Last week I took a look at my analytics. 7,163 followers on Twitter and 81 newsletter subscribers. That’s 1.1% conversion rate.

My heart sank a little. Wow, after all of this effort and all those viral posts, I only managed to convince 81 people to subscribe to my newsletter. Isn’t that pretty bad? Is it still worth it to run the newsletter?

But then I went on Twitter and saw another post from someone who has tens of thousands of followers but doesn’t get any engagement on their recent art. That’s when I realized I was right to build my own platform. Here’s why.

What I used to believe

When I was just starting out on social media, my goals were all about getting to a bigger number of followers. I remember how much I wanted to get to that 100, then 1k, then 5k…

I also really wanted to get a viral post, I thought if I could get one of those, then I’ll finally break through that beginner phase, and all my next posts will be getting much more attention. Then it happened, one of my posts got 3.4k likes! But nothing changed…?

The middleman

I’ve learned this the hard way. First I thought that my posts don’t get attention because I don’t have enough followers. Then I thought that maybe it’s because I’m shadow banned. And after wasting a ton of time on needless research, I finally accepted the obvious truth.

The algorithm’s job is to serve the right content to the right people, not to serve your posts to all of your followers.

My first viral tutorial got 3.4k likes. I was pumped. Then my next tutorial, where I put in even more effort, got 100 likes. My baseline engagement barely moved.

Let’s take Evan Lee (@EVANLEE082) as an example. He has 114.9k followers, his most recent post (3 days ago) got 5k impressions and 186 likes. This is a pretty impressive cloth study tutorial. You’d think if he has so many followers, and posts the stuff that people know him the most for (tutorials about clothes), then he should be getting tons of engagement, but it’s not what’s happening!

The approach I’m taking

After I noticed that pattern, I took a break from posting consistently. That’s when I built my website and started the newsletter you’re reading right now.

Why though? Let me share some numbers.

When I email 81 people, 43 open it (53%) and spend 5+ minutes reading. When I post to 7,163 Twitter followers, maybe 1,000 see it scroll past in 5 seconds.

That’s why a newsletter subscriber is so much more valuable than a Twitter follower.

But how do you get newsletter subscribers then? I have a link in my bio, a pinned post, and my banner says that I have a newsletter. That brought around 422 of the 614,000 people who saw my Twitter posts in the last 30 days.

So around 0.07% of the people who saw my content actually decided to go to my website. That may sound pretty bad, and I agree. That’s why I’m planning to double down on promoting my newsletter in 2026.

What you can do today

If you get something out of this letter, I hope it will be these 3 things:

  • Followers on social media is a rented audience.
  • Build a real audience where there is no algorithm middleman.
  • Use social media for discovery and a newsletter or other community for connection.

This week you can sign up for Kit (or similar), it will make a simple opt-in page where people can put in their email. If you do commissions, make it a commission waitlist. If you are teaching something, share your advice there (like I do).

You’ll know it’s working when even one person subscribes this week. That’s one person you can email directly without the algorithm’s permission.

If you don’t start, you’re building your audience on rented land. Next time Twitter changes the algorithm, you’ll have to start over.