10 Years of Amateur Radio Weekly

October 24, 2024

I nearly missed this before 2024 got away from me, but as of March 15, Amateur Radio Weekly has been making its way into inboxes for 10 years! I had to double check the send date on the original newsletter and do the math because I just couldn't believe this all started that many years ago. A decade is a long time. To be fair, though, ARW did go through a 3 year hiatus while I made my way through graduate school. So technically it's only been a 7 year run of content.

Nevertheless! It's been a good run. Last I looked, ARW is well past 8,000 subscribers. Starting off, I think the first issue might have made it to a dozen inboxes. Growth has been entirely organic since that first send. I'm pretty terrible at self promotion, so a few posts on social media over the years have been my only real effort at getting the word out. Readers passing the email along to other hams have been the real driver of growth. So thank you!

Several years ago, Matt (W1MST) of amateurradio.com asked me if I'd like to "syndicate" ARW on his site. Of course! That created quite a boost of subscribers at the time. KM4ACK has mentioned ARW in his email newsletter every so often which also generates a little boost of subscribers.

Subscriber numbers aren't always what they seem, however. Open rates overall have dropped down into the 20% range compared to 40-50% early on. This means it's time to clean up the ol' email list and remove inactive recipients. I'd guess maybe a third of the current subscriber list could be considered active over the past year.

Feedback

Feedback tends to be sporadic. Hams reply with articles to be featured next week, which is great. People writing in are almost always positive. The only time the nega-hams tend to come out is when the newsletter highlights a group or project striving for more inclusivity or equity within the hobby. Too many mentions of potentially illegal activity such as pirate broadcast radio or 11 meter antics tend to rub the purists the wrong way. I don't condone it, but I sure think it's interesting and I'm sure others do as well.

Tools

Audience numbers and feedback aside, it's still a fun project to work on and produce week after week. It certainly keeps me up to date on all the things happening in the world of ham radio. The process to produce the newsletter each week has become an exercise in efficiency. I've ended up writing my own CMS to handle the unique need to log links and output HTML for the final email. I recently switched from The Old Reader to Inoreader as my central feed reader. The Old Reader lacked basic features such as tagging, which became critical to keeping the newsletter organized each week. Sadly, active development stopped on The Old Reader years and years ago. I would have kept my dollars with The Old Reader, but the feature set just wasn't there.

How the newsletter is made

I've thought about doing this for years, but figured now was as good of a time as any: Here's a video overview of how an issue of Amateur Radio Weekly is put together each week.

The future

So what does the future look like for Amateur Radio Weekly? As of now, no major changes are planned. I'd like to give the website an overhaul, and I'll need to switch up the email template to be compatible with my email service providers's new editor, but no real timeline on either of those items. I have thought a lot about what else I could do with the time spent on the newsletter. Maybe branch out into other genres or focus on something completely different. I do think about what a nice round number of newsletters would be to wrap up the project or take a hiatus, but again, nothing decided upon at this time. As of now it's full speed ahead!

Thank you!

Huge thanks to everyone that has read an email, clicked a link, or shared the newsletter with a fellow ham. That's what keeps me putting these emails together week after week. It's always great to hear from readers. Shout out to Emma, the software that allows me to send the email each week, free of charge. I worked at Emma for 8+ years and free access to an account is a nice little perk for alumni. Another huge thanks to DLARC for including the newsletter in their special collection. It's a good feeling to know that the ARW archive could be around long after I am.

73
K4HCK