Reflecting on 150 posts and 2+ years of writing

Last month marked the second anniversary of my transition from writing about (mostly) software testing on mokacoding.com to (mostly) productivity on giolodi.com.

On top of that, I realized I passed the 100 posts milestone a while back. As a matter of fact, I published 125 posts on giolodi.com, plus 15 Monday Dispatches, and 10 Patreon-supporter posts, for a total of 150 posts.

^{125 posts on giolodi.com, plus 25 more between Substack and Patreon.}

This seems like a good time to look back and share some highlights and reflections.

The setup

A few details on my peculiar setup.

giolodi.com is the official site, but I use Substack as the vehicle to email posts and offer paid content. The idea was that Substack’s social layer would help with discovery, which it does, but only a little. More on that later.

^{The homepage of the mirror publication on Substack.}

I also cross-post on Medium because it takes a couple of clicks, and, with less diligence, on LinkedIn.

giolodi.com is hosted on WordPress.com. That’s a way to dog-food one of the products I help build at Automattic.

Some Numbers

Each article gets an average of 1.3k views on Substack but only a handful on giolodi.com.

The figure comes from me eyeballing the posts list as I couldn’t find that figure in Substack’s stats. Substack optimizes for sending new emails and converting paid subscribers, any data about other areas is quite sparse.

Most viewed posts on Substack

Those posts received 1.45k to 1.6k views each. They match with the most emails opened. That suggests most reads come from you, my dear subscribers, and not other sources like social or searches.

Most viewed posts on giolodi.com

The numbers on the blog itself are one order of magnitude lower, between 350 and 150 views. This reinforces my conjecture on where and how people read my work.

I find it interesting that the top posts on giolodi.com are different from Substack’s. I haven’t dug into it, but I suppose those views come from a mix of sharing on social media and organic searches.

Notable mentions

These are the 5 posts that Substack’s algorithm currently ranks as “top”:

I’m surprised that none of the top posts are from the most viewed group. Nor are they the ones with the most likes. Clearly, Substack’s alg must take additional factors into account.

The piece There’s more to caring than working long hours deserves a special mention, too. It got syndicated on Medium’s Better Programming publication where it got quite a few eyeballs.

_{^{Stats for the post that got feature on Medium’s Better Programming}}

Observation

I’m skeptical of analyzing the posts data without at least exporting them into a spreadsheet. But I cannot find such an option on Substack. Besides, given my volume, I doubt there’d be anything statistically relevant.

So, here are some observations.

Themes

The posts that most resonated, using views as a proxy metric, are down-to-earth, actionable productivity advice. One might say they have a contrarian flavor. The titles are phrased as critical or have negative verbs. “Don’t let this,” “That won’t,” “That other doesn’t,” “There’s more to this than,” etc.

None of the best posts are about AI, the future of work or the other tech-related topics I opine about from time to time. I don’t have the discipline or the attention span to write on a single topic over and over, but this observation will help me decide how much effort to put into those tangential topics.

Speaking of AI, none of the top posts has AI-generated images.

Distribution

Cross-posting and syndicating have been basically useless in gathering new subscribers. The piece syndicated on Better Programming that I mentioned above got more views than any of my posts on Substack, yet Medium accounts for only nine all-time views and one free subscription.

When viewed from that angle, I should stop doing it.

But I’d like to think my writing is helpful in some way. Sure, I’d love for folks to subscribe and for this endeavor to eventually become economically viable. But I’m also doing it with the romantic ambition of being part of the ladder of progress. From that angle, sharing and cross-posting are good ways to spread ideas and meet people where they are. I can see myself keep doing it on those channels that have low friction.

SEO

As I’ve mentioned above, from the data I can gather between Substack and my WordPress instance, little of my traffic is organic.

I debate whether to invest in SEO. On the one hand, it seems like a no-brainer. Why spend all that time writing if people only see your posts once?

On the other hand, I’d rather use the little time I have on writing.

I may be delusional, but I think there’s a tipping point in scale that, once reached, will outsize the return from any SEO effort. Better to work on my craft and sharpen my ideas by iterating on post after post than playing SEO games.

Lessons Learned

A classic theme for this kind of retrospective post is “how to grow your newsletter like I did.” Alas, I can’t advise you on how to grow an audience or succeed at Substack because mine is not a success story. My subs number is low and churning, and the growth curve is relatively flat.

