By Michael Evans, May 16, 2024.
One of the biggest problems with marketing author subscriptions is figuring out how to do it.
Not like the “what”. We all know the what. Slap some newsletters together. Make some social media posts. You know… the marketing things 🪄 (tries to smile but in reality feels myself shuddering at the thought).
We only have so much time and energy in a day… and the same is true for every month and every year.
The big problem with subscription marketing… is the undying pressure to “always” be marketing our subscription. Just as we have to be consistent with posting our chapters and other benefits, we can feel a similar pressure to consistently push our subscription to the world.
This is exhausting. And I have a better way.
We have noticed something peculiar about subscription growth.
Most new readers join during a short period of time. If looking at a period of 3 to 6 months, we find that most readers will join during a period of 1 or 2 of those weeks.
This typically happens because you release a new book into your subscription, launch a new tier, or run a promotion that brings a burst of new readers in.
This behavior is not observed for ALL authors. Many authors get a more consistent stream of growth, usually due to them serializing chapters on serial fiction platforms and getting a “drip” of readers to come in with each release.
But… if you have been burnt out from constantly marketing your subscription OR are holding back from sharing your subscription with the world because you are struggling to find the time and the bandwidth… then I have a solution for you.
Reader Drives.
Reader Drives are a set period of time where you try to grow your subscription.
It’s similar to member drives or fundraising drives in the world of nonprofits. It’s hard to always be in “fundraising” mode. In fact, it’s not even sustainable for most people to constantly be dreaming up of ways to market something.
Yes… marketing is important. But we are also all one-person storytelling businesses trying to do what we love and not lose our sanity in the process.
This is where Reader Drives come in.
- You can run 1 – 3 reader drives a year that last 7 to 10 days each. This ensures you aren’t always marketing and can focus your efforts and energy in a concentrated period of time.
- You can launch a reader drive when you are starting a new story in your subscription, launching a new benefit, or another moment that would bring extra excitement to your readers.
- You can create a deadline for your Reader Drive — creating a date fans must sign-up before in order to claim a discount (using a promotion code), special bonus, or even limit the number of spots available in your tiers for each new drive.
- And when a Reader Drive isn’t taking place, you can still grow your membership, but a little more passively. Instead, you can focus on building your followers so that the NEXT reader drive can be bigger and better.
And that’s it. A simple way to reframe how you think about marketing your subscription that may just be helpful to some of you.