It's been a slow season for me. Subscriptions are a bit behind my targets. Sponsored content isn't performing as well as it should. Maybe my projections were too optimistic. Maybe I'm being delusional about charging so little for what I'm offering. Maybe it's just summer.
To me, it feels like it's all going as fine and as fast as can be expected. It's going to take some time to build up to the 500 subscribers I need to make my projects sustainable for me. I just crossed 200 subscribers this month. I'm still getting lots of interest in my free newsletters, free events, free downloads, low cost classes, and free advice from media entrepreneurs. I haven't slowed down with what I'm producing.
I am super grateful for my Lifetime Legends and Annual Legends who are a massive help here in contributing up front so I can afford to keep going as I build these projects and sustainable revenue streams.
But I still have a gap I need to solve, so rather than try to make money another way that takes me away from these projects, I decided to run a Summer Reader Raise for $5k so I can keep going at the same pace.
Why a reader raise
I've had several people offer to pitch in more to support my projects.
Some people appreciate my work and don't want to become a paid subscriber for whatever reason. Others are already paid subscribers who just want to contribute more. Either way, it means a ton to me and I will gladly take your money to keep this good thing going. I never forget the people who bet on me and I keep rewarding them for years to come, with introductions, with special invites, with the occasional 1:1 call or whatever they'd find valuable.
I could always do other things for money, but when I make that choice, it pulls me away from the projects readers are already funding. The idea behind a reader raise is to get a little more investment in those projects, beyond your basic subscription tiers, from people who want to support it's sustainability and expansion.
My goal
I launched this campaign at the end of June. My goal was $5,000 by August 31 which would augment my income for July, August and September.
I'm bringing in about $4,000-5,000 on a good month right now and there's pretty much no buffer room to run lower than that for too long so this reader raise helps fill the gap of the summer revenue slump (which is more like $3000 right now).
I am working to get farther ahead of my revenue so I can last for longer with slower growth on the paid subscriber side, but I had a lot of unexpected churn this summer along with a heavier workload with live events, sponsorship campaigns, post publishing and platform migration which meant I don't really have that much spare time to add more work. I'm gonna have to cut down on how much I'm hosting and publishing though because it's not working sufficiently to build a stable income for me. The mix will change this fall.
Perks of contributing
I added two perks right away when I launched this reader raise—the annual Legends subscription and the Lifetime Legend Status. Those were easy because my thinking was that if you contribute as much or more as the subscription cost, I might as well make you a subscriber.
As the raise went on, I added the $20 perk for my newsletter class and the $79 perk for everything in my shop (which includes the newsletter class).
The last thing I added was a $499 1:1 call with me, which no one took me up on. My call price is regularly $1000, which also no one has taken me up on. And that's fine with me. I don't want to do one hour calls. They really fuck up my day, and they're super unsatisfying for me, so that combined with my 13+ years of experience in growth and revenue that I can boil down to a custom recommendation for you in minutes is why calls with me are so expensive.
But I digress. Here's the list of perks I offered.
Contribute $20 or more ➡️ Get my Launch Your Newsletter class (that's $9 off what it usually costs).
Contribute $79 or more ➡️ Get everything in my shop (that's $20 off what it usually costs).
Contribute $99 or more ➡️ Get 1 year of a Legends membership for you or a friend.
Contribute $297 or more ➡️ Get a lifetime Legends membership for you or a friend.
Contribute $499 or more ➡️ Get 1 year of Legends + a 1:1 with me to talk revenue (only 3 available) - a 60% discount on my call rate!
Who contributed to the campaign
30 people contributed to this campaign. Some of them more than once. Many of them quite generously. 16 of the contributors to this campaign (more than half) are also paying members of my projects. Average contribution was $50.
- Raven from Unraveled
- Perez Jones
- Colin Alsheimer
- Rob McClinton
- Raven O'Neal
- Saul from Remote Queer
- Greg Nix
- Jeremy Hulette
- Robin Petering
- Max Pete
- Maria Bustillos from Flaming Hydra
- Devin Lee
- Maigen Thomas
- Andy Dehnart from reality blurred
- Jordyn DiOrio
- Jo Long
- Pame Barba
- Will Quezada
- Keren Landman
- Dr. Robert Metcalf
- Chris Musei-Sequeira
- Rochelle Sanchez
- Linda Vinod
- Christy Price
- Antonio Neves
- Tony Mecia from The Charlotte Ledger
- Vanessa Armstrong
- Shawnna Stiver
- Jasmine Mithani
- My mom and dad!
How I promoted the reader raise
Phase 1: Launching the raise
I put this reader raise up on Ko-fi as a goal. That made it easy to launch and easy to track. Plus, everyone could see how well I was progressing towards it.
