To quote Javier Miliei's recent speech at the WEF:
>I would like to leave a message for all business-people...Do not be intimidated...You are social benefactors. You’re heroes. You're the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we’ve ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being.
"The modern version of this is “if you subscribe once, you can read everything in the archives, but if you forget to unsubscribe afterwards, you’ll pay money every month forever”."
Emily Oster has made several hundred dollars from me this way
It would be nice if Substack gave you the option to not send this nag to existing paid-up subscribers.
I know it's not your fault. I'm just sayin; it's not fun to be nagged when I'm already paying. (I wish Wikipedia would learn this lesson and give me a damned cookie.)
It’s not a bad idea to use some of the other tools that Substack allows. Making more posts subscriber only, if only for a few days, will encourage more subs - particular those posts that give you half the content for free.
I sign up to Substacks I don’t even like to read some of these articles and to comment.
FWIW I am part of your "worrying" downward trend. I unsubscribed from all Substack content a few weeks ago, in response to Hamish McKenzie's post outlining his stance on monetizing Nazi content. Substack may be happy to fund this kind of content, and it is their right to make this choice; however, I am not happy funding it, and therefore cannot in good conscience give money to Substack.
Unfortunately, you are collateral damage, and I am sorry for that. That said, the slope on your graph is longterm and straight enough that I suspect my reasons for leaving are in the minority.
You probably don’t need to hear this, let alone from an Internet stranger but: You have kids now and shouldn’t feel any embarrassment about making money to set aside for them.
Also, for whatever it’s worth, I like your short fiction quite a lot and if I wasn’t already subscribed that would probably tip me over.
I converted to paid subscriber. Not because I wanted to support you but because your book reviews are amazing and I wanted to read your posts on Cyropaedia, America against America & Paper Belt on Fire.
I wonder how much Slatestarcodex/Astralcodexten follow the common trajectory of blog popularity - logistic curve to a top, then slow exponential decay. A pattern I noticed and posted some graphs here:
Just read #7: Psychology of Fantasy and I got to thinking about the Wheel of Time in this lens (I’m currently reading and on book 11). Robert Jordan did something unusual in making the main main Chosen One character really agentic—he’s sort of thrown into adventure in books 1 and 2 but then he basically drives events from then on, he’s picking fights with the dark apostles of evil and he’s invading with his armies, not the other way around. But the tradeoff is that the main main character’s perspective isn’t the majority of the books’ word count and the other main characters aren’t so agentic. One of them is pretty much the agencyless isekai hero who is given military knowledge without effort (though not without cost) and accidentally becomes a great general, etc. It’s played for contrast with the other. But it seems Jordan could not write a fantasy world with all agentic heroes!
I say this with all respect in the world, but I think the decline is not due to some artificial cause but simply that post quality itself has been declining. Of course having children will slow you down, but I think that just compounds the issue
I enjoy reading this blog. I think it's got an important perspective that deserves more voice in the world. It occasionally informs me or provokes insights I wouldn't have had on my own [categories made for man] - though admittedly this happens less frequently recently than with some of the older posts.
When I saw the subject line in the email, I in fact thought "You know what, I should pay & support. Getting a few extra posts out of the deal would feel like a nice incentive."
However, on clicking through and seeing the ask for $10/mo., I balked at that amount. I enjoy reading - but I don't feel like I get $10/mo. of value. And as I consider my other price anchors for monthly subscriptions, I feel like other subscriptions in the $10-$20 range tend to have more content, and more resources behind that content. I did a gut check, and felt like maybe $40/year was what I wouldn't feel bad about subscribing for.
To be clear, I'm _able_ to afford an individual, marginal $100/year subscription, I'm not a student nor under-employed. But if I attempted to donate to the entirety of the various authors and video producers and volunteer open-source developers I enjoy the work of, _at the ratio_ that $100:ACX implies, I would not be able to afford that.
I don't fault you for setting the price where you have, nor for not offering more flexible pricing. It's quite plausible that your current strategy maximizes revenue. I'm glad that other people support the blog sufficient to keep your time and attention on it. I'm just offering a point of anecdata from someone who was not a paid subscriber, and is failing to convert to a paid subscriber at this time.
