. My plan when I launched RP was to offer it for free for a few weeks, build the subscriber base, and then charge money for it. 

Three months later, the newsletter is still free. Were I to continue publishing posts and adding a few subscribers here and there at the current rate, it would take me approximately four years to get the count where I think it needs to be to transition to a paid model. Even for me, that’s a lot of lonely grinding. 

So, here’s where I need your help. If you like this newsletter and want it to succeed, would you mind sharing it with friends who might like it, or promoting it on your social accounts? My hope is that together we can make a serious rise in subscriber count before transitioning to a pay model in a few weeks. 

Thank you, as always, for reading. I greatly appreciate everything you and this newsletter have brought to my life. It’s time to take the next step.