First of all, it's awesome for me to be able to say that there are as of today 620 subscribers to swombat.com. Thanks to all those who have subscribed! I feel that email is a much better medium than RSS or Twitter to get user engagement.
If you're reading this in your email, you should know that if you ever have comments on one of my articles, you can simply reply to it and I will receive your email (and read it!). My speed of reply has been less than stellar, but I do read every single email I get, and eventually get around to replying to it.
Linked posts
The other bit of news is that back in February, I added email options that enabled people to select whether they received full articles, linked posts or even reposts in their mailboxes. I set the default to full articles only (max of 1 per day).
Then, recently, I thought I'd try changing that default. So I've checked the "linked posts" checkbox by default for people who sign up. I did that just a week ago, and the result is a whopping 122 people signed up for linked posts.
Linked posts are those articles where I link to someone else's awesome article. In many cases, those articles are better than my own, so it makes perfect sense for people to be signed up to those. I also post them more frequently than my own articles (max 4 times a day), and they include some additional insight when I can provide it.
If you subscribed before May 11th, you are probably not receiving linked posts. I warmly encourage you to give those a try: click on "change your options here" at the top or bottom of this email (if you got this by email) and you can check that checkbox and give linked posts a try.
If it turns out you don't like linked posts, you can always uncheck that box later.
If you're not reading this via your email client, subscribe now! It's completely free, of course, and you can unsubscribe any time if you don't like it.
Let me know what you think
Few people have taken advantage of the ability to reply and have your email go straight to me. I guess it's unusual for a feed to allow replies (everyone sends emails from "no-reply" email addresses - imho, they miss out on ways to engage with users because of this). Feel free to reply to this or any other email you get, if you have thoughts, opinions, feedback, etc.
If you read this far, you should follow me on twitter here.