On the other side, if you managed to get all of us subscribers to become paid subscribers, you could make $12 million a year. I imagine you'd give a lot of it away, I wonder where?
"The modern version of this is “if you subscribe once, you can read everything in the archives, but if you forget to unsubscribe afterwards, you’ll pay money every month forever”.
Spoilers for a one hundred and eighteen year old book, but that is the plot of one of the Eugene Valmont stories from 1906 collection (the story itself is set in 1896):
"I noticed on Mr. Macpherson's current list the name of Lord Semptam, an eccentric old nobleman whom I knew slightly. Then turning to the list immediately before the current one the name was still there; I traced it back through list after list until I found the first entry, which was no less than three years previous, and there Lord Semptam was down for a piece of furniture costing fifty pounds, and on that account he had paid a pound a week for more than three years, totalling a hundred and seventy pounds at the least, and instantly the glorious simplicity of the scheme dawned upon me, and I became so interested in the swindle that I lit the gas, fearing my little lamp would be exhausted before my investigation ended, for it promised to be a long one.
In several instances the intended victim proved shrewder than old Simpson had counted upon, and the word 'Settled' had been written on the line carrying the name when the exact number of instalments was paid. But as these shrewd persons dropped out, others took their places, and Simpson's dependence on their absent-mindedness seemed to be justified in nine cases out of ten. His collectors were collecting long after the debt had been paid. In Lord Semptam's case, the payment had evidently become chronic, and the old man was giving away his pound a week to the suave Macpherson two years after his debt had been liquidated."
Hey Scott, I have taken advantage of the poor people's discount, and I make around %40 of the median income of a typical ACX reader. Hopefully that qualifies as a legitimate excuse.
I was hesitant to subscribe when Scott originally started this blog and decided to use discount option as a compromise. In the end I think it was a win-win, I got a subscription and Scott got more than he would initially get, i.e. more than nothing. I will probably stay subscribed indefinitely.
Not sure if I have a liberty to give any recommendations, but I would consider it if you have similar reservations.
I subscribed for your first year as a way to show support to you, but I want to share why I no longer subscribe.
1) I strongly dislike that you are on Substack and think it would be very easy and cost effective for you to migrate off the platform.
2) you have such a wonderful opportunity to use your platform and audience to create and curate such great things. You could hire someone and do fun things like:
I just re-subscribed to ACX. With my other subscriptions, I consider the value per $ of entertainment or education I'm receiving. For Scott, though, I'm pretty confident that the work and writing he's doing is a fairly meaningful contribution to making the world a better place, so I'm happy to support on those grounds. (I prefer to believe the seeming typo in the title is a reference to scriveners; hopefully Scott doesn't Bartleby on us.)
I think at this point I stay subscribed out of nostalgic inertia and mood affiliation, more than a clear-eyed assessment of the actual value received. Homerun-quality posts are less frequent, an increasing number have trouble cracking three-digit "likes"*, I don't have time in my life anymore to read or write many comments. (Which are a *huge* fraction of the value, at least for this blog!) It's still a beneficial trade, for now, but if I ever did get into penny-pinching need then I'm afraid I'd cut this cord first. Not because I literally couldn't afford it, but because bagging groceries for a living means I'm extra-averse to "wasted" purchases that I can't extract full potential from. It's more the time cost than the $ cost, you see.
*not a good metric of quality, but we work with the data we have, and comparing this to other popular blogs is...instructive.
Even as a free subscriber, I honestly think putting the paywalled “previews” of paid posts in the free feed is worth doing. I consider myself a pretty consistent reader, and I legitimately did not realize there were paid posts I don’t have access to.
I guess it’s like 5% annoying, and your readership does seem pretty ornery, so I’m sure there will be whining about it. But, I would assume it would lead to a meaningful increase in subscriptions, and given that you use your income much more effectively than most of your readers likely would otherwise spend that $10 a month or whatever, it seems like a worthwhile trade.
Trying to decide if the financial hardship discount is just a simple method of price discrimination (and the only thing Scott cares about is maximising revenue) or if Scott genuinely believes that people should only get the discount if they can't afford full price...
