I'm going pro.

For the last three years, I’ve been writing at least three hours a day, thinking about writing every other hour of the day, and publishing weekly. 

Some writers dream of seeing their book in airports or starting a popular podcast or selling some cohort-based course. Not me. This Substack is the dream. This is it.

The sole goal of my Substack is to write exceptional essays. 

Writing that stirs your soul, pulls your heartstrings, settles the dust in your mind. Puts words to intuitions you’ve always had but never could quite articulate. Writing that reminds you how beautiful and singular and painfully poetic this life is. Writing that feels like it’s pouring buckets of rain outside and you’re in the only dry, cozy spot in the world.

That’s the type of writing I love to read and the type of writing I want to create. Text remains the loveliest medium.

To do that, I work really hard. And I finally believe the writing is worth paying for.

So, I've created a paid membership for this newsletter.

Become a patron

Putting this membership together is an exciting step forward. It’s been a ton of fun and I’m so excited to share it with you.

If you feel a spark of joy when my newsletter lands in your inbox, if my writing makes you think deeper or differently, or if you just want to support my work and keep me creating, consider becoming a patron:

Free readers get:

1- Weekly essays. Same as before, nothing changes.

Patrons get:

1- Weekly essays.

2- Deluxe essays. Once a month, a deluxe edition of one of my best essays from the archive, showing what it took to go from initial idea to published product. With some exclusive details for a "behind the scenes" look at my writing process (research, notes, outlines, early drafts, cutting room floor), as well as commentary on my journey writing the piece (what I was going through, how I got the idea, why I wrote it). 

Each deluxe essay will also include an audio reading, if you'd like to hear me read to you.

After the essay, there will be an annotated photo gallery. Three of my best photos from the month with notes on their story, offering more insight into my adventures.

3- Occasional unfiltered life updates (like letters to a friend) and ask-me-anything's (AMA's). Only for paid members.

4- Book notes & reading lists. Short reflections on books I've read. Less summary, more speculation¹. Personal insights and ideas the book spurred. What stood out to me, what I'm taking away, how it connects to my life or other things I've learned, who should read it. Plus, you’ll get access to a running list of my all-time favorite books and essays that seriously shaped my thinking, as well as updates on what I’m currently reading.

I chose the word patron because a patron provides financial support to an artist, but they also encourage, advocate, and protect their work. It felt fitting.

To celebrate the launch, I’m doing a weekend AMA on my Substack. Starting now, patrons can ask me questions in the comments of that post on anything they’re curious about. I’d love to answer everyone’s questions but I want to make sure my responses are thoughtful and patient, so it made sense to keep it intimate. 

Next week, I’ll release my first deluxe essay on “slowness as an ideal” which I wrote in January 2024 and people seemed to like.

Also, I’ll post my top books/essays list soon and add to the book notes library over time.

Besides the benefits, patrons get the honor of making my writing possible. I’ll have to get a traditional job to support myself soon. But if my writing generates enough income, I can explore part-time avenues to continue to pour time into my craft.

I want you to see a subscription as a vote for a world in which I do this work and continue to write ambitiously. 

But, I know not everyone will want to engage with my newsletter on this level, and that is completely okay. I love that you’re here just the same. Nothing will change for you. 

If you are not ready to become a patron or just happen to read something you particularly love, I’ll include a link to buy me a coffee (small, one-time donation in a digital tip jar) at the bottom of each essay.

But for those wanting more access, upgrading to paid is the best way to get closer to me, my mind, and my work.

That’s my pitch. That’s it.

A world with honest, straightforward communication, where people are treated as intelligent human beings, would be a beautiful thing. I believe that forgoing the guilt games, manipulation, and annoying sales tactics that characterize modern marketing and instead simply saying that you can send a few dollars each month to support my work, if you wish, can get results. 

It would set a lovely precedent if it did. 

So I’m not going to bug you. I’m not going to plaster my pieces with clickbait and calls to action and ruin the reading experience. I’m not going to sell out.

