I have a newsletter I love, without much traction. Where to go from here?
Almost a year ago, I launched my newsletter Robot Owl: Proven ways to spark a passion in any child for curiosity and innovation, in your inbox. ( http://robotowl.co , https://medium.com/robotowl )
I started out with 12 weeks of consistent weekly emails, then got immersed in a series of other projects and have only sent out a few updates since then.
I have a slow trickle of subscribers coming in -- a handful a month -- and when I ask, people like it. But only a few readers have been so enthusiastic that they respond to the emails, or email me about it, or comment on the Medium article versions of the posts.
Should I keep working on it? It is in the intersection of what I'm good at -- programming, teaching, working with kids, writing. But it doesn't seem like there's traction around the corner.
I'd be happy to do it for free, if I only had a few hundred avid readers.
I like Michael's suggestion here to call up your subscribers or people who you would want to subscribe and ask what kind of content they need.
I would also suggest finding other large newsletters with similar audiences and reaching out to the people that run those newsletters to see if they would like & would share some of your content.
I've also found that with newsletters, consistency is key and providing a call to action asking for feedback/thoughts is helpful for connecting with readers. Hope this helps!
Thanks, @nahart! I'll look into these ideas.
I have done a few interviews of readers, and haven't found it easy to distill their stories into actionable ideas.