A few housekeeping items and a mailbag request

We have sections now.

Tyson Alger

Nov 18, 2022

Hey folks,

Your friendly, neighborhood sports writer here with a few updates about one of the top-10 most popular Oregon-related Substacks named after a freeway.

First:

We now have sections.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you like everything how it’s been, nothing really. But if you’ve signed up for The I-5 Corridor and don’t care for coverage of one team or another, you can now opt in or out of emails from specific sections.

You can do this by going into the settings menu of your Substack account, clicking Manage subscription and then selecting the sections you’d like to receive.

The sections are:

Exit 194B for Oregon Ducks coverage

Exit 228 for Oregon State Beavers coverage

Exit 302A for Portland sports coverage

Northbound for coverage above the Oregon border

The aim is to highlight what The I-5 Corridor covers for new people discovering the site, well also sparing those of you who don’t want wall-to-wall updates on the severity of Bo Nix’s limp this week.

Second:

I owe all of you a big thanks. I have a little bit of data now and through the I-5 Corridor’s first 15 months we’re looking at an 80 percent retention rate on paid subscribers. This is despite headlines such as:

“I think Oregon can cover” before Georgia.

“Dear Washington: It’s time to start pulling your weight,” before Washington.

And that one time I wrote about this guy:

The I-5 Corridor

'I know it's a little weird': Behind the toilet humor at Wednesday's halftime show

This is this free story from The I-5 Corridor. Subscriptions and tips keep the lights on here at our North Portland bureau. Subscribe here. Tip here. PORTLAND — Jonathan Burns went to bed feeling like he had nailed his act. He’s only done a few NBA halftimes over the years and the Pennsylvania-born comedian is still perfecting the abbreviated version of …

2 years ago · 6 likes · Tyson Alger

Truly, thank you. These 15 months have been a trip and the site is only growing.

Third:

Twitter is having a day. On one hand, that’s likely good for the overall mental health of everyone in America. On the other, it’s been my primary resource for sharing stories from The I-5 Corridor. About 50 percent of my paid subscriptions have been generated from Twitter in the past year, a place where I crack jokes that only make sense to about 50 of my 9,246 followers. Great strategy there. I see a lot of media jumping to new platforms like Mastodon, but I’m going to be honest, I just went to the site and sat there confused for about 20 minutes trying to figure out what this is.

So, here’s what I need: I’m not asking you to follow my Discord, figure out Mastodon or, gulp, venture over to Facebook. I just ask that if you like something you read here on The I-5 Corridor, please share it. Word-of-mouth is the No. 2 driver in subscriptions and is crucial if the bird app goes belly up — especially as we move into the football offseason.

We are on Instagram and TikTok though!

Fourth:

Let someone know just how you really feel about them this holiday season by giving them the gift of The I-5 Corridor.

Whether that’s positive or negative is for you to decide, but a gift subscription is at least different than anything else they’re going to get. And hey, it would mean a whole lot to us as well.

Give a gift subscription

Fifth:

Send me your mailbag questions in the comments. We can talk football, hoops, the business and how I plan to pass the time in a post-Twitter world.

Appreciate you all, have a great weekend.

— Tyson