Val Thinks: one year on...

Important milestones and an exciting new chapter

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Val Thinks. Who woulda thunk it would’ve come around so quickly? I most certainly didn’t.

On May 14th of last year, I sent out my first-ever newsletter “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” which incidentally is also my most popular post after being shared in a discussion thread by a fellow Substack writer.¹

As a year is a rather important milestone, please let me indulge today in my pride and joy and share with you important achievements from the past 12 months, as well as exciting plans for the future.

Looking back…

Subscribers

I think that graph is moving in the right direction?

When this newsletter started out, I messaged everyone in my network who I thought might be vaguely receptive to the idea of reading a newsletter, and for a month most of my readers consisted of family and friends.

Then I had (what I thought was a good) idea to promote my newsletter in a popular Facebook group for Thais with over a million members. So I wrote a pitch framing my newsletter as a way to practice English reading skills and hit “post” with much trepidation. As a result of that, I more than doubled my subscribers and broke the 100-subscriber ceiling for the first time.

I was very pleased with myself for a while, until I noticed that a lot of my readers weren’t opening my emails. I let this situation continue for a couple of months until I finally worked up the courage to email the people who hadn’t opened a single email from me to ask if they wanted to stay subscribed. One did, and I unsubscribed the rest. This is internally known as “the First Purge.”

And since then, I haven’t really been “cold promoting” my newsletter.² And growth has been slow as a result. Though I did break the 100-subscriber ceiling a second time and my engagement has improved massively, which I’m very pleased about. (As of now, no Second Purge is planned.)

Writer Friends

I joined a month-long Substack workshop for its writers earlier in February so I could learn ways to grow my newsletter and, more importantly, connect with other writers. Simply put, I went onto that workshop to make friends.

And make friends, I did.

From that workshop, I had the pleasure of making the virtual acquaintance of the lovely ladies³ behind:

It’s a pleasure to write alongside these beautiful minds and know that we’re in this together. I look forward to seeing all of us grow, each in our own way, and in more ways than one.

The newsletter

Val Thinks itself also underwent a transformation as a result of the Substack workshop. It tasked me to think about who I’m writing for and why they read me, as well as about the format and design of the newsletter.

Having started Val Thinks almost on a whim, these were questions I’d never considered. So I took my newsletter on a short hiatus and asked my star readers for their thoughts on what Val Thinks meant to them and where they’d like to see this newsletter go next (thank you to all who responded).

Armed with this reader feedback and a lot of thinking, I transformed Val Thinks from an “I’ll write about anything that I find interesting and inject a bit of humour so people will enjoy reading it” newsletter into a newsletter with a mission to “make people stop and think.” Yes, I’ll still write about an endless array of topics, some weirder than others, but the common thread will be that these are all things that made me stop and think, and that I want you to stop and think about.

I also redesigned and reformatted the newsletter (and its Instagram), which you may have noticed. (Or not. Which is fine too.)

So far, reception has been positive. But I’m always looking to get more feedback. So if you have some thoughts about Val Thinks that you’d like to share, feel free to leave me a comment, or you can also reply to this email.

Looking ahead…

Now comes the exciting bit. For this one-year anniversary, I wanted to introduce a paid tier to my newsletter. All Friday posts will remain free (forever), but I wanted to provide the paid option for those who want to financially support this newsletter and edge me closer to my dream of one day becoming a fully-independent full-time writer.

But, alas, this was not to be. I swiftly discovered that I can’t switch on paid subscriptions because I don’t live in the right part of the world and Stripe isn’t yet available where I am.

So the “going paid” plan will have to wait (please have your money ready). However, I don’t like relinquishing my agency to a payments provider, so I’m going to continue with my plan to offer paid content to you guys in the coming months, for free until Stripe begins offering its services in Thailand.

So, going forward, on top of these weekly Friday newsletters, you may⁴ receive:

• Occasional behind-the-scenes posts about my most popular posts (we’re going meta)

• Occasional life updates

• A monthly round-up of books/posts/articles that I think you absolutely must read (this is as much for you as it is for me to force myself back into a consistent reading habit)

• And more…

As I begin offering these various types of future paid content, I will be extremely grateful if you, as my earliest readers, could let me know what you think about them, if this is something you find valuable and (maybe, just maybe) would pay for. You can always comment on or reply to any of my posts. I read everything.

What do you think?

Today’s newsletter is different from my usual spiel (thank you for letting me indulge), and I don’t have a life-altering question for you to stop and think about. Though I would love to know:

What do you think about Val Thinks?

Is there anything you want to see from me? What should I keep doing and/or change? Would you give me a literal penny for my thoughts when I do go paid? Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone who you think should start reading Val Thinks.

Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,

Val

1. In case you were curious (I was), there were 50 Val Thinks post in its first year of life. A nice round number!

2. A good friend helped promote it in a popular expats Facebook group in Vietnam a few months back. No one signed up, but I am still grateful for the offer and learned from it what type of audience may not be receptive.

3. I’m not sure why I ended up gaining only female friends from the workshop. This was not the intention, but I’ll roll with it!

4. Gotta keep the suspense…