The practical implication is that non-subscribers who think $10/month is too much but $3.75/month is reasonable should just ignore Scott's warning to 'BE HONEST' and start paying him money at the lower rate (as long as they genuinely were not going to subscribe at the full rate, meaning everyone wins)
It's a little embarrassing to admit but I didn't realise there were paid subscriber only posts I was missing out on because I haven't received the notifications from substack. Might be worth considering reenabling them.
Ad forever subscription - you can subscribe for a some fixed period, eg a year, cancel the paid subscription but still enjoy the perks for the prepaid period. At least that is my experience from another Substack.
I do not subsribe. I used to pay money to the patreon (2 dollars every month).
For whatever reason, I do not want to pay 10 dollars/month to get access to a ~1 ACX post / month.
The business proposition might be way worse on ACX end, but I would be happier to pay for the patron business model. Ie, I give money, then all of humanity reaps the benefit of more ACX posts (early access and special chats seem like good benefits to restrict to actual patrons).
I would probably pay 2.5 dollars/month (adjusting for inflation, it's about what I used to pay via patreon), but I am neither a student nor in financial hardship.
Wikipedia also raises more money than it needs, by far, but it still asks for more, without reference to its actual lack of need. So it has a rather large bank account. Just in case.
You mean if I don't pay, I get fewer blog posts? Nice. I'm sold.
Also, I obviously can't read it, but the "What Ever Happened to Neoreaction?" post sounds... typical. I was only vaguely aware of Neoreaction in 2013, whereas now it's so mainstream as to be, in my opinion, passé. Is this like Scott's other posts in this vein (except possibly New Atheism, which did seem to collapse), where he arbitrarily narrowed the subject down to its phrasing or focus instead of its broader content and so determined that because people don't use the word "Neoreaction" as much, that it's gone somewhere? Or is it that his bubble is just really tiny? Or perhaps Scott has no ability to quantify it in the first place, which would be something of a combination of the two. I mostly follow non-English speaking artists on X, and I still notice perfectly normal people I follow retweet (or whatever it's called) Auron Macintyre, and follow Zero HP Lovecraft. Curtis Yarvin was on Tucker Carlson for Christ's sake. Personally I wish I could go a day without hearing the name Carl Schmidt.
Of course if I'm not allowed to know the gist of the article without subscribing, eh, never mind, I'm not that interested. Or wealthy.
I would be thinking about subscribing, but US sanctions prevent me from doing it, so once again free enterprise falls victim to geopolitical games. I might not agree with all of your views, but I still find your blog very interesting and illuminating, so for now, please accept my thanks for keeping writing it.
I'm happy to be a subscriber and really enjoy your writing. Thank you!
I mostly read on my phone, which logs me out every so often. I used to notice this because I could see locked subscriber posts, and then log back in to read them. But nowadays I just don't see the locked posts, so I didn't realize I had missed the last six months of them! This is only a minor problem, but I wanted to add my two cents that it'd be nice to still display subscriber-only posts when not logged in.
I have zero experience in this, but the graph does not feel like it is showing a high churn at all. I wonder of you can't see microbumps when some articles are posted more than others. Maybe the re-subscription rate is fine but you should aim to get new subs at a better rate to keep up. Maybe slowly getting into new niches and doing some minimal marketing effort (like, dunno, posting a link to a relevant subreddit), or sprinkling in more fiction/politics/whatever if data says those cause tiny subscriber bumps, etc.
Isn't it annoying when your only typo is in the title?
Speaking of a subscribing, I'm inclined to take advantage of the 2.50 per month option, but I don't see it anywhere.
I have slightly above average social-security income which should provide for me quite comfortably, but for the fact that I give away the majority of my income to the people I live with and other friends here in the Dominican Republic. Therefore I watch my pennies.
I've been a subscriber since the beginning, was just skimming thru the post and I noticed that "Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson" didn't seem to ring any bells to me. I searched my email and it wasn't there. Perhaps it went to spam, perhaps I accidentally deleted it, or perhaps it was never delivered at all.
Just noting this here in case the same thing happened to any one else. It seems like a good one, may be worth going back to read that one.