^{Subscribers graph on Substack. The jump in Aug 2022 is the initial import.}

What I can share, however, is how I managed to stick with this for two years, publish a healthy number of articles, and get value out of the process regardless of extrinsic metrics being unremarkable and stagnant.

What works for me

I’ll summarize it in a step-by-step framework. But keep in mind that reality is often more complex. Take this as a guideline.

1. Find something you are interested in and care about. Ideally, it should be a “scratch your own hitch” kind of thing. I care about productivity because I want to be the best version of myself and support and provide for my family. All the online writers I admire write from a place of curiosity.

2. Read about it. Read about your area of interest as widely as you can. Watching videos and listening to podcasts also counts as gathering ideas. After all, ideas come in all different forms and instantiation. But I can’t help feeling that if writing is your goal, reading should be the primary acquisition medium.

That means being in touch with the prominent voices in the field at present, as well as understanding the “canon” and background of the field. In addition, read widely, for example, by reviewing the bibliographies of the books that resonated with you or by finding out who your favorite authors read.

3. Think. Then, think some more. I came across a prominent author’s comic strip illustration of their writing process. Unfortunately, I didn’t note it down at the time, but I remember it showing a stick-figure-like version of the author’s head growing in size in each frame until it was massive. That’s when the writing began.

Writing is thinking.

I’ve heard from various authors in interviews that they have several ideas in incubation at a time. They’ll go out for a walk and ponder about them. Or collect notes in draft articles. At some point, all the thinking coalesces, and they’re ready to start writing.

That’s been my amateur experience as well. I’ve missed my self-imposed weekly deadline many times because I started to write a post that wasn’t thought through enough and couldn’t get anything worth sharing in time.

4. Write. That sounds easy enough, but anyone who tried it knows it isn’t.

But if you’ve thought through your ideas long enough, writing about them gets less hard.

I follow a rather standard process.

Write down the core idea. That’s the elevator pitch for the post, the one-liner kernel at the center of it.
Develop an outline. Try to think about storytelling, too. Beginning, middle, end. Setup, conflict, resolution.
First draft.
Edit.
Bounce between writing and editing until satisfied. Or till you realize you’re going round in circles and it’s time to ship the damned thing.
Copy edit. I’ve been using Grammarly for a while. Recently, I’ve also been feeding the final version into ChatGPT. It picks things every now and then that Grammarly missed.

5. Publish, then move on. It’s easy to get emotionally attached to a post. You came up with a new idea or a fresh angle to an old one. You’ve put your heart and soul into it.

Then you publish and… it’s out of your hands.

Sometimes, it resonates. Once in a while, it goes really well.

More often than not, it falls flat.

That’s why I try to ignore my posts’ stats and think forward.

John McPhee pointed out that: “It doesn’t matter that something you’ve done before worked out well. Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.”

Something your last piece can do, however, is reveal further avenues for research and thinking.

Something your last piece can do, however, is reveal further avenues for research and thinking. At that point, you’re ready to start again from the top.

I find the process I just described thoroughly enjoyable. From the turning of pages in the books I read to the loud clicking of the Cherry MX Blue in my Ergodox EZ mechanical keyboard. From diving into rabbit holes to ruminating on ideas while out walking.

I get something out of it every time, regardless of the measurable outcomes. If all the reads and like went away, I’d still be writing in one way or another.

That’s the not so secret secret of my consistency. If found something I care about and built an enjoyable process around it. It’s a climb where the landscape I see along the way is intrinsically rewarding, regardless of how far the peak is.

Accountability

Another benefit of writing about the topics I cover is that every post holds me accountable.

Since writing about developing empathy for the future self, I found it harder to make short-term focused choices. Publishing posts about workflows and ways to work is a way for me to put them into practice. I can’t be consistently disorganized when I pour so much ink into praising organization and discipline.

If writing is thinking, then publishing is accountability.

If you want to embark on a self-improvement journey, consider writing about it in public.

The raw metrics for my writing are far from impressive, but there’s more to this work than optimizing for views or shares.

It might sound lofty, but I find myself aligned with what philosopher Karl Popper wrote in Conjecture and Refutations: “It so happens that I am not only deeply interested in certain philosophical problems (I do not much care whether they are ‘rightly’ called ‘philosophical problems’), but inspired by the hope that I may contribute—if only a little, and only by hard work—to their solution.”

So, here’s to the next 150 posts.

And here’s to you for sharing the journey with me.

Thanks!