I've been writing for five years

Happy birthday to Conversations By The Sea 🎂

This newsletter is five years old!

I started writing this weekly email as a creative outlet but also a cathartic one, as it was the start of the first lockdown, and I had so many things I wanted to write about… but nowhere to put them.

I sent my first email on 18th March 2020 to 10 subscribers. It was about the ethical dilemma of continuing to market your business during a global pandemic and how to do so without feeling icky.

To market or not to market?

Conversations By The Sea started out as more of an industry commentary piece, but it became so much more. Looking back, I cringe a bit at my emails since no one was even reading them. But I soon learned that it didn’t matter if anyone read them… and then, slowly, people did start to read them. And subscribe. And comment. And even recommend the newsletter on their own platforms.

A lot has changed in the last five years. I now write less about work, and more about mental health for the chronically online… as well as some personal essays about my own experiences with motherhood, grief, anxiety and more. I also found out I am autistic, which is probably unsurprising to many of you who know me personally, and that plays a huge role in my insistence on keeping up this weekly writing habit.

I know not all of my subscribers are writers, but many of you are. So, I figured I would share some cool stats from the last five years, and maybe this will inspire you to start your own regular writing practice.

Here is my subscriber growth chart over time:

In 2022, Substack launched its recommendations feature, which meant writers could recommend other newsletters to their audience. As you can see, this made a massive difference for me, as I picked up subscribers from other fantastic writers (and I hope I have managed to do the same for others).

These are my all-time top sources of traffic - My emails have been read 87,000 times!

And my most opened email ever was, ironically, the guest post written by my husband Craig about his ADHD:

Here are some more interesting numbers…

• 28 Substacks are currently recommending this newsletter

• I’ve published 215 emails in 260 weeks - I did have a baby in 2022, so I will let those breaks slide.

• Thursday is my most popular day for new subscribers - not surprising since that’s the day I send the email.

Here are some less interesting thoughts about writing (nearly) every week for five years…

I don’t plan anything

I have tried scheduling, planning topics in advance and other organisation tactics, but they don’t work for me here. This newsletter is driven purely by my gut feeling, so I typically write it on a Wednesday or, more often than not, on a Thursday morning and then immediately press send.

There is a lot of discourse in the marketing community about the importance of planning and scheduling content. And, while I agree this can be helpful, I don’t think it’s always the best approach. In my opinion, it’s better to post when you have an idea and not give yourself time to doubt. If I left any more time between writing and publishing, I am certain some of my most popular emails would have never gone out.

I don’t think about it that much

As an extension of the last point, it’s really not that deep. I am a firm believer that perfectionism is the enemy of creativity. If you obsess for too long, you risk never actually putting anything out. I would rather send something imperfect, than nothing at all.

I don’t promote it very much

I probably should shout about this email more, but I am not that bothered about acquiring thousands of subscribers. I would rather have the ones I do have read and engage every week, than loads of strangers come and judge me for my chaotic rants.

It has grown with me

When I first started this newsletter, I wrote about work culture… and then I soon realised that was just one spoke of the wheel that interested me. I don’t restrict myself to one specific genre or subject matter. I just write about whatever is on my mind that week.

One of the things that I was most nervous about was how my newsletter would change when I found out I was autistic. I was worried about alienating my audience. But then I realised I had always been autistic; I just knew about it now. So the writing never really changed.

I don’t know what’s next

I have no big plans for this newsletter. I don’t really care about hitting any massive goals, although 2,000 subs would be nice in the next year or so. If you want to keep reading what I write, then please subscribe or drop a comment below to let me know you’re out there.

I’ll be back next week with something less self-congratulatory!

I have started my training for the Edinburgh Half Marathon in May, which means lots of running and even managed to get out for a jog with the buggy earlier in the week. This definitely used to be easier when she was smaller…

Here are some things I've enjoyed over the last two weeks:

📺 A Thousand Blows (Disney+) - Historical drama from Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight starring Stephen Graham based on a true story about boxing rivalries in Victorian London. We loved this, watched the whole season in a week.

🎥 Mickey 17 - We went to see Bong Joon-Ho’s new sci-fi flick at the cinema and absolutely loved it, so chaotic and hilarious. Highly recommend if you enjoyed his other films,

That’s all from me, see you next week,

Ellen x

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 200(!) emails; currently, I have over 1,300 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.

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