Let's talk about money
And about why I haven't (yet) turned on paid subscriptions.
When I launched this newsletter in August 2023 I chose not to switch on payments. Every post, I declared, would be free and visible to everyone for the foreseeable future.
Two-plus years later, Fritinancy is still a paywall-free publication. But from time to time I ask myself: Should it be? Should I flip the switch and start charging for subscriptions? Do I want to turn this newsletter into a revenue stream?
And I answer myself: Well, duh. Of course it should. And of course I would.
But it isn’t quite that simple.
During a long stretch of my career, before I shifted to name development, I made a pretty good living from my writing. I wrote magazine articles and columns that paid between $1 and $2 a word, and those articles and columns often ran as long as 4,000 words. I also wrote annual reports, catalog copy, and speeches. I wrote, and ghostwrote, books. I never had a month without at least three deadlines.
As time went on the publications I wrote for folded, or no longer wanted the kind of writing I was good at, or when they wanted it they paid five or ten cents a word, or nothing at all, for very short articles: 100, 200 words. A good business model for them, I’m sure, but unsustainable for me.
I kept writing anyway. I calculated that writing for free was an investment in my “real” work in name development, and more fun and less hassle than attending networking events, which I found exhausting. I published a blog, the predecessor of this newsletter. (It’s archived here.) Not only did I not make any money from that blog, I paid the blogging platform $50 a year for the privilege of burnishing the platform’s brand1. Although subscribers saw ads in their inbox feeds along with my blog posts, I had no control over the ad content and made no money from the ads.
I itched to flip that scenario, and so in 2018 I began publishing on Medium, which once again meant that I was paying to publish (again, $50 a year). In theory, I could also earn money from my writing there, but only if enough other Medium “members,” each of whom was also chipping in $50 a year, read and “clapped” for my stories.
Medium’s little secret is allowing up to 50 “claps” per story: more claps, more reward. But readers never got it — everywhere else, one “like” is sufficient — or just didn’t feel like tap-tap-tapping 50 times. My stories would get one, three, maybe five “claps,” if I was lucky. And I’d earn a penny or so per story, if I was lucky.
And so, seven years later, although I have more than 2,800 followers on Medium, and have published 103 stories, including some good ones if I say so myself, the most I’ve ever earned there in a single month has been about $144. Other months have fallen far short of that dollar amount. This year to date, January through September, I’ve earned less than $5 from my writing on Medium, even as my follower count increased.
Substack looked like a promising alternative. I like the format and the community aspect: I gain readers when other newsletters, like Benjamin Dreyer’s A Word About or Caitlin Barrett’s Naming for Everyone, recommend Fritinancy. (And vice versa, of course.)
I like the detailed stats, too.
As of October 8 this newsletter has 2,180 subscribers — those of you who choose to receive it in your inboxes — and 1,998 followers, who find the newsletter through Notes or some other means.
That’s a total readership of 4,178. Which is gratifying, and I’m grateful.
But consider this: Although I haven’t turned on paid subscriptions here, Substack automatically inserts a “Pledge Your Support” button into every post. And since August 2023 exactly 43 of my readers have pledged to pay for a subscription if and when I ever flip that switch. (Which, I repeat, I still haven’t done.)
Forty-three pledges divided by 4,178 readers translates to barely over 1 percent of you, and a hypothetical annual income of $2,430.
Those numbers are, shall we say, modest. Embarrassingly modest, I am tempted to say. And considerably short of what I’d consider a vote of confidence.
But wait, there’s more — or, more accurately, less — to the story.
If I were to turn on payments today, I wouldn’t earn $2,430 per year from pledged subscriptions. First, Substack would skim 10 percent off the top. Then Stripe, which handles payment processing, would deduct another 2.9 percent of the gross plus 30 cents per transaction: $70.47 + $12.90, or $83.37.
Bottom line: Out of the pledged $2,430 I’d net $2,103.64 a year, on which I’d owe federal and state taxes.
Now, $2,103.64 (pre-tax) isn’t nothing! And, let me repeat, I am grateful for the hypothetical support. (And also for “likes” — just click the little heart icon — and comments and recommendations.)
Let’s go even further into the statistical weeds.
I publish a little more than 100 posts per year. Let’s say I spend an average of five hours researching, writing, and editing each post, for a total of 500 hours per annum. (It’s actually quite a bit more time, but I’ll keep it simple.) $2,103.64 divided by 500 comes to about $4.21 in income per post, which is so close to zero — and, again, so embarrassingly meager — that I find it hard to justify the bookkeeping, tax-paying, and figuring-out-how-to-do-something-extra-special-for-paying-subscribers-that-will-make-them-feel-they’re-getting-their-money’s-worth.
I confess that when I started publishing I had in mind some imaginary subscriber and pledge numbers that would spur me to monetize this sucker. I also confess that the actual figures have been very, very far from that imaginary and admittedly ambitious target.
Humbling? You bet.
And that is why — for now, anyway — I continue to write for free, and why not a single one of your 43 pledges has been converted to cash.
Now that I have made my self-pitying (yet also data-driven!) case for keeping this newsletter free, I have a modest proposal.
From time to time over the last year I’ve solicited donations through Buy Me a Coffee, a payment platform not associated with Substack. So far 27 of you have contributed, for an all-time total of $955. One of you even signed up for monthly contributions!
The BMaC platform takes only 5 percent off the top; I keep 95 percent. That’s a better deal than Substack’s. I am grateful for every dollar and every drop.
Which means I am once again inviting you to . . .
In case that wasn’t clear enough:
Or you could just hit that little heart icon and let me know, for free, that you like what you’ve read here.
Bonus content: Read my Medium story “The Monetized Life” (gift link). And, you know, clap. Up to 50 times!
More bonus content: “The Money Song (Sitting Pretty),” from the stage version of Cabaret, was replaced in the 1972 film by “Money, Money,” which is fine, but I prefer the original.
Along, I suppose, with my own. That blogging platform, by the way, is now defunct.
medium.com has a few problems. The worst is that I haven't received any new article email notifications for quite some time. Tried to contact their support and never got a reply.
It was kind of nice to just pay one yearly fee and get access to many different authors. Substack gets pretty expensive when you have to pay yearly fees for even a few authors.
Hmmm...I'm confused by your link to the old blog. You say it was on Typepad which is now defunct but the link goes to a WordPress.com site, which is very much still around (I'm on it)!