Dear readers — now we’ve launched our massive autumn campaign, there’s a betting pool going in The Bell office: how many paying subscribers can we get each day?
Fittingly, for a Glasgow paper, it turns out all of us are quite cynical. We totally underestimated how many of you would get on board with our (very?) ambitious quest to net 1,000 new subscribers in just four weeks.
I’m writing this at 7pm — as of right now, our special campaign tracker is showing 60 shiny new members of The Bell community who have signed up in the last eight hours. That’s not even one day! That’s half of one day! Less than half! There might even be more of you now, if anyone wants to check the tracker for us and let us know.
Either way, that’s at least 60 people who read our five pledges to make Glasgow better and said ‘yes please!’.
Sure, it might also have been the huge £40 off an annual subscription that eased their path into the fold. Or even the try-us-out option (two months for £2.99). Whatever the case, we’re delighted they’re here.
Over the next month, we’ll be giving you some tasters of what to expect if we reach our goal, like more Good News stories and the first two episodes of our Bell podcast — a great listen if we do say so ourselves. And tonight, almost 300 people will be heading to Drygate for our sold-out event asking ‘Is Glasgow on the up?’
These are all related to those five pledges we mentioned, shaped by you. The pledges are our attempt to make Glasgow a better place — a city where people are better informed, where young people have pathways into the media and where good news is amplified as much as more negative stories.
To make these possible we need to hit 1,000 new paying members. You can help us achieve that by spreading the word (and this link) to anyone who’ll listen in the physical or digital world. Tell your colleagues at lunch, send a WhatsApp to your mate, or a pigeon message to your cousin in Yoker. Oh, and if you’re yet to jump aboard this runaway train (that’s a good thing, right?), sign up this very minute, for either full price or that £40 off an annual membership.
If you’re still not convinced, you can even try us for two months, for just £2.99 per month. If 500 of our members sign up two people each, we’ll smash our goal straight away and the celebrations will be so joyous, we may even defy the Pollokshields Fireworks Control Zone (editor’s note: we definitely won’t do this).
Our great start shows that people want to see us deliver on our five pledges. But there’s still 940 to go until 1,000. It remains a terrifyingly large undertaking, but we’re not daunted.
For now, get sharing and signing up and we’ll be back tomorrow with a post-event debrief.
