You are missing a category of content consumer, and I know because I am often of the camp..
Those that are willing and able to pay you for content (as they already pay for other content) but may not pay you as they lack content consumption time.
So, before you write off the comment/category as being effectively the same as the first two non-payer categories - I implore you to consider you may be rushing to judgment.
This 5th category would be much more aligned with the latter two categories of which you desire as company, over the pay wall… I don’t know how big my camp of 5th category folk is but could imagine it might be a very population being overlooked. This said, I do have a solution to the 5th category conundrum. Your current modality is like offering an all you can eat buffet, and I want to be the one trip through styrofoam guy.
So, I am not super familiar with the substack platform (as I only arrived today mid a Demetri Hidden Forces episode when I first became aware of you and your content) and not sure if an ala carte content consumer tier is a feasible offering on the platform; but, if so, you may want to consider. Lastly, I’ll add that I am not a Hidden Forces sub for this same reason and have several times almost pulled the trigger on emailing Demetri requesting the ala carte consumer option but figured my camp may be small and such an email would be a waste of his time…. In poking around your content today and seeing my category of consumer left out again, I guess I finally snapped and had to follow through with the ala carte request. ;)
Love, #1 wannabe high paying ala carte content consumer
@Kirk has captured my category. I have just signed up for Doomberg having had a friend send a few along to me. Clearly the writing is intelligent, insightful, and clever - a pleasure to read. I sometimes think about subscribing to content that appears 'good' on the surface, Bloomberg, Forbes, WSJ, NYT to name a few. But as I sit here near year-end wading through all the unread material sent to me for free I just can't justify spending on a subscription unless I could truly believe that a large portion of the content would be relevant to my interests.
I could see subscribing to a service that pulls material from many sources - but again the problem is you have to hope a moderator will share your tastes.
To me there is a model where the writing of Doomberg stays free - and if it continues to resonate then the audience will grow. The hope has to be that paying customers for Doomberg's services will be among the appreciative audience and when it comes time to say 'who can we hire to help us think about this problem' the answer will be easy.
Of course its your business and therefore your model to choose - I will miss you when you stop emailing me - but then again it will be one less email I struggle to get to.
This just in...in a call with a group of friends on December 31, 2021, we discussed our enjoyment reading Doomberg and my comment above. The group, all older than me and all avid readers on a macro-economic plane, confirmed that they all pay for subscriptions - partly to receive the work and partly just to support the writer even when they don't have time to do all the reading.
Each week they read what they can from multiple sources and just delete/discard the rest to avoid my problem of accumulated reading.
As a result, I started the year subscribing to various publications that are part free and part behind a paywall. We are using it as an experiment for the year to see which ones have sufficient value to continue in 2023. In the meantime I will be interested to see the Doomberg pricing when its decided.
I really like this explanation and breakdown of the Doomberg Super Plan ;)
As someone who's building his own writing letter on this platform, I think this is an attractive concept for me to explore down the road. However, subscription models in general are something I am not a super fan of as a consumer.
And I can't keep up with my own free inbox of emails that come in from the couple dozen voices I listen to, so to pay for premium information when I don't even keep up with the free stuff just doesn't make sense for me to use my limited wallet (on an ongoing basis). It may be worth considering keeping some free article *bi-weekly for example* with other means of revenue. Promote merch, advertise, affiliate links, etc... could also fund those more irregular but free articles.
I am not sure I entirely subscribe to the notion that a paywall needs to be binary in nature. The fact is that every individual piece has individual value based upon the needs of the individual who reads it! Will I pay for trite, humorous articles for entertainment purposes? No. Will I pay for insightful observations and articles that improve my knowledge and understanding of what is happening in events I am interested in? Yes!
I have paid for many subscriptions in the past, and few have survived the test of time.
I think one strategy to consider may be to somehow introduce a 'grading' system so that you can develop a way to assess the value to your subscribers of each piece. Different people value different things. Put the aggregate of valuable things behind the paywall...I'll pay for that access.
But if the ratio between what I consider trite/entertainment/political and useful/interesting/educational out of balance, I'm gone.
Remember, free is a 4 letter word. Your material is excellent and you have a team doing it, so fatigue may not become an issue. I think you will be surprised how much you can charge for it. Whatever you are thinking I am pretty sure it should be higher….if money is your objective of course.
Found you through George Gammon's work on Youtube. I like the 3-4 articles I've read so far and have a couple of friendly comments regarding your intention to monetize. I think you have many plusses and two glaring minuses. On the plus side, your content is spot on and consistent with the pundits I follow on Youtube like Wall Street Silver, Peter Schiff, George Gammon and many others. The quality of your writing is high which makes reading the work nearly effortless. I am confused, however, about your decision to 1. remain anonymous, and 2. produce primarily written content instead of videos. It's difficult for me to be loyal to a green chicken instead of a person who's name I can know and eventually trust. I like to know a little about the person who is feeding me content so I can intuitively connect with their personality. Somehow I don't see myself identifying with a green chicken who seems to be little more than a gimmick. Regarding the reading of your written content; I'll do so when I have time and am not exhausted from my busy schedule. If you produced videos, I'd listen to them in the car like I do with most of my other trusted sources. I think I'd have a difficult time justifying paying for your service given these trust and time challenges. I suppose we'll soon see.
