Ev BogueWhen I blanked the slate on Far Beyond The Stars and moved my blog over to Evbogue.com, I deleted the entire feedburner list.
A few thousand people re-subscribed, but nowhere near the 8,700+ people who I'd previously been transmitting to.
This said something specific to me: most of those people weren't paying attention.
It's not because there is anything wrong with not paying attention. It's just that my number wasn't right. I had an over-inflated sense of who was interested in my work. It wasn't 8,700 people. It was less than 2,000.
Over the last half of year, that list has grown and changed. People have subscribed and unsubscribed. In fact, I assume that many of the people reading now never encountered my old blog.
Readers receive my blog posts in ways that I can't even imagine. I imagine some people read me on Flipboard, for example. There's no number for that.
I believe that real, honest, numbers are the only numbers to work with. This is why I look at my open rate on Mailchimp. It's honest with me. It might not be the most flattering number for my ego, but it's the number of people who are actually interested.
An open rate is a type of sensory perception for my digital self.
I want to actually know who reads my stuff, not an unrealistic number that's been padding itself over time as readers come and go.
How do you know who's reading your work?