But I wanted to let you know. 

Support me if you want to. Continue to read my work for free if you want to. Honestly, I’m just grateful that you read my writing and get something from it. I don’t take your time for granted. At all. 

Regardless of money, paid or unpaid, subscriber or not, I appreciate you.

Also, I know what it’s like to feel financially strained. I never want anyone doing math to figure out whether they can afford a subscription to my work. If you want access to everything but paying for a subscription causes you actual stress, please ask for it for free. Send me a message and I can give you a full comp. No request denied. No questions asked.

I love this newsletter, and the little online community we’ve built, to death.

I’m very lucky to have so many smart, kind, thoughtful people here, that expand my understanding of life into something richer, more full, more roundedly human. People willing to spend time reading the machinations of my mind, asking beautiful questions, and hopefully coming home to themselves a little more each week.

My Substack reminds me there is so much love in this world. 

It’s like an enchanted nook on the internet. 

So, if you would like to support my work, help make it accessible to all, and see more of it in the world, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription².

I’ve done 100+ hours of work behind the scenes over the last 12 months to reach this point that I want to share with you.

Only if you’re interested. It’s supperrrrr in-depth. So no pressure if you want to jump to the end (:

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Behind the Curtain of this Launch

This announcement is a huge deal for me. Like a “procrastinate and push the deadline back half a year” huge deal. 

It’s been many months in the making and I wanted to detail my process, in case it’s helpful. 

Leading up to this…

• With an undergrad degree in business and (too much) experience in finance/consulting, I straddle a unique intersection that makes me somewhat qualified to think about the business model of a newsletter.

• I worked closely with Noah Kagan for one year on his book, almost strictly on marketing. It became an instant NYT-bestseller. Above all, Noah is an exceptional marketer.

• I hired Substack whisperer Erin Sherton, who has worked with some massively successful writers, to help me out.

• I’ve been thinking about going paid for two years. For the past year, I’ve been studying the paid offerings and marketing and copywriting of my favorite Substacks (especially the ones I pay for myself!) and taking detailed notes. I started putting my plan together eight months ago, chipping away a few hours a week. 

Deferring to stereotypes, most creatives don’t love dealing with money and have a justified distaste for marketing and sales. As a result, most don’t think hard enough about what creative monetization could look like. So it ends up looking like laziness.

I wanted to do things differently.

For starters, I waited longer than most writers before going paid. My first post was May 19, 2021. It’s been three years of publishing, without missing a week³. 

Why?

I was still experimenting. Finding my voice, learning what I like to write about, what I want my writing to be about. I didn’t want the pressure of a paycheck. I didn’t feel confident enough in my ability as a writer—that I was providing something of real value worth real dollars. I needed time to practice and to outwork my self-doubt. 

I was afraid. I’m still afraid. Putting a dollar value on my writing is as comfortable as wearing wet socks. It’s scary to ask for money. To risk rejection. To put myself out there a step further. What if people only “kinda” like my writing, like the free pile at a garage sale? What if it’s not good enough to be worth anything? What if I disappoint or anger or alienate my readers? What if it fails? 

Also marketing can be… icky. 

Most marketing nowadays edges on manipulation: using psychology hacks and slick copywriting skills and primal fear to convince people to buy something they don’t need, usually by subconsciously suggesting it will finally make them feel whole (attractive, loved, successful, productive, wealthy, socially validated, etc).

Early on, I made a list of what I don’t / won’t / shant do:

• pushing, manipulative tactics, salesmanship

• fake urgency (“buy now to get a 20% discount!”) or scarcity (“only 20 spots left!”) 

• pressure people

• guilt people

• seduce people

• anything fear-based 

• use words like "unlock" and "limited"

• talk about how i need the money

• talk about how i will starve

• quote jesus about how it's better to give than receive

• quote jesus again about how it's good to give away your money if you want to go to heaven 

• point out how jesus and buddha and socrates all wore rags and would definitely pay for my substack if they were still alive and had a credit card and stuff 

• make bad jokes to mask my insecurity

I’m terrified of selling out. 

