Collected 500+ emails, received 100K+ views... Now what?

[zzzebra]

Hi!
I recently wrote an article that resounded really well with a certain niche group. I received over 100K+ views over 3 weeks, and a lot of people reached out to thank me for the articles and also to ask further questions. My article ended up as one of the most popular Medium posts and was very well received.



Side note: The article was published through a publication that has over 300K subscribers.

I then created an opt-in sign up form to my newsletter for more information. So far, I've collected about 500+ emails, and the number keeps growing every day.

Everything's going along really well!

Except..

My problem:
- I've sent 4 emails (1st one had 100 subscribers, 2nd had 120, 3rd had 270, and 4th had 500 subscribers) so far, but no one responded when I asked if there's a question they'd like to ask me
- The medium article does really well, but it's not converting into much of an audience for me. I have 1000 followers on Medium now because of that, but when I posted an article recently about a Youtube video I made, I had 100 views and that's about it

I'm unsure what to do with this mixed signal. Can someone help me understand what's going on? I can provide more context and information as well.

I have some ideas about what to do next, but I don't have clear signal on what I need to do next.

Ideas:
1. Create a short online step-by-step course describing how I did it in my article and sell that.
2. Keep it up on both Medium and Youtube to build a following. Don't bother monetizing now until I have X number of followers. Figure out monetization down the road with partnerships


I'm a single-man operation right now. Ideally, I'd like to grow this into a sustainable side-business, if possible.

Thank you!

 

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[Guest92dX]

Just don't give up.

Act. Assess. Adjust.

Find your positive feedback loop. Deliver value. You can do it.

Also, I think medium is becoming saturated. It's going mainstream.

 

[zzzebra]

Just don't give up.

Act. Assess. Adjust.

Find your positive feedback loop. Deliver value. You can do it.

Also, I think medium is becoming saturated. It's going mainstream.

Thanks for the comment!

Do you have suggestions on how to act right now? I didn't want to dilute my value proposition by monetizing. Is that an OK mindset to have? I feel that if I start charging, I might be perceived as looking for money and not necessarily trying to build a community, which is not what I intend to do.

 

[Guest92dX]

Thanks for the comment!
Is that an OK mindset to have?

Sorry for the late response. I still don't have a specific answer.

Act. Assess. Adjust. Is from @MJ DeMarco's second book Unscripted .

Maybe think like this: Instead of what do I sell and "how", maybe ask yourself "why" sell what you're trying to sell or sell anything from that post. Those aren't your followers.

Hi!
1. Create a short online step-by-step course describing how I did it in my article and sell that.

I would definitely like to hear more information.

Please don't create a course on how to grow a medium following. If your medium post was about how to grow a medium post, you actually haven't done any of that. All you did was post on a large publication 300k followers and get like .3% signups. One could easily conjecture that you received the 100k views because of the loyal following to the publication, not your article.

It sounds like guru stuff with the way you phrased it.

If your medium article was about growing a medium following then you just have a bunch of growth trolls hanging around on your list. They won't pay for anything.

This is all speculation though without knowing the topic you wrote about.

Read this as literally as possible. I'm serious. Just read it with as literal an interpretation as possible.

Excerpt from Stephen Mitchell in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu:

I know TL;DR right? I'm long winded. Here's the spoiler:

Spoiler: What MJ DeMarco Might Say Is the Right Answer

Act until echo.

Act. Assess. Adjust.

P.S. replace all of the pointers in the quote with millionaire or business and see if it resonates with you. Seriously, read it as literally as possible.

A good athlete can enter a state of body awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm of non-action. The purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game. The poem writes the poem. We can't tell the dancer from the dance.

Less and less do you need to force things, until finally, you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly vanished into the deed. The fuel has been completely transformed into flame. This nothing is in fact everything.

It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body, hence Lao Tzu's emphasis on softness. Softness means the opposite of rigidity and is synonymous with suppleness, adaptability, endurance.

Anyone who has seen a Tai Chi or Aikido master doing-not-doing will know how powerful this softness is. Lao Tzu's central figure is a man or woman whose life is in perfect harmony with the way things are. This is not an idea. It is a reality. The master has mastered nature, not in the sense of conquering it, but becoming it.

 

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