Business for Bohemians by Darryl W. Bullock

Author:Darryl W. Bullock [BULLOCK, DARRYL W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS025000, BUS080000, BUS059000, BUS107000
ISBN: 9781468315943
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2018-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

Our Newsletter Story

I have been building up a list of newsletter subscribers for many years. When we had set a date to open the Idler Academy, in March 2011, I was able to spend the previous three months selling courses and event tickets to our existing subscriber base, which was around four thousand at the time.

It worked. We sold a few thousand dollars’ worth of tickets for both events and courses before we opened, directly from the mailing list.

We used a company called YMLP and paid them something like $100 per month. We now use a more up-to-date service called MailChimp. (MailChimp, TaskRabbit, SurveyMonkey—I am thinking of doing a new start-up called WorkSnail for people who want to avoid full-time employment.) Using YMLP was horrific. I would lose hours of work because the site was so user-unfriendly that you could easily press the wrong button and would have to write the whole thing again. Each week, I suffered real pain for three or four hours.

MailChimp is far easier to use, and now I enjoy writing the newsletters: I try to keep them amusing and opinionated. To me, they are freedom. I can do what I like. I can attack Google and Uber and celebrate the printed word.

We use the font Courier New, the typewriter one, because it looks immediate and old-fashioned, like a communiqué sent by Comandante Marcos of the Mexican Zapatistas. The newsletters are a great way to communicate with customers, fans, and readers. People feel involved in what we are doing. At parties, people say to me, “I love your newsletters—they are the only ones I don’t delete!” This is because they are not bland and inoffensive. They are ranty, and often negative. One week I ranted about the evil monopoly Uber. (My friend Rebecca Harris, a Tory MP recently voted fifth-sexiest member of the House of Commons, wrote back, saying, “Are you running a business or an anti-Tory blog?”)

You need to grow a thick skin, though, if you put provocations out into the ether. Readers are very happy to abuse me. Sometimes, for example, people on the left are offended by my newsletters. One week there was a story in the papers that a Tory MP had been caught playing Candy Crush on his phone during a meeting on pension reform. I thought this showed a sweetly human side and suggested that we enter him for our Idler of the Year competition.

The socialist readers of the Idler raged. In certain circles, you are not allowed ever to say anything positive about a Tory, ever. Tories are scum and, if you don’t toe this Party line, you will be ejected by the Leninists. Some of these subscribers demanded to be unsubscribed. You have to let them go. If you want to write a lively newsletter, you have to be controversial, and if people take against it, they can choose not to read any more.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand …

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