I despise the treadmill of infinite growth in our economy that rots the quality of goods and services. And I refuse to abandon the aliveness that characterizes the earnest early days of a creative’s career.

This Substack is the hardest I’ve worked on anything.

Thousands and thousands of hours of leaning in, fully applying myself, stretching my mind to its limits. But every day, I get to do the thing I love most: Read and think and write. About the ideas that captivate my attention. And I’ve met so many incredible, kind, intelligent people, from all corners of the world, that make me smarter and shape my thinking and fill up my heart. 

In some ways, I feel responsible to my readers—those generous enough to trust me with their time. Protective, even. I feel like a steward of their attention⁴.

Last summer, I was talking to a friend who works in sales at Substack. He advised if I want to “make it” as a writer, I have to be able to think about my newsletter as a business. My writing is the product, self-promotion is growth/marketing, and I’m the brand. 

Great companies pour effort and intention into product launches.

I didn’t want to just flip on paid subscriptions and blast out some boilerplate marketing copy. Or sneak my announcement in the bottom of a newsletter and hope no one notices. 

If I was going to go paid, I wanted to treat it with the same thoughtfulness and patience and care I treat my writing. I wanted the thread of honesty and vulnerability and authenticity to weave through it. I wanted it to be about giving and good vibes. In a way I’d be delighted if I were a reader. 

Like Christmas, but on Substack.

crafting the benefits

When I began to brainstorm what benefits I’d offer my paid members, I made a list of my favorite 10-15 Substacks and studied what they offered. I turned the mirror on myself as a reader, trying to understand why I did or didn’t feel compelled to become a paying member. What reasons hit close to home? What made my nose scrunch?

I wrote it all down.

For the handful of subscriptions I have paid for, I followed the creator for a while, loved their mind, their work, and what they stood for. I was impressed by the generosity and intention and thoughtfulness they put into what they did. Their free work was extremely valuable and standalone, but paid members were given the option to go deeper into the work, get closer to the creator. They also seemed like earnest, humble, kind people that I felt good about supporting. 

As silly as it sounds, I almost wanted to give them my money. I loved that I could directly say, “your work is valuable to me”. I felt a bit special that my dollars go straight into their bank account, to buy milk or a vintage copy of Hamlet or pay for a camping trip or whatever.

My subscriptions are still the happiest money that leaves my account every month.

For months, I read every essay I could find about creative monetization, the creator economy, making money on Substack. I made a list of every business model imaginable for a newsletter. Even the bad ones, like paid ads. Then, I wrote about why I did or didn’t like them. A few stood out, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. 

So I made a list of everything I don’t want to do:

• I don’t want to create a bunch of additional work 

• I don’t want to lock into obligations I’m not excited to fulfill 

• I don’t want to dilute my work with lower quality content

• I don’t want to waste my reader’s time or (worse) attention

• I don’t want to create anything I wouldn’t care for if I was a reader

• I don’t want to offer benefits or content that oppose my values

• I don’t want to filter my writing or censor my honesty

• I don’t want to get distracted from my main thing 

The last point became the most important and the crux of my entire philosophy of going paid.

Here’s the thing: I want to keep the main thing, the main thing.

My writing is my core competency. It’s the work I would do if the only reward was to get to do more of it. It’s the thing I pour my heart into. It’s the skill I’ve been practicing and improving for thousands of hours. It’s the reason you’re here.

My mission, my “main thing”, is creating exceptional writing. 

Skills compound. Every hour not spent writing has a high opportunity cost. Especially if I create additional work that adds stress or seeps into my subconscious and distracts from my essays⁵. 

Success eats itself. 

After half a decade of diligence, a writer becomes successful but then their success draws them away from the very thing that made them succeed in the first place: writing! As they spend less time at the keyboard, the quality and frequency of their writing dwindles. Eventually, so does their success⁶.

