Manual Moreale wrote an interesting post about self promotion, where he reflects on whether closing out all his People and Blogs post with a line pointing to his Ko-Fi page is too much:

And so I added that single line. But adding that single line was a struggle. Because in my head, it’s obvious that if you do enjoy something and are willing to support it, you’d probably go look for a way to do it. That’s how my brain works. But unfortunately, that’s not how the internet works. Apparently, the correct approach seems to be the opposite one. You have to constantly remind people to like and subscribe, to support, to contribute, and to share.

I completely understand his feelings about this. I’m pretty sure I’d have just as much trouble adding such a promotion at the bottom of my post. Heck, it’s hard enough to write about what I’m working on here without any expectation from the reader other than to maybe, possibly, read it. They’ve been relegated to a separate blog, so as to not bother anyone.

But as a reader of P&B, I think the line he added is perfectly fine. I think it’s only fair to ask people to consider supporting something where it’s obvious someone put a lot of effort into it, as he obviously has been doing with P&B.

As for where to draw the line, I think I agree with Moreale:

How much self-promotion is too much? Substack interrupting your reading experience to remind you to subscribe feels too much to me. An overlay interrupting your browsing to ask you to subscribe to a newsletter is also too much. Am I wrong? Am I crazy in thinking it’s too much?

I get the need to “convert readers” but interrupting me to sign up to a newsletter is just annoying. And I’m not sure “annoying” is the feeling you want to imbue in your readers if you want them to do something.

But a single line at the end of a quality blog post? Absolutely, go for it!