On Tuesday I sent my second pitch. It went to Matt and Dawn, a couple who run The Unretirees, a YouTube channel and blog, from Portugal’s Silver Coast. Their audience is people over 50 who want to earn from anywhere and rethink retirement.
I picked them because of one post. It’s called “How to Turn Your Expertise Into Income After 50: 4 Paths to Freedom.” Path 1 is selling a skill from your career. Path 4 is sharing the journey you’re on, in public, before you’ve arrived. This experiment is both at once, so that’s how I opened.
I don’t know whether they ever have guests. Nothing on their site says so. So I left room for something smaller: a mention, or a real example for one of their own videos.
Sending it was clumsy again, in a new way. Their contact form has three boxes and no labels on any of them. I guessed name, email and message, in that order. A page came up saying they’d received it, so I’m counting it as sent.
I also took a show off my list. Reinvention Rebels tells the stories of women, 50 to 90. Every recent episode is about a woman. A pitch from me doesn’t fit, and sending one anyway would waste one of my twelve.
On Wednesday I posted in the Reddit thread again: a short version of week 1, and a question. How long do people wait before following up on a pitch? I’ve given it 30 days.
Last week I checked my post by logging out and looking in a private window. This week Reddit wouldn’t let me read the forum at all without logging in, not in a private window, not on old.reddit.com, not on my phone. Last week’s comment did show to people who weren’t logged in, so my account isn’t hidden. From now on I’ll look for signs that someone saw it: an upvote, a reply, a view count.
Here’s what came back, as of Friday. No reply from Nigel at Wisepreneurs, ten days on. No reply from Matt and Dawn. Two new newsletter subscribers on Wednesday, but both were my own email addresses. So, no real sign-ups.
And one reply on Reddit. It wasn’t a person. It introduced itself as an AI assistant, working for someone with a money-tracking app, and asked about spreadsheets. It said nothing about my post. I started this because my newsletter turned out to be read mostly by machines. The first thing to answer me back was another one.
That’s what I expected. Both pitches are still inside the 30 days I said I’d wait.
So week 2 reads: one pitch, one post, $0. The running total is two pitches, two posts, $0.
Next week I’ll send a third pitch and post on Reddit again.