How I got here: I found both of your poor life/no-longer-poor life articles on Hackernews, but did not subscribe. Only when the discussion with Scott started, I was like "I know that name", started checking the archive and then subscribed. The articles about poverty were super interesting, but they did not do much to advertise the rest of the blog, at least for me :)
Regarding payed subscriptions, I think that Substack is actually pretty expensive. I don't mean this in a way too devalue your (or anyone else's) work, but 5$/month is equivalent to the subscription price of a lot of newspapers or half of a Spotify Premium account. I would like to support more people that way, but this just adds up really quickly and I feel like the amount of quality time I get from most Substacks is lower compared to that. If 1$ or 2$ a month would be possible, I could (and would) "tip" a lot more, but as-is, I need to be a bit more picky.
> About once a year, the blog fairy descends from the sky and grants you permission to bore your audience with data about your audience.
Part of me doesn’t trust the self-deprecation on these types of posts, since they’re genuinely some of my favorites to read! Do they perform better or worse than the typical essay?
I think I came here from ACX, but since they enabled the recs feature. However, i also will follow random accounts that have cool names and sound interesting and you might have been one of those.
How I got here: definitely via ACX. I think it was from your book review, but I remember one of the first things of yours I read was your pieces about being poor and being not poor, so it may have been a link to that.
Why I stayed: because you're outside my typical bubble in a way that I don't find unpleasant. I lean pretty liberal on most issues and am pretty blue-tribe culturally, and despite our ideological differences I appreciate what you have to say.
I came here from ACX, presumably around Sept, but I can't actually remember. I like your writing- you are extremely fair and reasonable (more than almost any writer I can think of), and, as someone who has very different political opinions (I am pretty far left economically, probably left of centre socially, and an atheist) I appreciate this a lot.
I first found out about you from one or two of your posts on DSL. I'm pretty sure by the time Scott Alexander mentioned you, I was already a consistent (or at least consistent-ish) reader of this blog.
How I got here: You wrote a comment in a different substack I read -- I think it was Doc Hammer's Anvil, but I am not 100% on that. Since substack listed you with your substack, I went there to read what else you had been saying.
Would you be interested in talking about the first part of your subscriber graph? I started my own Substack back in September, and I'm not sure how well I've been doing at self-promotion and subscribers. So far, my trend's been pretty linear.
What do you mean, you're bad at giving people opportunities to chat? You've got 100+ people on your private discord server. And enough active participants to always have something going on there.
Obligatory Yearly Blog Metrics Post
How I got here: I found both of your poor life/no-longer-poor life articles on Hackernews, but did not subscribe. Only when the discussion with Scott started, I was like "I know that name", started checking the archive and then subscribed. The articles about poverty were super interesting, but they did not do much to advertise the rest of the blog, at least for me :)
Regarding payed subscriptions, I think that Substack is actually pretty expensive. I don't mean this in a way too devalue your (or anyone else's) work, but 5$/month is equivalent to the subscription price of a lot of newspapers or half of a Spotify Premium account. I would like to support more people that way, but this just adds up really quickly and I feel like the amount of quality time I get from most Substacks is lower compared to that. If 1$ or 2$ a month would be possible, I could (and would) "tip" a lot more, but as-is, I need to be a bit more picky.
Same as others: I read the I'm-poor story from somewhere random on the internet, clicked the I'm-not-poor story, and then subscribed.
> About once a year, the blog fairy descends from the sky and grants you permission to bore your audience with data about your audience.
Part of me doesn’t trust the self-deprecation on these types of posts, since they’re genuinely some of my favorites to read! Do they perform better or worse than the typical essay?
I think I came here from ACX, but since they enabled the recs feature. However, i also will follow random accounts that have cool names and sound interesting and you might have been one of those.
I got here from reading your comments on ACX articles and somehow realizing (maybe you said something about it?) that you had a Substack of your own.
How I got here: definitely via ACX. I think it was from your book review, but I remember one of the first things of yours I read was your pieces about being poor and being not poor, so it may have been a link to that.
Why I stayed: because you're outside my typical bubble in a way that I don't find unpleasant. I lean pretty liberal on most issues and am pretty blue-tribe culturally, and despite our ideological differences I appreciate what you have to say.
I came here from ACX, presumably around Sept, but I can't actually remember. I like your writing- you are extremely fair and reasonable (more than almost any writer I can think of), and, as someone who has very different political opinions (I am pretty far left economically, probably left of centre socially, and an atheist) I appreciate this a lot.
I first found out about you from one or two of your posts on DSL. I'm pretty sure by the time Scott Alexander mentioned you, I was already a consistent (or at least consistent-ish) reader of this blog.
I followed you from Scott's comments section. I like your style of argumentation, and came here through I think the link through your profile.
How I got here: You wrote a comment in a different substack I read -- I think it was Doc Hammer's Anvil, but I am not 100% on that. Since substack listed you with your substack, I went there to read what else you had been saying.
Can you loan me a few thousand subscribers?
Would you be interested in talking about the first part of your subscriber graph? I started my own Substack back in September, and I'm not sure how well I've been doing at self-promotion and subscribers. So far, my trend's been pretty linear.
What do you mean, you're bad at giving people opportunities to chat? You've got 100+ people on your private discord server. And enough active participants to always have something going on there.