I'm probably not your typical SSC/ACX reader. Long, overly verbose posts about rationalist-adjacent content never appealed to me. What did appeal to me was the community it fostered that commonly interrogated important social issues with the same insightfulness and clarity of thought that was typical of the content of the blog. Despite the obvious downsides of such communities, I felt it was extremely valuable. I was hoping ACX could recreate that experience. It seems that the only successful online communities that are viable now are either narrowly focused on a specific topic/ideology or are communities formed around internet personalities. The viability of a community centered around debating important social issues in good faith across ideologies seems to be almost nil. I would easily pay $10/month for a community that managed to create that aspect of the old blog.
The third post is still paywalled
>I make an embarrassingly large amount of money from this blog
Why be embarrassed about providing a good that so many people are willing to pay to enjoy? I'd be quite proud of such an accomplishment.
I see this point was raised last year: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/2023-subscription-drive-free-unlocked/comment/11881753.
To quote Javier Miliei's recent speech at the WEF:
>I would like to leave a message for all business-people...Do not be intimidated...You are social benefactors. You’re heroes. You're the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we’ve ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being.
"The modern version of this is “if you subscribe once, you can read everything in the archives, but if you forget to unsubscribe afterwards, you’ll pay money every month forever”."
Emily Oster has made several hundred dollars from me this way
It would be nice if Substack gave you the option to not send this nag to existing paid-up subscribers.
I know it's not your fault. I'm just sayin; it's not fun to be nagged when I'm already paying. (I wish Wikipedia would learn this lesson and give me a damned cookie.)
It’s not a bad idea to use some of the other tools that Substack allows. Making more posts subscriber only, if only for a few days, will encourage more subs - particular those posts that give you half the content for free.
I sign up to Substacks I don’t even like to read some of these articles and to comment.
FWIW I am part of your "worrying" downward trend. I unsubscribed from all Substack content a few weeks ago, in response to Hamish McKenzie's post outlining his stance on monetizing Nazi content. Substack may be happy to fund this kind of content, and it is their right to make this choice; however, I am not happy funding it, and therefore cannot in good conscience give money to Substack.
Unfortunately, you are collateral damage, and I am sorry for that. That said, the slope on your graph is longterm and straight enough that I suspect my reasons for leaving are in the minority.
You probably don’t need to hear this, let alone from an Internet stranger but: You have kids now and shouldn’t feel any embarrassment about making money to set aside for them.
Also, for whatever it’s worth, I like your short fiction quite a lot and if I wasn’t already subscribed that would probably tip me over.
I converted to paid subscriber. Not because I wanted to support you but because your book reviews are amazing and I wanted to read your posts on Cyropaedia, America against America & Paper Belt on Fire.
I wonder how much Slatestarcodex/Astralcodexten follow the common trajectory of blog popularity - logistic curve to a top, then slow exponential decay. A pattern I noticed and posted some graphs here:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8szBqBMqGJApFFsew/gunnar_zarncke-s-shortform?commentId=MzhHJQmchELQAkLQj
Just read #7: Psychology of Fantasy and I got to thinking about the Wheel of Time in this lens (I’m currently reading and on book 11). Robert Jordan did something unusual in making the main main Chosen One character really agentic—he’s sort of thrown into adventure in books 1 and 2 but then he basically drives events from then on, he’s picking fights with the dark apostles of evil and he’s invading with his armies, not the other way around. But the tradeoff is that the main main character’s perspective isn’t the majority of the books’ word count and the other main characters aren’t so agentic. One of them is pretty much the agencyless isekai hero who is given military knowledge without effort (though not without cost) and accidentally becomes a great general, etc. It’s played for contrast with the other. But it seems Jordan could not write a fantasy world with all agentic heroes!
I say this with all respect in the world, but I think the decline is not due to some artificial cause but simply that post quality itself has been declining. Of course having children will slow you down, but I think that just compounds the issue
I am not going to subscribe at this time.
I enjoy reading this blog. I think it's got an important perspective that deserves more voice in the world. It occasionally informs me or provokes insights I wouldn't have had on my own [categories made for man] - though admittedly this happens less frequently recently than with some of the older posts.
