Is It Worth Trying to Retain Finicky Subscribers?

As a podcaster and YouTuber, I think a lot about why some subscribers stay and others leave. I keep an active spreadsheet that tracks the growth of subscribers on my YouTube Channel. Ultimately, I’m trying to understand any behavioral patterns with subscribers as it relates to the diversity of my content. For every ten subscribers I gain, I will lose at least three. Despite the steady growth of my audience, it has been slow. They say that the best way to have a successful social media presence is to have a niche and stick with it. My niche is that I don’t have a niche—I’m interested in talking with everyone, and this affects the tumultuous gains and losses that I experience with my social media audience.

This past week, my podcast focused on the subject of erotica/porn as a literary genre, and while the conversation was highly philosophical (embracing what my guest described as, “… the pornographic and erotic as delineated by authors like Audre Lorde”), this topic alone reflected an interesting shift in my metrics on the YouTube platform. Over the weekend, just before the release of the episode, I scheduled a clip titled, “What Pornographic Literature Shows Us About Human Nature” (named after my guest’s LitHub article). Within minutes I lost a subscriber. Then another. Before the episode went live on Monday morning, I lost four more. Sure, it could be a fluke, but I’ve been eying my growth in subscribers for a while now, and I haven’t seen anything like this. Did the word “porn” send off alarm bells?

I’ve been weighing whether it’s worth my energy to try and retain every listener (even though I know it’s an impossible task). Going into this, I understood that I wasn’t going to win everyone, and that there would be an ebb-and-flow with subscribers—but it never occurred to me that it would affect my confidence in the topics I chose to discuss. I always thought any subject would be okay as long as it was discussed with some level of professionalism. I want to be able to openly discuss porn from a philosophical standpoint, just as I might discuss the sociopolitical parallels in science-fiction, or allegories in fantasy fiction. In other words, I don’t think any subject should be off-limits, and if I choose to discuss these topics, I should be able to—without any dramatic ramifications. While I understand that some people are sensitive to certain topics, I do not believe that content creators should have to answer to this blatant lack of emotional intelligence.

What this week taught me was that with my openness to discuss almost every topic, my metrics will now have to account for more sensitive subject matters. In the end, it’s really just expectation. I now expect to lose subscribers when I use the word “porn” in a title, or if I choose to openly discuss a topic others might be sensitive about.

I have since made back those subscribers with new ones, and surpassed where I was when I started to lose them. I optimistically believe they’ve been replaced with more open-minded listeners. It’s important that I accept that my subscribers aren’t going to be ‘everyone’—that I will have those that are interested one week, and disinterested the next. But it’s the subscribers that have the diversity of interests that I have that will ultimately be my most loyal listeners.

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Eric Norcross is a writer, filmmaker, and podcaster. Originally from Portland, Maine, Eric's work often revolves around being a "fish-out-of-water in a world hostile to the arts". He makes arthouse and narrative feature films, short and experimental films; he writes novels, poetry, and experimental content, and hosts an arts and culture podcast (The Eric Norcross Podcast). He is currently based out of New York City, and hasn't been on vacation since 2008.

Today, the clip in question went live. Check it out on my YouTube Channel:?https://youtu.be/baF0C4-ZXUk

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