Dear diary,
It’s been about two years since I started using newsletters to grow my blog/brand and connect with my lovely supporters. I have almost reached 100 subscribers and I’m so excited about that! My goal is to reach 100 this year and to see how close I am to it is such a great feeling. I love providing freebies to my subscribers and trying to think of new ways to advance and make sure each subscriber feels special.
However, despite being so grateful for the rising subscriber numbers, I can’t help but become frustrated with not having much participation or clicks. There’s nothing that I’m currently selling in my newsletter, but if there was, I’m not sure if I would have many clicks on it. I’ve also tried to ask for suggestions on what kind of newsletters my subscribers would like and on ideas for the freebies they would like to see and, unfortunately, the response is always low to none.
As grateful as I am for each subscriber, these newsletter hosting sites cost money, which is what makes it even more frustrating. I’m always open to helpful tips and ideas, but if the opens or clicks don’t start matching up with my subscriber count soon, then I’ll have to unfortunately close my newsletter. Hopefully, that won’t become the case, but engagement is so much more important to me than just growing subscribers.
That does sound super frustrating, Deandra. Tbh I’m not sure if I am subscribed to your newsletter. I rarely subscribe to newsletters these days because I get so much mail in my inbox, and I haven’t figured out how to automatically filter emails yet.
Similarly, I feel the same way about blogging. I make $0 from blogging yet spend money just to maintain it. I often wonder if it’s even worth my time. I love blogging but is it a good use of my time? I’ve been struggling with this thought lately.
I just checked to see and you were but unsubscribed last year, which is understandable with a bunch of emails in your inbox. I feel you with blogging also. I’ve barely made anything with the almost 5 years I’ve been blogging. I thought putting ads on my blog would’ve given me a little cash but I seem to be wrong lol. I think you should give yourself a timeframe and if you haven’t made money by that timeframe, then cut down some expenses and maybe even start from the beginning. Sometimes you have to move backward to go forward, but if you truly love blogging, making money or not, then I wouldn’t completely stop.
Hi Deandra! I feel so bad for unsubscribing. I will re-subscribe because I know how important that is for networking + your blog and brand. One thing I need to do is figure out a way to automatically put newsletters under my “to read” folder. Idk how to do this exactly, but once I figure it out I will resubscribe.
You shouldn’t feel bad, I completely understand! I don’t think there’s a way to move it as far as I know. At least I know with Gmail, I don’t see how I can move newsletters out of the promotions folder so I just remind people to check it every now and then.
I’ll resubscribe to your newsletter and then try to figure out how to better organize my inbox. I use hotmail. My email is super duper old and I refuse to retire it lol
Lol I completely understand that. I have two yahoo email accounts that I’ve had for over a decade now lol. One of them I’ve definitely had since middle school for sure.