18,000 followers. Why do so few buy?

Some readers follow a blog about leaving employment to make another week in their job easier.

Two of the five participants describe reading this way. The blog offers relief: they read about someone else leaving, imagine themselves doing the same, feel better and return to the same job. Meanwhile, you address them as people about to resign and offer mentoring for that transition.

This helps explain the pattern behind your question: steady reach, lively comments and messages saying “thank you, that’s exactly how I feel” — yet very few purchases. These readers have come for something other than help leaving. For now, they get what they need for free.

“I read on the way to work in the morning. You know, just to… I’m not saying I’m about to hand in my notice tomorrow. But when you read that someone managed it, you can… well, breathe a bit more easily.”

A limit we return to in section 15: five conversations reveal reasons for reading within these stories. They do not show how common each reason is among 18,000 followers.

On the left is the message you put across in the blog. On the right is how participants appear to interpret it, based on their accounts. Read across in order: the first item on the left pairs with the first on the right.

The blog speaks to an imagined reader. The person reading it is someone else.

Before the first interview, you named five assumptions about your audience. We recorded your wording and did not show it to participants. Here is how those assumptions held up.

None of the assumptions is supported in full. The conversations give the creator a more specific picture to work with.

Four assumptions were not supported; one was partly supported.

The creator invited the participants. In this example, the creator publishes an invitation we prepare together on 2 September. From the responses, we select five people who have read for at least three months and contacted the creator at least once, in comments or privately. Together they cover different circumstances, from “not planning to leave” to “left and returned”. The scenario assumes recorded and transcribed interviews on 5–12 September; the quotations show how that material would appear in a report.

Participants are identified by codes. In a live project, we agree recording arrangements and access to material before the interviews. Recordings are not shared with the creator without participants’ agreement.

Instead of asking “why did you subscribe?”, we reconstruct the story: what happened that day, what the person did and what followed. These three accounts show how long the path to a purchase can be, and where it stops.

We examine what someone opens the blog to do at a particular moment in their life. The five conversations reveal three different reasons. Each calls for different help; the current offer does not address all three equally.

Both ratings in each card come from the participant at the end of the conversation. Where a rating was not given, we leave it missing rather than invent it.

Get through the week

P-1, P-2 · both employed, neither planning to leave now

Moderate importance, high satisfaction: the free content already helps. This offers one explanation for not buying in their present circumstances — the immediate need is met.

“I don’t exactly read everything. I open it in the morning and scroll. If something catches my eye, I read. That story about the man who left and lost money for the first year — I read that twice. Actually, no, I think that was somewhere else. Anyway.”

“Buying? Probably later. I’m not in that position now. I have a mortgage; I can’t just… I’ll buy when I decide to do it.”

“When I decide” is a key phrase. The purchase is postponed until a change in readiness, rather than a particular date. Understanding what could bring that change closer is more useful than another call to act.

Work out the numbers before leaving

P-3 · employed, preparing to leave · the only purchaser in this group

This participant bought a consultation in the week they set their own deadline for leaving. Before that, they had read the blog for over a year.

“I’d like… you know, some kind of spreadsheet. How much to put aside. I worked it out myself and got either eight months or a year — I don’t know what I’ve missed. Tax, for example. I don’t know.”

Learn to find clients, not to resign

P-4, P-5 · both have left; one has returned to employment

The highest importance and lowest satisfaction in this group. This is where P-5 returned to employment. The blog says very little about it.

“Leaving takes a week. You hand in your notice and that’s it. Then you’re sitting there… And nobody talks about that. Really: four months. I had two clients. Two in four months.”

The three reasons connect to a broader aim. At the top is the change the person wants in their life. Below are three ways to move towards it, each made up of specific tasks. Those tasks make an offer concrete: what exactly would someone pay to get done? Seven of the nine tasks came up in enough detail to examine further in the next sections.

Look one level deeper before seeking a new audience: people who managed to leave now face their next task alone, and they still read your blog.

For the tasks discussed, we asked for two ratings: how important the task is and how satisfied the person is with their current way of handling it. Both ratings were available for five tasks, shown here. Where two people gave ratings, the chart shows their mean, not an estimate for the whole audience. Together, the ratings highlight needs that matter but are poorly served.

Here are all the tasks discussed, including those without numerical ratings, broken down by participant. The difficulties are uneven: one person has no urgent issue, another has one, and the last two face several at once.

P-1 has no urgent issue; P-2 has one pressing question — whether it is too late to start. P-4 and P-5 face their greatest difficulties finding clients and talking about their work. The blog does not address these tasks.

The strongest unmet needs are on the right of the table. The content speaks to the left.

What are people already doing to manage without you? These are your practical alternatives to compete with: ways to get something done, as well as other blogs.

People do not describe themselves the way marketing copy does. On the left are phrases from the conversations; on the right is how the blog describes the same things. The left column gives you language to test in headlines and offers: words readers may recognise as their own.

The last line is particularly useful. It is how P-2 explains feeling uncomfortable about buying, yet that objection is missing from your copy.

We do not base findings on “would you buy this?”: an answer is not a purchase. We ask what the person has already paid for in this area and how they manage now.

In these conversations, a concrete calculation sounds clearer than a promise of motivation. Nobody uses the word “expensive”, but that is not enough to rule out a price barrier.

First, the overview: which existing offers fit each group, and where a new offer could be tested.

Across the two existing products and three groups, only one cell corresponds to a described purchase. The group with the greatest unmet needs would require an offer you do not yet have. The proposed offers still need to be tested.

Here are the patterns to reconsider. Each point connects to specific interview material and gives you something concrete to change or test.

These limits are part of the report. Here is what the example establishes about the funnel, and what remains unknown.

The hatched bars mark quantities the interviews do not measure. Those figures come from the blog’s analytics. Bar widths are schematic: they show the sequence of narrowing, not proportions. This is not a conversion chart. Five participants remain five participants; their proportions cannot be applied to 18,000 followers.

The five conversations support three reasons for reading within these accounts. How common each is remains a separate question. If that matters to your decision, we will propose the right research design to investigate it.

A report should help someone decide what to do. To complete this example, here is the creator’s next step. It is a decision in the scenario, not a measured commercial result.

The creator pauses the mentoring launch in its previous form and starts shaping two offers. The first is an affordable financial runway calculation, like the one P-3 asked for. The second is support for people who have already left but cannot find clients — the right side of the table in section 09, which the blog has barely addressed.

The creator also takes four phrases from section 11 and uses them as headlines for upcoming posts. That can be done the same evening, without changing the product.

The key material behind the report is collected here, with one column per participant. Use it to compare accounts and trace the findings back to what each person says. Numerical ratings appear separately in sections 06 and 08; this table does not replace full transcripts.

Five participants in this table. Scroll right →

Missing material stays missing. If a participant does not discuss something, we mark it “not mentioned” rather than completing the account for them.