I enjoy your content. I will never pay for it though and my status as a reader will be incinerated by the fire of your paywall. Truthfully I never planned on giving you anything in return for your work. I am a freeloading parasite; you need me about as much as a dog needs fleas.
Finally hit the subscribe; usually I just keep tabs open and refresh a page. But, if it's making a difference to your decision making metrics, I figured I'd get the emails.
As far as subscriptions, while I'd love to support you, I'd go in the "unable to" category. I was barely able to get it together for the Grant Williams, and was only able to justify it by him being the best person I've found as far as discussion on long term market trends. While I don't have many assets; I'm lower middle class single man electric shop, knowing how the markets will operate will have a great impact on the family.
While I find your articles of great value and fascinating, I just can't do both at this time. Which is too bad, as while his views are great on some of the macro side of things, your articles almost exclusively take those same trends and apply them to specific situations going on in our world today, which can be extrapolated or used as examples for other areas of society or the markets.
I hope you keep a portion of your articles in front of the paywall, and when the business picks up (I'm in the first year of the business, so I think I'll be able to make it work next year) I'll be able to feed the birds!
I'm a huge fan, for exactly the reasons you're doing this. Clarity and informed perspectives are what light up my day. I am also in my mid-70s on a fixed income that is low but livable now, but as you have noted, things are going south at a pretty good rate. I will do my damnedest to afford whatever your paywall is, but there will be a limit. I do appreciate you can't keep up the time and research for free. I just hope we end up meeting in the middle! But in any case, cheering you on - the world needs more of this.
I'd love to hire Doomberg to help launch my brand. Can you contact me? [email protected]
You are missing a category of content consumer, and I know because I am often of the camp..
Those that are willing and able to pay you for content (as they already pay for other content) but may not pay you as they lack content consumption time.
So, before you write off the comment/category as being effectively the same as the first two non-payer categories - I implore you to consider you may be rushing to judgment.
This 5th category would be much more aligned with the latter two categories of which you desire as company, over the pay wall… I don’t know how big my camp of 5th category folk is but could imagine it might be a very population being overlooked. This said, I do have a solution to the 5th category conundrum. Your current modality is like offering an all you can eat buffet, and I want to be the one trip through styrofoam guy.
So, I am not super familiar with the substack platform (as I only arrived today mid a Demetri Hidden Forces episode when I first became aware of you and your content) and not sure if an ala carte content consumer tier is a feasible offering on the platform; but, if so, you may want to consider. Lastly, I’ll add that I am not a Hidden Forces sub for this same reason and have several times almost pulled the trigger on emailing Demetri requesting the ala carte consumer option but figured my camp may be small and such an email would be a waste of his time…. In poking around your content today and seeing my category of consumer left out again, I guess I finally snapped and had to follow through with the ala carte request. ;)
Love, #1 wannabe high paying ala carte content consumer
@Kirk has captured my category. I have just signed up for Doomberg having had a friend send a few along to me. Clearly the writing is intelligent, insightful, and clever - a pleasure to read. I sometimes think about subscribing to content that appears 'good' on the surface, Bloomberg, Forbes, WSJ, NYT to name a few. But as I sit here near year-end wading through all the unread material sent to me for free I just can't justify spending on a subscription unless I could truly believe that a large portion of the content would be relevant to my interests.
I could see subscribing to a service that pulls material from many sources - but again the problem is you have to hope a moderator will share your tastes.
To me there is a model where the writing of Doomberg stays free - and if it continues to resonate then the audience will grow. The hope has to be that paying customers for Doomberg's services will be among the appreciative audience and when it comes time to say 'who can we hire to help us think about this problem' the answer will be easy.
Of course its your business and therefore your model to choose - I will miss you when you stop emailing me - but then again it will be one less email I struggle to get to.
This just in...in a call with a group of friends on December 31, 2021, we discussed our enjoyment reading Doomberg and my comment above. The group, all older than me and all avid readers on a macro-economic plane, confirmed that they all pay for subscriptions - partly to receive the work and partly just to support the writer even when they don't have time to do all the reading.
Each week they read what they can from multiple sources and just delete/discard the rest to avoid my problem of accumulated reading.
As a result, I started the year subscribing to various publications that are part free and part behind a paywall. We are using it as an experiment for the year to see which ones have sufficient value to continue in 2023. In the meantime I will be interested to see the Doomberg pricing when its decided.
