The State of Ditch Rich
A brief overview of the numbers and the readers that have made this project a success.
It’s a big week for Oregon football, but I thought I’d give a quick recap as to The State of the Ditch now that the regular season has come to a close.
Since my first Football season preview on August 5th, Ditch Rich has:
Sent out and posted 50 articles. Nearly 48,000 words written in total. Just short of a novella in four months.
Game Previews and Reviews each week, along with a Pac-12 Check and Christian’s Picks nearly every week.*
*My highest volume week was Ohio State, where I sent out an article per day, Monday-Friday.
In that same timeframe, Ditch Rich has netted 26 new subscribers—from 112 to 138.**
**And I think we lost two subs somewhere in the middle of the year because those folks wanted me to lie to them and say that Anthony Brown was trash, but I refuse to lie to my readers because trash quarterbacks don’t win ten games; and their division; and beat Ohio State.
We have also garnered over 10,300 total views, and over 3,000 unique site visits.
We have a ~45% average email open rate. For some context, your average email marketer would drool over an open rate of 30%, so Ditch Rich is doing well by that measure. The last thing I want, however, is for this newsletter to become a nuisance in anyone’s inbox, so as football season winds down I’ll focus on fewer and higher quality pieces that cover Women’s and Men’s basketball, along with track season and any other news that is sure to come out over the Winter and Spring.
My hope is that a less saturated send schedule—and a step-up in content quality—will allow Ditch Rich to enter into next football season with an average open rate that is closer to (or above) 50%.
I’ll link some of the “Top Posts” of the season by views down below to give you an idea of what kind of content generally drove the most attention, but the outlier there is clearly my “conspiracy” blog about Justin Flowe’s injury status going into Ohio State.
Duck Twitter was going crazy that day. Everyone was apparently googling “Justin Flowe injury”, and my blog was able to dive down a rabbit hole that the 247 guys were too afraid to—lest they lose their precious access.***
***Note: Matt and the 247 guys are essential to Duck coverage and they do incredible.
However, the fact that the conspiracy blog was so gigantic should be a far more serious indictment to the state of our media landscape and what kind of “news” hits the jetstream nowadays.
As enticing as those views are, I don’t intend on turning into Duck Drudge any time soon.
On that note, I still haven’t made any money with this blog—although I think our record in Christian’s Picks might have given that away already—and I intend to keep it that way. I will not be beholden to my own or anyone else’s pursuit of profit.
I only answer to my own stupid, hopeful heart.
Overall, I’m proud of what my consistency (and the on-field success) has done to help Ditch Rich take a big step this season, but these stats basically mean nothing. This rundown is most definitely not a pitch to any advertisers, and it isn’t a case study, either. It’s just a thank you.
Thank you all for liking, commenting, and sharing Ditch Rich. Thanks for emailing me your praise—and your disagreements. And thanks for subscribing to get some crudely photoshopped pictures and some writing that I hope gets just a little better every week.
And a huge thank you to Christian Vitale for giving me his picks and talking Ducks with me every week.
These numbers are a testament to the community that’s growing here. They are numerical proof of the countless family, friends, retweets, and tie dye t-shirts that have built this thing. So thank you for the support. I hope you’ll keep reading.
Go Ducks.
TOP POSTS + Views (August - Present)
Everything We Don't Know About Justin Flowe's Status for Ohio State - 1,743
2021 Oregon Football Preview: The CJ Verdell Alert System - 611
Choose Life: Cal Game Review- 460