When I saw the subject line in the email, I in fact thought "You know what, I should pay & support. Getting a few extra posts out of the deal would feel like a nice incentive."
However, on clicking through and seeing the ask for $10/mo., I balked at that amount. I enjoy reading - but I don't feel like I get $10/mo. of value. And as I consider my other price anchors for monthly subscriptions, I feel like other subscriptions in the $10-$20 range tend to have more content, and more resources behind that content. I did a gut check, and felt like maybe $40/year was what I wouldn't feel bad about subscribing for.
To be clear, I'm _able_ to afford an individual, marginal $100/year subscription, I'm not a student nor under-employed. But if I attempted to donate to the entirety of the various authors and video producers and volunteer open-source developers I enjoy the work of, _at the ratio_ that $100:ACX implies, I would not be able to afford that.
I don't fault you for setting the price where you have, nor for not offering more flexible pricing. It's quite plausible that your current strategy maximizes revenue. I'm glad that other people support the blog sufficient to keep your time and attention on it. I'm just offering a point of anecdata from someone who was not a paid subscriber, and is failing to convert to a paid subscriber at this time.
On the other side, if you managed to get all of us subscribers to become paid subscribers, you could make $12 million a year. I imagine you'd give a lot of it away, I wonder where?
"The modern version of this is “if you subscribe once, you can read everything in the archives, but if you forget to unsubscribe afterwards, you’ll pay money every month forever”.
Spoilers for a one hundred and eighteen year old book, but that is the plot of one of the Eugene Valmont stories from 1906 collection (the story itself is set in 1896):
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19369/19369-h/19369-h.htm#The_Absent-Minded_Coterie
"I noticed on Mr. Macpherson's current list the name of Lord Semptam, an eccentric old nobleman whom I knew slightly. Then turning to the list immediately before the current one the name was still there; I traced it back through list after list until I found the first entry, which was no less than three years previous, and there Lord Semptam was down for a piece of furniture costing fifty pounds, and on that account he had paid a pound a week for more than three years, totalling a hundred and seventy pounds at the least, and instantly the glorious simplicity of the scheme dawned upon me, and I became so interested in the swindle that I lit the gas, fearing my little lamp would be exhausted before my investigation ended, for it promised to be a long one.
In several instances the intended victim proved shrewder than old Simpson had counted upon, and the word 'Settled' had been written on the line carrying the name when the exact number of instalments was paid. But as these shrewd persons dropped out, others took their places, and Simpson's dependence on their absent-mindedness seemed to be justified in nine cases out of ten. His collectors were collecting long after the debt had been paid. In Lord Semptam's case, the payment had evidently become chronic, and the old man was giving away his pound a week to the suave Macpherson two years after his debt had been liquidated."
Hey Scott, I have taken advantage of the poor people's discount, and I make around %40 of the median income of a typical ACX reader. Hopefully that qualifies as a legitimate excuse.
Didn't you initially say you weren't going to paywall any posts except some of the open threads?
I would subscribe is Substack wasn't such a trash platform. It's the only site that locks up my phone, especially when there are hundreds of comments.
I was hesitant to subscribe when Scott originally started this blog and decided to use discount option as a compromise. In the end I think it was a win-win, I got a subscription and Scott got more than he would initially get, i.e. more than nothing. I will probably stay subscribed indefinitely.
Not sure if I have a liberty to give any recommendations, but I would consider it if you have similar reservations.
Seeing Bernie Sanders makes me clutch my wallet even tighter, so I'm not sure if making him the face of your subscription drive is a great idea.
I subscribed for your first year as a way to show support to you, but I want to share why I no longer subscribe.
1) I strongly dislike that you are on Substack and think it would be very easy and cost effective for you to migrate off the platform.
2) you have such a wonderful opportunity to use your platform and audience to create and curate such great things. You could hire someone and do fun things like:
- monthly discussion topics/paper reviews
- themed essay contests
- provide a hiring service (like The Diff)
- a million other things
I just re-subscribed to ACX. With my other subscriptions, I consider the value per $ of entertainment or education I'm receiving. For Scott, though, I'm pretty confident that the work and writing he's doing is a fairly meaningful contribution to making the world a better place, so I'm happy to support on those grounds. (I prefer to believe the seeming typo in the title is a reference to scriveners; hopefully Scott doesn't Bartleby on us.)