I really like this explanation and breakdown of the Doomberg Super Plan ;)
As someone who's building his own writing letter on this platform, I think this is an attractive concept for me to explore down the road. However, subscription models in general are something I am not a super fan of as a consumer.
And I can't keep up with my own free inbox of emails that come in from the couple dozen voices I listen to, so to pay for premium information when I don't even keep up with the free stuff just doesn't make sense for me to use my limited wallet (on an ongoing basis). It may be worth considering keeping some free article *bi-weekly for example* with other means of revenue. Promote merch, advertise, affiliate links, etc... could also fund those more irregular but free articles.
I am not sure I entirely subscribe to the notion that a paywall needs to be binary in nature. The fact is that every individual piece has individual value based upon the needs of the individual who reads it! Will I pay for trite, humorous articles for entertainment purposes? No. Will I pay for insightful observations and articles that improve my knowledge and understanding of what is happening in events I am interested in? Yes!
I have paid for many subscriptions in the past, and few have survived the test of time.
I think one strategy to consider may be to somehow introduce a 'grading' system so that you can develop a way to assess the value to your subscribers of each piece. Different people value different things. Put the aggregate of valuable things behind the paywall...I'll pay for that access.
But if the ratio between what I consider trite/entertainment/political and useful/interesting/educational out of balance, I'm gone.
I really like your stuff, its entertaining and informative.
But to pay for it - lets say a few hunded bucks a year - I would have to make money off it.
I'd be willing to pay, but not much. Entertainment is cheap. Netflix is a hundred bucks a year, Amazon Prime around forty, youtube is free.
Remember, free is a 4 letter word. Your material is excellent and you have a team doing it, so fatigue may not become an issue. I think you will be surprised how much you can charge for it. Whatever you are thinking I am pretty sure it should be higher….if money is your objective of course.
I enjoy your articles a lot. If you released paid subscriber-only articles I'd definitley pay for it.
I also found you via George Gammon’s YouTube. Wonderful interview. Looking forward to getting to know Doomberg.
Found you through George Gammon's work on Youtube. I like the 3-4 articles I've read so far and have a couple of friendly comments regarding your intention to monetize. I think you have many plusses and two glaring minuses. On the plus side, your content is spot on and consistent with the pundits I follow on Youtube like Wall Street Silver, Peter Schiff, George Gammon and many others. The quality of your writing is high which makes reading the work nearly effortless. I am confused, however, about your decision to 1. remain anonymous, and 2. produce primarily written content instead of videos. It's difficult for me to be loyal to a green chicken instead of a person who's name I can know and eventually trust. I like to know a little about the person who is feeding me content so I can intuitively connect with their personality. Somehow I don't see myself identifying with a green chicken who seems to be little more than a gimmick. Regarding the reading of your written content; I'll do so when I have time and am not exhausted from my busy schedule. If you produced videos, I'd listen to them in the car like I do with most of my other trusted sources. I think I'd have a difficult time justifying paying for your service given these trust and time challenges. I suppose we'll soon see.
Fantastic guidance. Thank you...I'm following success, because it leaves clues.
Just heard you on George Gammon's "Rebel Capitalist Show". Great stuff. Came to check you out. Happy to be here.
I enjoy your content. I will never pay for it though and my status as a reader will be incinerated by the fire of your paywall. Truthfully I never planned on giving you anything in return for your work. I am a freeloading parasite; you need me about as much as a dog needs fleas.
Finally hit the subscribe; usually I just keep tabs open and refresh a page. But, if it's making a difference to your decision making metrics, I figured I'd get the emails.
As far as subscriptions, while I'd love to support you, I'd go in the "unable to" category. I was barely able to get it together for the Grant Williams, and was only able to justify it by him being the best person I've found as far as discussion on long term market trends. While I don't have many assets; I'm lower middle class single man electric shop, knowing how the markets will operate will have a great impact on the family.
While I find your articles of great value and fascinating, I just can't do both at this time. Which is too bad, as while his views are great on some of the macro side of things, your articles almost exclusively take those same trends and apply them to specific situations going on in our world today, which can be extrapolated or used as examples for other areas of society or the markets.
I hope you keep a portion of your articles in front of the paywall, and when the business picks up (I'm in the first year of the business, so I think I'll be able to make it work next year) I'll be able to feed the birds!
you boutta charge us $500/yr huh
I'm a huge fan, for exactly the reasons you're doing this. Clarity and informed perspectives are what light up my day. I am also in my mid-70s on a fixed income that is low but livable now, but as you have noted, things are going south at a pretty good rate. I will do my damnedest to afford whatever your paywall is, but there will be a limit. I do appreciate you can't keep up the time and research for free. I just hope we end up meeting in the middle! But in any case, cheering you on - the world needs more of this.
Waiting on the Grant Williams/QTR/Doomberg bundle pricing! :)