Boy, can I relate to this. Running media has gone through a similar transformation (and the running world itself suffers from some of the same kinds of elitism). Great interview!
Also, I found this really interesting: "Instead of promising a podcast every Friday and a news update every Tuesday, I commit to 100 newsletters per year. Some weeks I write four. Some weeks I write zero. But 100 over the course of 52 weeks is very achievable."
Stuart, if you're reading this, could I ask how your readers have responded to this? I myself am interested in being able to publish more when I want, rather than sticking rigidly to a schedule. (But I don't want to mess up what I have!) Curious to know more.
Hi Terrell - thanks so much for the comment. I've had readers comment to me here and there that the cadence was "just right." No one has ever said, "I wish you had a more rigid, predictable schedule." I think it helps that skiing is a seasonal activity, so people expect less in the summer (most ski publications stop altogether from May to September. I did actually try to follow a set schedule at first, but I quickly learned that, with the podcast especially, flexibility was really important (if one of my guests had to reschedule, for example). This model also allows me to write when there's actual news, rather than forcing a post because it's Tuesday. I think the best judge of whether readers cared or not was this: when I went paid, the conversion rate was stronger than I expected, suggesting to me that they were fine with the way I was doing things.
Feel free to email me at skiing@substack.com if you want to discuss more. I'm also a lapsed runner (who currently has a broken leg), so I'm going to sign up for your newsletter to get the running stoke flowing again.
Boy, can I relate to this. Running media has gone through a similar transformation (and the running world itself suffers from some of the same kinds of elitism). Great interview!
Also, I found this really interesting: "Instead of promising a podcast every Friday and a news update every Tuesday, I commit to 100 newsletters per year. Some weeks I write four. Some weeks I write zero. But 100 over the course of 52 weeks is very achievable."
Stuart, if you're reading this, could I ask how your readers have responded to this? I myself am interested in being able to publish more when I want, rather than sticking rigidly to a schedule. (But I don't want to mess up what I have!) Curious to know more.
Hi Terrell - thanks so much for the comment. I've had readers comment to me here and there that the cadence was "just right." No one has ever said, "I wish you had a more rigid, predictable schedule." I think it helps that skiing is a seasonal activity, so people expect less in the summer (most ski publications stop altogether from May to September. I did actually try to follow a set schedule at first, but I quickly learned that, with the podcast especially, flexibility was really important (if one of my guests had to reschedule, for example). This model also allows me to write when there's actual news, rather than forcing a post because it's Tuesday. I think the best judge of whether readers cared or not was this: when I went paid, the conversion rate was stronger than I expected, suggesting to me that they were fine with the way I was doing things.
Feel free to email me at skiing@substack.com if you want to discuss more. I'm also a lapsed runner (who currently has a broken leg), so I'm going to sign up for your newsletter to get the running stoke flowing again.
I'd really like that -- I'll send you an email a little later today.
Thank you so much