In the Year of our Lord of COVID Issue #11.25 Unpopular Opinion: I’m Not Paying For Your Newsletter

I’m going to strike the irony while it’s hot by complaining something in the very medium I’m complaining about.

A few days ago, a newsletter I thought was dead and buried appeared in my inbox after a few years. It’s prolific, five times a week, but it was not so much as topic based but a roundup links linked with pithy comments. It’s fun. I’d find something of interest and pass it around myself. The newsletter is worth a quick scan.
 
I’m perusing the “I’m back, bitches!” email and then the begging starts. In order to continue on writing this five times a week newsletter, we need to pay them to do so. Of course, there will be free newsletters for us heathens with the paid subscribers getting so much more content. I suppose if you’re really into this writer, this would be a boon for you.
 
The cost? $5/month or $50/year.
 
$5 isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. It’s a medium cup of coffee somewhere. Many of us throw that down and do not think twice numerous times a month. But if I were to financially support every newsletter begging for cash, it cost me $150/month. All of them on Substack.
 
I do not have $150/month to spend on newsletters. I wouldn’t spend $150/month even if I had it.
 
Here’s a question: what the fuck am I doing to do with all that extra content? Who has the fucking time for all that extra content?
 
I get it. 2020 fucked us all up: people lost jobs and unemployment skyrocketed. And if you are a content creator, job prospects went way the fuck down. There’s a lot of hustle going on. Journalists and writers of all types and genres kickstarted a newsletter economy with Substack as the default go-to. It made sense: if you covered a beat and the jobs on that beat were non-existent, you could write about said beat in a newsletter. Grow an audience, use it to springboard, and sure, you’ve moved your job to be independent writer with full autonomy AND you could earn money. You’ve become a journalist influencer.
 
Here’s the rub: No one is forcing you to write those newsletters but you’re creating content, and shouldn’t you get paid for what you’re putting out into the world?
 
Back when I was into SEO, mailing lists were the default go-to. You build your audience and if your campaigns got 10-15% click throughs, you were doing great. The mailing list I’m ragging on also offers advertising with one ad placed on two newsletters with nearly 40K subscribers. The claimed click through is 40% for both. Cost? $200/week. So, you’re telling me that you’re 4x higher than the accepted average? Can I see those stats, please?
 
(I will toot my own horn that I may have a small subscriber base, but I have regular 50% click throughs. I can provide the stats.)
 
I don’t mind advertising in newsletter if it’s not obnoxious. A newsletter I used to read ages ago handled their own advertising and it was usually three to four low key text ads at the bottom. Nothing in your face. This newsletter had a pretty good subscriber base and the ads were $50 or $75 per issue.
 
If I sound all over the place, I am. I gladly pay for paywalls: between the both of us, we support nearly a dozen newspapers and magazines. But the “I’m doing something of interest or of fun and you should pay me for it” is really obnoxious. I write my newsletters because I have a voice and I feel something to say but to take on paid subscribers seems so foreign and odd to me. 

It seems greedy and disagreeable.
 
I have so many questions: what is the value you’re putting on your work or is it to structure you as a "brand"? Are you providing original content or just rehashing someone else’s work (which seems to be pretty popular) like link farming? What kind of content are you providing that cannot be found nowhere else?
 
Lastly: why are you here?
 
 
As always, don't be an ass. Wear a damned mask.
 
 
lisa x