Looking Sideways Listener/Reader Survey

A year or so after I turned on paid subs, tell me what you like about Looking Sideways, and what you'd like to see more of.

Back in January 2023, I decided to offer listeners and readers the options of supporting Looking Sideways with a paid subscription. To be honest, I had no idea if anybody would sign up to support my weird little corner of the internet - with their own hard cash! Imagine that.

After all, what I do over here - combining an unapologetically cerebral take on sideways culture with bloody-minded takes on creativity and activism - isn’t that common in ye olde action sports world.

But I’d been encouraged by some other Substackers, who basically said: Don’t overthink it. People seem to love what you do, and they will support it so you can keep it going.

So I went for it and, to my surprise, hundreds of people DID sign up. Which was nice, of course, but also meant I could expand the LS universe and different ways, as well as pay my contributors properly. Posts like this brilliant piece by Calum:

Calum Macintyre: 5 Reasons Our Community Does Not Genuinely Engage

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Here’s the post I put out at the time, explaining exactly why I was doing it:

Bonus: Housekeeping Corner - Why I Am (Finally) Going Paid

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Even more gratifyingly, I’ve seen noticed quite a few of my peers following my lead, such as the excellent Spaceship Earth by

dan burgess

,

The Adventure Podcast

by Mat Pycroft, Climate and Boardsports by

sam haddad

, and

Ben Mondy

‘s brilliant new Surf Bugle. Slowly but surely, there’s a growing outdoor and action sports community building on this platform. Click the links above to sign up, follow them all, and support this nascent little community.

Anyway, as January 2024 approached, I was of course intrigued to see how many members of my paid subscriber community would renew, and how many would quietly cancel their subscriptions. And again, I was surprised. Of course, a fair few people did. But a gratifyingly high percentage made the decision to renew and continue to support Looking Sideways. Even better, more and more people sign up every month.

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With all that in mind, I thought this loose one year anniversary would be a good time to use Substack’s survey feature to find out exactly what my free and paid community of subscribers think about Looking Sideways.

After all, since the beginning the LS editorial policy has basically been ‘do I find it interesting?’ Which works to a points. But there’s a big old Looking Sideways community out there now.

So click the link below to answer a short list of questions, so I can continue to further refine and tweak what I’m doing with this whole weird business.