Freebie Friday: A blog for everyone

Find out about my blogging journey and where I am today

Welcome to this week’s Freebie Friday and the first of 2023. It’s great to have you here reading and getting a taste of what can be found behind my paywall whilst seeing something weekly for signing up to a free subscription.

My idea for this piece came from a Substack feature that comes out every week giving all writers the chance to ask questions, comment on what others had asked and to share experiences. It’s a great place for knowledge, to pass on your ideas and to also see what else everyone does to increase their presence on Substack.

I’ve had quite a blogging journey and I wanted to share with you how I reached this point and why a majority of my work is behind a paywall. It’s not designed to plead or beg for any of you to become a paid subscriber, that I feel is down to any individual to decide from what they read if it’s a worthwhile venture.

I am now into my sixth year blogging, but yet to reach a year on Substack, ten months to be precise at this point. At school I always wanted to be a sports journalist but without heading down the conventional route of university or college so it lay dormant for a long while.

Over the years I dabbled with social media duties for non-league football teams, the explosion of the likes of Facebook and Twitter plus easy to create websites allowed me to harness some of that want for a good few years. Then came the idea for a non-league football blog, for those of you who follow ‘soccer’ or indeed football England has quite a unique system below its professional game.

Looking back at 2017 when I started out, I was writing one blog a month, now it’s eight per month behind the paywall and a further four available to everyone. Like quite a few people my explosion came during worldwide lockdowns, a captive audience who in some cases found solace in something to regularly read on a subject they enjoyed.

As the world gradually went back to work I expected to see the numbers drop but they held steady and then even started increasing to a level of 37,000 visitors across the world in 2021. At that point I felt after four years I had an audience that had grown and had stayed with me and the time was right to go paid.

I did test the water a little bit across social media but believed in my writing that it would work but not to put pressure on for it to convert immediately as I was transferring to a brand new platform away from the mainstream that people knew and trusted.

So far I’ve been pleased with the growth and am always looking for ways to increase my list of both free and paid subscribers. I came across a couple of articles recently by other Substack writers who were attempting to explain what it takes to put together their work and why it goes behind a paywall.

You are effectively paying for someone’s time to create articles on a subject and topics you like to read, some are relatively easy to sit down and write for an hour or two like these pieces are, others involve going to a game, taking four hours or more out of your day or even creating a set of questions for individuals to answer and then writing that bit up, I guess it’s a service in a way but not one where you get shafted by a professional charging extortionate rates!

I’ve made sure from the tail end of last year to provide something for free subscribers to see on a weekly basis, to add some more structure and to make everyone who subscribes feel appreciated. Of course I would love everyone to convert and would hope it’s value for money in a time where I know every penny and pound counts, it’s a tough time we’re all in the middle of currently.

There might be someone you know who might like the site, feel free to show them what it’s all about and as you know from reading this free subscribers get something too so there’s no pressure to buy.

Without you needing to go looking for it, the monthly cost is £5 for eight pieces of work, that comes out at less than 70p per article, not much you can buy for 70p these days. A tip which you might not have worked out is that an annual subscription when divided by twelve works out at £4 a month (£48 for the year) which makes the cost an incredible 50p per article, just gets better and better doesn’t it!

I’ve a podcast to relaunch this year which will add to the experience and to your value through a mixture of free and paywall interviews and I’m hopeful all of you and more will stay or join the journey, there is also a chat function now available which I need to master and persuade you to join in with, a great way to get communication and debate going.

Feel free as always to leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you think and suggestions for articles are always welcome.