I’m not an influencer or a podcaster or a course builder or a merch maker and certainly no coach⁷. 

I’m a Writer. 

That’s my main thing. That’s the thing I love to do. That’s the thing I’m best at. And that’s the thing I want to make money on. The only thing I can even justify making money on. 

Writing makes my life meaningful. Money is just the added bonus. But I won’t let money swallow meaning.

Plus, introducing other products/services mucks with incentives.

Life is hard. Sometimes I struggle. But it’s difficult to admit, “I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing and I’m afraid and feel lost and figuring it out as I go” if I’m trying to sell you my course. I’ll slowly, even subconsciously, creep toward presenting an image of this fully formed, semi-enlightened being, continually on the cusp of revelation.

I can’t make money but blunt my honesty. Because it’s bad to lie to you but it’s worse to lie to myself. 

To craft benefits for paid members, I was left with questions like:

• What do I want to fulfill, as a Writer? What would I be excited to create? What would increase my aliveness, not drain my batteries?

• What can I consistently commit to doing for years? But also not get locked in? 

• What won't cause stress / worry / pressure / attention residue that can contaminate my writing?

• What could actually benefit or improve my work (a “synergy”)?

• What isn't a distraction from my "main thing"? 

Over the next few weeks, I made a list of 10-15 benefits that fit within my category constraints and then whittled it down to the best three. Feedback from several of my most engaged readers was extremely helpful to make final decisions and also generated new ideas (like including the photo gallery!)

No paywall on essays?

I don’t want to paywall any of my essays. 

In other words, both free members and patrons will have 100% access to my new essays every week and my entire archive of past posts.

This lands squarely on the radical side. Paywalling essays and restricting the archive seem to be the most widely used monetization model for writers on Substack. It’s the easiest. My workload remains the same. 

But, I don’t want to limit the accessibility of my writing, nor make readers pay for something they’re used to getting for free, nor handicap my Substack’s long-term growth. 

I want everyone to be able to read every piece. To be able to share it with anyone who they think will love it, who can also read the whole thing. I want to find readers with my whole body of work⁸.

Countless times I’ve stumbled onto an essay exactly when I needed to read it and it would suck if I never got past the first paragraph because there was a big fat paywall.

I read a few hours each week on Substack (eat your own cooking, etc.) and most of the time, I’m relieved when an essay is paywalled. It feels like one less thing I have to do. Never in my entire life have I hit a paywall and impulsively said "fuck it" before punching in my credit card number. 

I considered increasing my publishing cadence, sending out a mid-week essay only for paid members, but that runs in the opposite direction I want to head. If anything, I’m trying to slow down. Spend more time crafting each piece, making it as good as I possibly can—honest and authentic and captivating. I don’t want to waste your time with rushed essays⁹. 

The biggest driver of growth for this newsletter has been three posts that got over 100 likes¹⁰. But I generally have no clue which pieces will resonate and which will flop. I’m usually wrong. If any of those pieces had a paywall, they’d reach a fraction of the audience and create a fraction of the growth. If I’m thinking in decades, small differences in short-term compounding lead to big differences in long-term growth.

Why do I need to grow? 

My book deal… 

This essay is a mirror

If you allow me to go meta for a moment, my approach to going paid is shown by this essay itself. 

At every stage of this project, I was writing. Reflecting on my plan in my journal, furiously capturing fleeting insights on Apple Notes after a run, saving examples I saw on Substack for inspiration. For every difficult decision, I opened up a word doc and just wrote about it.

Writing forces me to structure my ideas and organize my mind. It makes me realize where there are holes in my logic. I’m never sure what I think until I write about it, then try to poke holes through the page.

By writing and rewriting this essay over the last six weeks, using my reams of notes, I put all my thinking, planning, and strategizing to the scrutinizing test of the articulated word. 

