Lots of Links Lack Looks

A Literal Literary Loser Limits

I am pro-choice. About everything. I tell my educational consulting clients that “More choices is better than fewer choices.” I like to have choices myself (even though research points to “decision fatigue” and insists people are actually happier when choice is taken out of their hands.) I let my kids choose their clothing, their activities, their hairstyles to the point where I have teenagers begging, “Just tell me what to do already!” I even let my middle child choose to drop out of high school. (Yeah, that was fun.)

So when I write posts here or at any of my other regular outlets, I give readers lots of choices. By including lots of links.

I link for a variety of reasons. Because I want to authenticate my statements. (When my high school drop-out son was applying to college, he explained that he’d be taking the AP exams — despite an oft-stated, and written, aversion to The College Board which administers them — because, as he reasoned, “I could just send in my home-schooling grades. But I gave myself those. Why should a college believe me when I claim I know the material? I wouldn’t believe me.”)

I link because I assume readers always want to go deeper and learn more about a subject. I always want to go deeper and learn more about a subject. My family is used to, when we watch a movie, me researching it afterwards and sharing many fun facts about its production, backstory, and subtext with them. They love hearing my many fun facts about its production, backstory and subtext! (And whenever I share my findings with others, they love telling me that such obsessive researching is a symptom of autism. I’ll research that later!)

I link because I want to give proper source credit, and I link because it’s good for a page’s ranking in Search.

But here is something I’ve learned: Other people are not me. Shocking, I know.

As part of my educational consulting practice, I send out a weekly email detailing all the latest scandals in NYC education. (Fear not, there is never a week when I don’t have a new scandal to report. Sometimes, I even send out a mid-week update, because there are so many scandals popping up simultaneously.)

And here is something strange I’ve discovered: The more links in the email, the fewer clicks total. An email with one or two links gets more overall clicks than an email with four or five. And, even in an email with only two links, the first one gets clicked disproportionately more frequently.

Now, this may be a well known fact to professional marketers. (I’ll research that later, too.) But it was new — and very slowly dawning — news to me.

I suppose the reasoning could be that, once folks click the first link, they never return to the original email for the rest. Or they get so engrossed reading the first, that they don’t have time to go back and read more.

I try to make the links be about different topics, so people can choose the one most relevant to them. But the first one still gets, far and away, the most attention, regardless of topic.

It’s the same with this Substack. I tend to load it up with links because I want to authenticate my statements, and offer more information, and give proper credit and sell my books (yeah, especially that last one).

But, in the end, the more links (no matter how scintillating), the fewer clicks. And the first link always gets the most clicks.

So I’m going to try something new! (I am always trying something new, rather than sticking to something old and giving it an adequate chance to work. Whenever I share my tendency with others, they love telling me that such obsessive novelty-seeking behavior is a symptom of ADHD. I’ll research that later, too!)

I am going to put only one link into this post, and see how it performs. (You have no earthly idea how difficult this is for me. I am physically jonesing, like an addict, to add more links whenever I reference something that warrants a link, in my opinion. Which is most of the above. In my opinion.)

I will then, of course, come back and share the results with my readers. (Because, since I always want to go deeper and learn about a subject, I assume everybody else does, too. Except, have you heard? Other people are not me!)

Ready? Here is the link: It’s me, being an Amusing Jew on a podcast of the same name. Do you enjoy soap operas? Historical fiction? Political hypocrisy? Soviet propaganda? Interracial romance? It’s all at the link below! (And only at the link below. I swear. I can quit whenever I want to.)

Let’s see if my lone link theory holds.

Otherwise, I may need to do more research….