If You Can’t Give Money, Subscribe to my Stories… Please

It Helps

I can’t say I’m all that new at Medium because I joined in November 2021, but still, in the overall scheme of things, it has been a relatively short time.

I don’t have a huge following, but it’s growing. More so since I began publishing under the auspices of different publications at Medium. I’ve noticed something lately. My subscribers seem to be picking up. And that’s a good thing. These are folks who get whatever I write e-mailed to them.

I know I don’t read all of the stories of people I’ve subscribed to, but I will turn to them a lot of the time. At one point, I was really impressed with what they had written which is why I subscribed in the first place. That hasn’t changed.

There are only so many stories that Medium recommends that I read. Don’t get me wrong, they are stories I like, but those selected pieces are not always from folks I follow.

So, subscriptions, the way I figure it, are the way to go.

Yes, I know you get a lot in your email box. Over the years with as many places I’ve dropped my email address, I get a lot. 400 a day? Yeah, I’m thinking that’s so. But, still, I see those Medium writers there, and those folks comfort me.

But the biggest reason that you should want new subscribers is you can reach out to them when you start publishing your books. I know you’ve got it in you. We’re all writers, and writers write books. For that matter, you could pick out a bunch of your articles here, trim them, tweeze them, and gussy them up for a book. It’s an idea.

Those email addresses you have from your subscribers are better than gold. Those people who have read your articles may have helped you to earn 17¢ here or 35¢ there, but being able to reach out to a warmed-up audience and tell them that you have just written a book is worth it. I saw this because I know drumming up interest in social media accounts is a tough sell. That’s pretty much a cold audience. That’s why they call it cold calling.

My husband had a job once cold calling. It lasted all of three hours. He was desperate, but it turned out not that desperate. It was a long, noisy room, full of telephones and talking people. I can’t remember what they were selling, but whatever it was, they were calling all over the United States. Along one wall were long shelves full of telephone books from all over the United States.

Later on, in jobs where he did last longer than three hours, he always got called on to make cold calls. He told me one time that, generally, for every 100 cold calls you make, you get one nibble. That’s a nibble. One interested person who may or may not be interested enough to sign up for whatever was being sold.

Everybody else in the offices, because I believe there was more than one business where this happened, would go and hide when it came to asking for a volunteer to make the dreaded cold calls. You have to learn how to take rejection like the other day when I slammed the door on those two possible PG&E agents.

I also had to make the dreaded calls to customers in one of my jobs. I saw where people started hiding their faces and finding things that were so incredibly interesting under their desks when the supervisors would ask for a volunteer. I volunteered. It wasn’t that bad.

Actually, it was sort of interesting. I remember I had to ask one customer if they’d crawl around under the table in their conference room looking for a tag identifying a phone line. They had to take a flashlight with them. It was funny from both of our perspectives, actually.

How you get a look at that list of subscribers is to go into your settings. On the second tab, “Publishing” scroll down to the sixth item and click on “Export Email Subscribers”. You will get a response from Medium asking that you agree not to sell anybody’s information. You say, “Yes” and that gets the ball rolling. They will email you a list of your subscribers. They said it would take 24 hours. Mine took 2 minutes.

I pull down that list every few months. Chances are the names may have changed. Some are not members at Medium, and yet they’ve got large followings. Of the two I just discovered on my list, I shifted them over to another column. They are there if I want to use them later on. Otherwise, they are not interested.

So, the folks who subscribed to the pieces you write at Medium and, incidentally, all of your followers at Substack have left gold nuggets lying on your desk.

Use them.

Hey, thanks for reading. I hope this helps out with your journey at Medium. As always, Clap, Comment, Follow and Subscribe.