Is deleting inactive subscribers making you less popular or more productive?
The reason I regularly delete Substack subscribers who never read my posts
When I first made the transition from writing on Medium (with 4,000+ followers) to Substack, I dreaded trying to re-build that follower list. My first thought was to go straight down my subscriber list and add everybody on it, announcing that I’d moved to a different platform. I did try that with the first 50 or so, and I noticed I was constantly getting bounce-back emails. Considering paid Medium users are charged $5 per month, I wondered how could this even be possible.
Maybe some users used to use this email address and stopped? Still, I’d run into enough spam accounts to realize some “readers” would start an account solely to post about the product they were selling, then disappear. Sifting through a list of 4,000 sounded more tedious by the minute. So I gave up and did exactly what I did with Examiner, Associated Content (Yahoo Contributor Network) and Medium. I started with one subscriber and crossed my fingers, hoping to work my way up.
Interesting things started to happen that had nothing to do with subscribers and never happened on any of the other platforms (minus Examiner, which led to a contract job reporting for CBS Chicago for a few months). I started seeing non-subscriber opportunities that I never predicted would happen (ex. an advertorial request, photo licensing request, approval for two affiliate programs). My writing style nor content had changed. In fact, the only thing that did change was I got older (and became a better editor during the years I still worked in Corporate America). Why was I seeing more opportunities with far less subscribers?
ADVERTISEMENT ~ Amazon
As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a percentage from purchases with my referral links. I know some consumers are choosing to boycott Amazon for its DEI removal. However, after thinking about this thoroughly, I want to continue promoting cool products from small businesses, women-owned businesses and (specifically) Black-owned businesses who still feature their items on Amazon. As of the first date of Black History Month 2025, each new post will ALWAYS include a MINIMUM of one product sold by a Black-owned business. (I have visited the seller’s official site to verify that Amazon Black-owned logo.) I am (slowly) doing this with older, popular posts too. If you still choose to boycott, I 100% respect that decision.
I’m convinced that, besides exposure which happens organically, it was from carefully sifting through subscribers to see who is active and who isn’t. Substack already has an option to confirm that email addresses are verified so people don’t put in fake ones just to get to an article. But another handy tool that Substack has is allowing writers to see who is actually opening content and which article brought them to your platform.
In turn, I give subscribers 60-90 days to open the Substack emails. For Substack series that I write on a weekly basis (
and ), that’s a really long time. However, for , and , which have monthly posts (unless I’m feeling chatty), that gives subscribers a couple of months to check out a post when they haven’t heard from me for a while.So why would I remove inactive subscribers, even if that subscriber list makes me look more popular? The main answer: Honesty in marketing.