From 2,000,000 reads to 400? Fuck yeah.
When I started writing on Pizza Party and abandoned Medium, I walked away from around 2,000,000 reads over an 18 month period. Simply huge stats. It was insane. And looking back, I know I certainly abandoned an interesting asset in that audience. Which was really part of the problem. I was seeing my audience as some kind of an asset.
Setting up Pizza Party on the Svbtle network and starting again from scratch has reminded me of the importance of every single individual reader, and how much it means when someone takes the time to read and engage with my work.
It’s also a wonderful opportunity to re-invent that work, and make it my own. I’m excited by that. There are questions worth considering though. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be writing on Svbtle. It’s beautiful, it’s simple, but I’m not hosting it, and that always leaves me with a sense of discomfort. The morning I set it up, I chose it because:
- I liked that it was a paid platform, so I was supporting indie makers
- It was easy, straightforward and simple to build on
- The lack of customisation and the built in beauty of the platform meant I couldn’t get so caught up in how it looked that I’d forget to fucking write
But the limitations are now starting to feel more restrictive. And I think the time may have come to push out and go beyond it. I’m considering Ghost, I’m considering Wordpress, and I’ll see where I wind up.
If you want to back me as a writer, the one thing you can do is to share anything from Pizza Party around to the people you like. Every single reader helps me to explore my audience all over again and find something new in my creativity.
Thanks y'all.
xox Joany 🍕🍕🍕