Some ideas were better than I thought. I doubled down on my conviction not to paywall posts. I explained my argument and it seemed rock solid. Some ideas that seemed smart in my head, like running a subscriber-only group chat, fell apart. But by noticing I was wrong, I could change my thinking and become less wrong. I also generated new ideas as I wrote, like how selling products/services could affect incentives.

This essay and my thoughts about paid subscriptions existed together in an ecosystem. Each shaped the other. Recursively. 

It’s a living repository for all my thoughts about going paid.

In the process of writing, I was forced to examine why I even wanted to go paid. I had to stare the danger in the face. How I could lose my way, if I wasn’t careful.

Sharing this piece publically holds me accountable. People far wiser than I am have begun with pure intentions but let money lead them astray. Temptation may knock, but by revisiting this piece I can remind myself what I want my work to be about.

In the end, I got the final conviction to launch paid memberships from my confidence in this piece.

That’s All Folks

This feels like a new chapter. 

Like any new chapter, it’s both exciting and terrifying. Like any new chapter, some people will wish the old one never ended. But I’ve thought hard about everything I’m doing. I’ve been patient and diligent and tried to get it right. 

If I don’t make a red cent from my essays for the rest of my life, I will still continue to write. 

If I somehow make enough money to build a beautiful New England style home on a grassy sunlit piece of land, remote enough to be private but close enough to walk to a quaint main street for coffee and scones, I will still continue to write.

Thank you for being here.

As always,

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Thank you

Erin Shetron

for your feedback on earlier versions of this piece (:

My essays are entirely funded by readers. If you want to support my work (and get some exclusive content), the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.

If you enjoyed this piece but are not ready to become a paid subscriber, you can make a small one-time donation in my digital tip jar here at Buy Me A Coffee. If you can.

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👋 what i’ve been up to:

• All week I’ve been working heads down on the finishing touches of the paid membership for my Substack. I’m doing an AMA this weekend to celebrate the launch.

• I finished building my vertical laptop stand and painting my LIGHTLY sign. With both, I was rather pleased. Next project is to organize the shed into a functional workspace.

• After +3 months of daily study, I finished reading the New Testament. Now, I’m onto the Old Testament.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

Johnny Uzan on how to stay on top of your agenda:

“Watching the news is how you stay on top of other people's agendas.

Taking a walk is how you stay on top of yours.”

📸 photos i took:

cows & flowers

1. The only books worth reading resist summarization. Plus, AI can do that much better than me.

2. I will also accept payment in Patagonia and Fjallraven apparel, if that’s a currency you happen to deal in.

3. Besides when I was living in a tent in the Thai jungle for two weeks with a single solar panel for electricity.

4. This is why I've rejected any cross-posting growth-hacky requests from other newsletters. I wouldn't ask you to read anything that I don't read and love myself.

Out in the world, our attention is pulled in a million directions. In here, I want it to just be about reading. I want to cultivate a reading experience as close to reading a paper book as possible.

5. For example, an hour “coaching call” isn’t just an hour. It’s waking up and seeing the block on my calendar and worrying I won’t have anything good to say because I didn’t sleep so well and the client will think I’m an idiot and want their money back. Then, feeling the pit of dread in my stomach grow into a tree. Sitting to write, half my brain on the essay, the other half trying to avoid a coaching catastrophe. 

6. Long-term this strategy fails because their pipeline of new readers they want to sell coaching/courses/workshops/merch to, also dwindles. Unless they miraculously develop a competency, and become known for, the new thing.

Just recently, I turned down a marketing job offer from a best-selling business author who's sold +1.5M books (including one you've certainly heard of).

7. (Although I will take $200/hour to give you advice you don’t need)

8. If I block my archive of past posts, I also limit my reach as a writer.

9. I don’t know any writer on Substack who can consistently share two high-quality, crafted pieces every week.

10. The best way to grow on Substack is to share quality writing. Everything else, from design to onboarding emails to publishing cadence, is just a distraction.