Folks,
Thank you for your patience. Season 3 of the Green Room is about to begin.
What’s the Green Room?
The Green Room is a blog & newsletter written by me, Jordan Green. (You can find more of my work here.) This site was borne in February 2021 from the desperate, pandemic-induced groans of a writer who missed his readership.
A Short History of the Green Room
Season 1 of the Green Room was experimental, building off the audience of The Terwilliger Post, a newsletter launched in early 2018.
In that season, I acquainted myself with Substack and established themes like: the Cascadia Chronicles; missives & stories concerning faith, family, and food; dispatches from life as an Oregonian; and recommendations about cool places & stuff.
(If you wanna read my best work in Season 1, try my commemoration of Grandpa Lewie or my report on Tyler Green’s 2nd place finish at Western States.)
Season 2 of the Green Room explored similar themes and I also established ongoing series to build out, like stories from life with Mindy, tales from middle school, times I got in trouble in the Army, and A Dreamer’s Guide to the Rose City.
Also, Midjourney and the AI art revolution launched, allowing me to craft my own title images instead of relying on photos in the public domain.😅
(My favorite pieces from Season 2 include the story of Lana’s birth, the subsequent audio edition, and a memorial of Frederick Buechner.)
Nuts & Bolts & Stats
The Green Room audience grew at a 37% rate in the 2022, and paid subscribers grew at a rate of 67% over the last year. That’s some quality growth!
One valuable metric for newsletters is “open rate,” which is the percentage of folks who actually read each sent email. Generally, a 15-25% open rate is considered successful. Well, the Green Room’s open rate is regularly in the 55-65% range. This infers an highly engaged readership, so thank you for opening Green Room emails!
On the platform front, Substack continues to impress with new products and services uniquely suited to writers. Beyond that, more authors, bloggers, and journalists are moving to Substack, and I expect that to continue as mass media companies strip out talent in the name of profit and Twitter disintegrates. Readership grew in brand recognition alone, and Substack should get more familiar as time rolls on.
The plan to grow in 2023 is: more frequent posts; more focused stories; more audio works, like interviews and readings; and a robust social media presence to widen the spectrum of potential readers.
A New Approach to Finances
Last year when the Green Room went pro and opened up to paid subscribers, I faced a dilemma: Which posts should be private and which should be public?
I see a lot of Substackers wondering the same thing, and the only guidance from from the platform itself is to make top posts public so they can be shared and pull in more readers.
From this uncertainty, I pitched the Green Room as a kind of local journalism shop where paid subscribers have access to bonus material. I think that worked alright, yet I also occasionally wondered if enough value was offered to those of you financially supporting this place.
(I’m also just deluded enough to believe all my posts are my best work, and I almost always want I make them public.)
So the financial plan for this season is to shift toward a public radio model, relying more on readers’ generosity than quid pro quo. I might drop in with a fundraiser every so often, or a reminder that while most of my work is available for free, good art & beauty flows from abundance, and supporting art is one of the clearest ways we honor the generosity God bestows on us.
As Brad Routh reminded me early last year, there’s Scripture to support this generosity:
“Give a bonus to leaders who do a good job, especially the ones who work hard at preaching and teaching. Scripture tells us, ‘Don’t muzzle a working ox’ and ‘A worker deserves his pay.’” 1 Timothy 5:17-18
I don’t know about preaching, but I’m definitely trying to teach Jesus’ way— through storytelling—and I’m well-trained for this job. I hope you agree, and decide to support an artist or writer you enjoy, even if it’s someone else.
While posts will remain mostly public, paid subscribers will have full access to archives, occasional posts solely for them. I’m also working on commemorative coins to give to paid subscribers during Seasons 2 & 3.
In closing…
Thank you so much for being here. I’m honored to write for you, and I feel certain the finest Green Room content is still ahead. In television, I’ve noticed Season 3 is often the year a show finds its groove and vaults into mastery. I’m hoping for the same effect here, and to enlighten and entertain you to new heights in 2023.
Thank you for traveling along with me, friends, and thank you, as ever, for reading.
Sincerely, Jordan Green
All best wishes for a good Season 3 ahead!