September was an absolutely wild month for The Lunduke Journal.
The Short-Short Version: Views skyrocketed to over 11 million. New free subscribers way up too (over 7 thousand new free subs). Total shows for 2025 on track to hit 300 in the coming weeks. On the flip side, new paid subscriptions were down (which means the “no sales” experiment didn’t work).
Mixed bag, but overall pretty gosh darned good!
If you’re interested in the details — and would like a peek behind the curtain — read on!
Stats for September
Here’s some Lunduke Journal stats for September:
274 shows, so far, in 2025 (Jan 1st → Oct 8th, +36 shows over the last 30 days).
11.1 Million views (or listens) during the last month (September) alone.
139,315 free subscribers (not including audio podcast feeds).
7,498 new free subscribers on the primary platforms.
$0.00 (zero) taken from any corporation.
Yeah. You read that right. 11.1 Million “views/listens” in September (up from a bit over 9 Million the month prior). With over 7 thousand new (free) subscribers.
That’s a close to 20% jump in “views”… and total free subscribers grew by over 5% month-on-month. Fantastic growth numbers. Numbers the other Tech News outlets would kill for.
This really reinforces that the current strategy is working:
Focus on stories that no other Tech Journalist is covering.
Publish everywhere (on every major platform).
And publish all shows for free.
That, right there, is a winner. The stories published by The Lunduke Journal are spreading further and further every month. This is amazing news.
The “No Sales” Experiment Results
Not every strategy can be a success, though!
Case in point: Experimenting with having no sales and subscription discounts. Whew! That didn’t work!
With the rapidly growing audience size, September seemed like a good time to test the waters by no longer doing any subscription discount sales.
You see, most Tech News outlets are on the verge of going out of business. Most of them teeter on the edge almost every month… despite the fact that they take funding from Big Tech (for “paid stories”, ads, and more).
Since The Lunduke Journal has a firm “No Big Tech Money” policy… we’ve relied entirely on subscriptions and one-time contributions from all of you.
One of the most effective tools in our “Keep us Big Tech free” tool belt has been discounted subscription sales. Things like “25% off new Subscriptions”.
Over 60% of The Lunduke Journal’s income, over the last year, has come in via such sales. In previous years that number was even higher.
But what would happen if we did away with sales entirely? I wanted to answer that question (in large part because that would free me from needing to run such sales). And, with the rapidly growing audience size, now seemed like a reasonable time to give it a try.
So I resolved to run zero sales during the month of September (last month) and see how it went.
The results were… not sustainable. To put it mildly.
After a month of “no sales”, at the start of October, I decided to run a different kind of promotion… but not a traditional “discount sale”. And those results were nowhere near what was needed to make up for the lack of traditional sales.
I’m still looking through the numbers (I keep lots of spreadsheets), but one thing is clear:
In order to keep The Lunduke Journal sustainable into the future, traditional sales need to make a return. Oh well. Getting rid of sales was worth a shot!
On the plus side, bringing back sales will allow us to remain Big Tech free… and keep us running well into the future.
Which is already a big improvement over the other, Brand X Tech News. So not too shabby!
Thank You!
Seriously. None of this would be possible without all of you. I strive to do you proud every day.
-Lunduke
