Thread by @QuinnyPig

Congrats to @revue on their @twitter acquisition. Now, some thoughts on paid newsletters.

Last Week in AWS (lastweekinaws.com) is my snarky email newsletter. I have ~23000 or so subscribers.

There are some folks (Revue is one, @substack is another) that would urge me to write a paid newsletter, to which subscribers are the revenue source.

Unfortunately for my model it's a complete non-starter. Basically none of you you would pay say, $100 a year for my ridiculous ranting nonsense. I might be wrong on that but I seriously doubt it.

But in that newsletter I talk about cloud computing. The folks who read it skew towards technically sophisticated, they block ads, and they buy cloud services. The long-term value of a single new customer to one of my sponsors is immense.

I've talked about revenue numbers before; but at a glance the newsletter sponsorships alone (ignore the podcast stuff) pays more than any engineering job I've ever had by something like 3x.

And the sponsors are *HAPPY*! I'm sold out until Q2 at least right now, with a high renewal rate of returning sponsors. The model is working for everyone.

So while on the one hand I envy folks who can build a paid subscriber model, it's not for me.

And for one more reason, too. Ignore *all* of the money for a second. I'd still write the newsletter for free with a smile on my face.

Remember, I have a day job fixing the horrifying AWS bill at duckbillgroup.com. This newsletter is my marketing channel. It's fun, it's engaging, and when folks have an AWS bill issue they reach out.

I want the audience to grow significantly for that reason alone.

Any kind of paywall would cut against that goal and reduce my audience size.

And this is the pattern that I think paid subscriptions miss. The goal is audience growth and building your own "brand" as it were. Charging folks for that is a drag on growth.

Maybe I'm wrong on this--it's certainly worked for @benthompson! But I just have a hard time seeing how I'd come out ahead by charging you all to read my nonsense.

I agree with this, but I want to clarify that the ENTIRETY of the information about the audience that the sponsors get is this single page.

https://twitter.com/shaquilhansford/status/1354074109500682241?s=20

And I'm doing some fun things to boost subscriber growth too.

I mean, check out lastweekinaws.com/refer; the higher (and currently unlisted) tiers have prizes that cost thousands of dollars.

This one may be a bit judgy: I find that the "buy me a coffee" donation links on a newsletter go a long way towards eroding credibility of the author as a Serious Professional.

There's a reason my t-shirt drive every year benefits a charity.

https://twitter.com/RandomSort/status/1354078309462781954?s=20