No Post This Week / # Of Paid Subscribers / #1 Newsletter Lesson Learned

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to publish a full post this week, so I’m going to use one of my vacation days.

I’m working on several mega posts that I’m really excited to share with you. And I think it’s worth the extra time to get them right rather than rush something out just to stick to the schedule.

But I still want to leave you with something. So, today, I share two things:

• #1 personal lesson learned since starting the newsletter

• # of paid subscribers this newsletter has so far

#1 Lesson On Paid Newsletters

Writing a paid newsletter is a constant tension between two forces:

• One tension is sticking to a schedule that subscribers can count on.

• The other tension is focusing on quality no matter how long it takes.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve focused 100% on quality, and I only published a few posts per year. As a result of this strategy, my average article on Medium had 150,000+ views. But this strategy also had downsides:

• Not regularly staying in touch with readers

• Throwing away most of my research because it didn’t fit into a longform article

• Difficulty monetizing through a paid newsletter because of irregularity

• Perfectionism

• Having to spend more time on marketing than I’d like, because the content was completely free.

Last July, I started my first paid newsletter to stress-test my assumptions, find a better model, a find a platform more suited to me. I wondered:

What would happen if I focus 80% of my effort on quality and publish more often?

How do I get the best of quantity and quality?

How can I make money directly from creating content?

First, I started off with 5 posts per week. That lasted for all of one week.

Then I went to 4.

Then 3.

Then 2.

Now 1.

As I reduced the number of posts per week, a few things happened:

• I spent more time thinking about what was worth writing.

• I spent more time going deeper into the research.

• I spent more time editing the work.

• I spent more time getting feedback.

• I felt less stressed by deadlines.

• I explored more counterarguments.

• I spent more time brainstorming hooks.

• I worked on a more sustainable schedule.

• I spent more time creating bonuses for paid subscribers.

And two things didn’t happen (One good. One bad.):

• Bad: I still end up rushing to get posts out on publishing day. Damn you Parkinson's Law!

• Good: There wasn’t a dip in paid subscribers when I shifted my cadence.

5 Results & Reflections

1. I feel like a kid in the candy store. I get to spend almost my entire day learning and exploring my curiosity. I am proud of reinventing my schedule to make it intrinsically rewarding after burning out 10 years ago. It took years of personal growth to value my inner world enough to create space for my curiosity rather than being solely goal-focused.
   

2. The newsletter has 580 paid subscribers, which means $60,000/year in recurring revenue. While this is a small part of my revenue compared to my courses, it’s a welcome addition. I feel a sense of freedom that I could eventually earn a full-time income from the newsletter alone.
   

3. Creating a daily habit doesn’t work for my style, but a weekly one does. I do believe in the power of becoming a daily habit in people’s lives. This means reliably sending out posts at the same time and day. This was my original goal with this newsletter. Unfortunately, I’m just not wired to enjoy this way of working. Therefore, it’s not sustainable for me. But I love the balance that a weekly cadence provides.
   

4. I love Substack. I’m very happy with my choice to use Substack so far. (1) It makes it fun to send out a newsletter. Using Infusionsoft for emails was a nightmare. (2) I love the community that is forming on the platform, because of Notes and DMs. No other newsletter platform has a community. (3) I love that Substack supports video podcasts and notes. No other newsletter platforms offers these.
   

5. I love the paid newsletter model. It provides a way to create content and monetize simultaneously. This allows me to focus more time on learning, thinking, and writing.

I deeply appreciate your support of this newsletter. Thank you for being a subscriber.

See you next week!

Michael