u/Getting0nTrack

To preface, I think North Carolina and Georgia are honestly doing a lot better in this regard... relatively speaking. I am living in South Carolina and it truly feels like there's zero consideration for anything beyond car oriented development, beyond building out each little subdivision rather than cohesive regional planning or hell town planning as one would traditionally think of it.

In the last 5 years this area has seen a rapid expansion of housing stock but virtually no industry. They seem to be banking on Boomer money funding everything without consideration for what comes after. Most people I know who are under 35 regret moving here, or are only here because its where their parents retired. I remember speaking with someone at the local permitting office a few years ago during some of the major construction booms who just shrugged and said "how could anyone have seen tis coming?"... What.

This is by no means a unique Southern US problem, but I worked on local issues in the Northeast in a very suburban area, and at least there the NIMBYism gave way to revitalizing apartments and building mixed use developments. There was a recognition that you can't just build homes if there's nowhere for people to work and go about their life. It took over a decade but once they acted it was at least paying lip service to resiliant dense development in an otherwise suburban area. They saw the influx of money from NYC and realized it couldn't last if they didn't plan.

Down here, it took a wildfire ripping through one of the larger private communities for them to build a second exit. On the off chance apartments are approved, they are still fundamentally car dependent. Recently there was this huge project to build out a park, and rather than doing what you might expect - putting the housing directly adjacent or within the complex, the local government only approved housing on the other side of a highway... which still runs through the park? I was there yesterday, there is maybe 1 meter of space between the running trail and 6 lanes of traffic. How nice it could've been to have even a simple crosswalk, but that isn't realistic. The closest hotel is still an hour away but they're touting this as some huge win for tourism.

Meanwhile just 20 miles north they've broken ground on several big box stores and warehouses, clear cutting probably 90 acres of previously forested land.

The way they're "developing" is turning me into a NIMBY and I don't like it.

I am someone with a journalism background originally from a small European country. Two years ago I started a podcast talking about broad historical topics from the region and my country in particular when the mood felt right. Due to a disability traditional employment has always been difficult for me so I went in thinking that podcasting might be able to earn something in good time.

Despite low initial growth I kept going, I figured eventually it would pick up steam. A year and in I still barely cracked 10 downloads on a very good episode. If this had been something like a music or film podcast I may have treated it differently but I eventually figured what was the point in continuing something that no one listened to anyway? I started to go from weekly uploads to twice a month.

Around two months ago I released the last episode in the run-up to an election thinking that it would be the last for a while. On top of the weekly blog posts and podcast I was at this point enrolled in some college classes. I thought it would be good to sit out the election coverage. I just checked last night, that one episode has gotten over 200 downloads.

If I got back into this, how can I do it in a healthy way to avoid burning out or that endless chasing of success upon success?

A part of me wants to get back into making episodes...but I have seen this show before. Something does exceedingly well on YouTube or in podcasting or in journalism and you try to repeat it, basically chasing a high. With those other avenues at least there's a way to measure monetarily how things are going, where you can go from that point of success. A lot of people I know from the region don't do coverage of their own nations because, broadly speaking, the English language market does not care until they suddenly pay attention. That makes it hard to know whether this spike was a one-off, or whether further coverage is worth the time investment. With classes basically done for the summer except one, I have more time on my hands again. I just want to ensure I am making good use of it, you know?

Lately I have relaunched a Substac centering on silver and alternative investments. I figured it had been well over three years since I posted on that page and it was time for a rebrand of some kind.

After a decade of collecting and being in Gen Zed I figure there is some perspective I could offer, especially as those in my generation are looking to alternative investments. It won't all be Pokemon and MTG cards, one would think.

In the last 30 days, I've had about 250 views, posting twice a week

However, my free subscriptions have dropped about 20%

My open rate is between 45% at the highest, 25% at the lowest after 48 hours.

One post got 60 views without any outside promotion or restacks... but there were no free subscriptions generated.

I know you don't want to flood subscriber's inboxes, but is there such I know you don't want to flood subscriber inboxes and that isn't what I'd be trying for... keeping a daily schedule writing 750-1k words would get tiring very quickly for most people not actively monitoring news. My posting cadence has been once every 3-4 days, with a dedicated post on weekends dealing with retail curation.

Is this a case where I've put out too much content in such a short time? Do I need to niche down into an already very small, specialized market? I am trying to attract an audience of folks around my age think 20s-35.

Lately I have been getting back into studying Chinese history and have thought about how much it might cost to have a little collection of pieces from the Warlord era. Ideally included in that would be late Qing silver, but I am not trying to spend rent on a single piece.

The thing I keep coming back to when searching Numista and using Gemini is the sheer amount of variety. I speak Mandarin enough to source from Weibo but a lot of the WeChat groups I'm in say "awesome that you're interested but we can't ship to the US".

Retail platforms like MAShops and VCoins seem to have a nice variety but a lot of the shops are in Europe making me hesitant due to the tariffs. I don't want to pay $125 on two really nice examples then come out with a $40 bill from the carrier after they add in a bunch of processing fees.

Is this an area of numismatics where the difference between a $30 example and a $80 example are worth the jump in price?

If anyone collects coins from China, what strategies do youtypically use to find decent deals? In an ideal scenario I'd try to collect coins from Henan, Sichuan, Beijing, Nanjing, and out west think Gansu, Xinjiang, Tibet etc.

I am not entirely new to Substack but I will admit I never really took the platform that seriously in the past. It always felt like a very niche, insular blogging platform only really reliable for those who already had an audience.

I recently revived and rebranded an old Substack into a page less politically focussed and more finance related, based around my interest in silver and history. I am in a position where turning this into income could radically change my quality of life if it goes well. It isn't the only iron in the fire... but it's one that I am confident that there is a market for.

The trouble is I have found very minimal conversion through Substack notes, posting twice a day for the last week. The open rate on articles is 50% after having not posted in years, so clearly an audience still passively exists even if it is not actively growing. Could increasing my number of posts from 1 a week to twice weekly meaingfully impact growth?