A Mailing List Experiment
I wanted to try something a little different, so I’ve created a mailing list with MailChimp. If you sign up, I’m going to email you a full-text version of any article that I write. My thought is that this will be a really great, low friction way to get my writing in front of anyone who wants to read it. I currently post about new articles on Twitter, but I suspect many of those tweets are simply lost in the noise. I’m also hoping that people who choose to receive the emails will be more likely to respond and interact with me. I honestly can’t think of a lower barrier to entry than replying to an email.
You may wonder why — if I’m so concerned about interaction — I don’t have comments on my site. If I’m being honest, it’s because I don’t want people coming to my site to read what other people are writing. Right now I have full control over every pixel and every word on this site, and that’s how I intend to keep it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t care what people think about my ideas. I just have a strong preference for those conversations to happen somewhere else.
I don’t really know what to expect from this. Not many other writers seem to be syndicating their articles via email, so there mustn’t be too much demand for it. Though maybe they just haven’t thought to try it? I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
If you’re not interested in joining my mailing list, but you are interested in following what I write, I also offer an Atom feed, and the aforementioned Twitter account.