I also added a Zapier automation that posted to my Bluesky account every time someone contributed. This was major and drove a lot of contributions straight from Bluesky, even from my paid subscribers who follow me there. I think that's because I really did not have that much space to promote this via my email newsletters with everything else on the promo calendar so it got the most play on social.
Phase 2: No Monopoly Media Week
The first month of the reader raise (July) went pretty slow and that's because I didn't do much! I was hoping that mentioning it a few times and having the automation going would get me halfway to my goal and it actually did, but then I realized I would need to step it up if I wanted to hit this goal in August.
That's where the idea of No Monopoly Media Week came in. It was inspired by Aftermath's Inside Baseball drives.
I did something weird here that I wouldn't do again which is that I targeted No Monopoly Media Week at Revenue Rulebreaker readers EVEN THOUGH the people who benefit most from my free labor are the readers, DMers and event attendees of Journalists Pay Themselves. I did that because I knew I was going to be shutting down Journalists Pay Themselves in September and I didn't want to run a big raise over there and then say goodbye. Anyway, none of this was optimal and there is some overlap between the audiences so I tried to lean into that.
No Monopoly Media Week was 5 days of posts. 1 a day. About why we should read, back and become indie media. It was entirely free for the newsletter but those posts are now paywalled on the site. That week, we raised about $1300 towards the goal. In addition to 5 newsletters/posts, I did a lot of social media posting, probably twice on LinkedIn, many times on Bluesky plus I did 2 targeted email asks at my most active long time readers (which didn't work except to win back 1 very important Legend).
It was successful enough. I was hoping to see more engagement from a wider range of supporters given how long some of these folks have been on my list (going on 4 years now!) and how many of them hit me up to tell me they love where everything is going but it did get me much closer to my goal of $5k.
Phase 3: Substack migrations and 1:1 calls
After No Monopoly Media Week, I was at something like $3400 raised which was 68% of my goal. And I had just gone pretty damn hard at messaging and targeting across my channels.
So then I thought...maybe it was time to pull out a mega perk. A 1:1 call with me, which people ask for all the time and I don't like offering. I put up a landing page and listed the $499 perk as including a call with me to strategize revenue, 30 days of email support and 1 year in my Legends membership which includes all the guides you need to execute your plan. But I got no takers even though several people helped promote it for me. It was likely too short a window where no one was ready to buy it (and often the people who "want to pay me for my time" actually don't want to do that!)
I did get a few last minute contributions (from paid subscribers) so we closed the campaign at 72% of the goal or $3600 out of $5000 raised.
How it went
I'd say it went pretty fine.
I don't think I took myself that seriously when I launched this in June and I'm saying that because I didn't have a real plan about how I was going to do this and promote it alongside everything else I'm promoting (subscriptions, sponsors, events, posts, etc). You really can't have more than 2 calls to action in a newsletter and you can only have 1 in a post so this was rarely a priority that made the cut.
I also sort of regret hosting this on Ko-fi. It works ok for this purpose, but it won't let me easily embed the campaign on a landing page or in a post like this one. I can't link directly to the campaign and people can't see their donation easily. It also doesn't show me how much I raised, only a percentage I have to calculate. Next time, I'll try Crowdfundr or something a bit more robust.
As I started nearing the end of my reader raise dates, I realized I need to do a 1 year anniversary drive in October so I stopped myself from doing more intense 1:1 outreach for the summer. I didn't want to do so much hammering on people yet, because I would rather have them as a paid subscriber than as a one off $50 contributor. I'm making that plan now and it's going to be a more direct campaign which will include encouraging current subscribers to upgrade into longer lasting plans, with special loyalty discounts and making an ask of longtime readers again.
Part of me thought I might have a couple people in my audience who would throw in $500-1000 just to be a bigger part of my world. There are a few folks like that who continually pitch in any time I ask but I didn't get any major contributors to this particular raise and that's probably because I didn't do that good a job messaging what this money was for. So through that lens, it's kind of impressive that 30 people pitched in $3600 just to help keep me going this summer.
Also, learning how many of my paid subscribers were willing to support the sustainability of my work has made me think a lot about the tiers and perks of the subscriptions and whether there's a more inner circle offering I should be sharing with the people who are most invested in this with me.
In the back of my mind, I think it could be interesting to do some profit sharing with my subscribers, but practically I don't really have "profit" yet so that's a ways off. Still, I love the idea that these are microinvestments and that you benefit back from them in more scalable ways than perks can deliver. Something to consider for the future when there's more cash to spread around.
Next up: the 1 year anniversary drive of Revenue Rulebreaker!
P.S. This summer reader raise is closed but the tip jar is always open if you want to contribute.