I think at this point I stay subscribed out of nostalgic inertia and mood affiliation, more than a clear-eyed assessment of the actual value received. Homerun-quality posts are less frequent, an increasing number have trouble cracking three-digit "likes"*, I don't have time in my life anymore to read or write many comments. (Which are a *huge* fraction of the value, at least for this blog!) It's still a beneficial trade, for now, but if I ever did get into penny-pinching need then I'm afraid I'd cut this cord first. Not because I literally couldn't afford it, but because bagging groceries for a living means I'm extra-averse to "wasted" purchases that I can't extract full potential from. It's more the time cost than the $ cost, you see.
*not a good metric of quality, but we work with the data we have, and comparing this to other popular blogs is...instructive.
Even as a free subscriber, I honestly think putting the paywalled “previews” of paid posts in the free feed is worth doing. I consider myself a pretty consistent reader, and I legitimately did not realize there were paid posts I don’t have access to.
I guess it’s like 5% annoying, and your readership does seem pretty ornery, so I’m sure there will be whining about it. But, I would assume it would lead to a meaningful increase in subscriptions, and given that you use your income much more effectively than most of your readers likely would otherwise spend that $10 a month or whatever, it seems like a worthwhile trade.
Is there a prediction market for ACX subscribers numbers? Maybe people would pay to subscribe if mana was on the line.
Trying to decide if the financial hardship discount is just a simple method of price discrimination (and the only thing Scott cares about is maximising revenue) or if Scott genuinely believes that people should only get the discount if they can't afford full price...
The practical implication is that non-subscribers who think $10/month is too much but $3.75/month is reasonable should just ignore Scott's warning to 'BE HONEST' and start paying him money at the lower rate (as long as they genuinely were not going to subscribe at the full rate, meaning everyone wins)
It's a little embarrassing to admit but I didn't realise there were paid subscriber only posts I was missing out on because I haven't received the notifications from substack. Might be worth considering reenabling them.
Ad forever subscription - you can subscribe for a some fixed period, eg a year, cancel the paid subscription but still enjoy the perks for the prepaid period. At least that is my experience from another Substack.
I do not subsribe. I used to pay money to the patreon (2 dollars every month).
For whatever reason, I do not want to pay 10 dollars/month to get access to a ~1 ACX post / month.
The business proposition might be way worse on ACX end, but I would be happier to pay for the patron business model. Ie, I give money, then all of humanity reaps the benefit of more ACX posts (early access and special chats seem like good benefits to restrict to actual patrons).
I would probably pay 2.5 dollars/month (adjusting for inflation, it's about what I used to pay via patreon), but I am neither a student nor in financial hardship.
Congrats on making a ridiculous amount of money by doing something you love!
Wikipedia also raises more money than it needs, by far, but it still asks for more, without reference to its actual lack of need. So it has a rather large bank account. Just in case.
You mean if I don't pay, I get fewer blog posts? Nice. I'm sold.
Also, I obviously can't read it, but the "What Ever Happened to Neoreaction?" post sounds... typical. I was only vaguely aware of Neoreaction in 2013, whereas now it's so mainstream as to be, in my opinion, passé. Is this like Scott's other posts in this vein (except possibly New Atheism, which did seem to collapse), where he arbitrarily narrowed the subject down to its phrasing or focus instead of its broader content and so determined that because people don't use the word "Neoreaction" as much, that it's gone somewhere? Or is it that his bubble is just really tiny? Or perhaps Scott has no ability to quantify it in the first place, which would be something of a combination of the two. I mostly follow non-English speaking artists on X, and I still notice perfectly normal people I follow retweet (or whatever it's called) Auron Macintyre, and follow Zero HP Lovecraft. Curtis Yarvin was on Tucker Carlson for Christ's sake. Personally I wish I could go a day without hearing the name Carl Schmidt.
Of course if I'm not allowed to know the gist of the article without subscribing, eh, never mind, I'm not that interested. Or wealthy.
I would be thinking about subscribing, but US sanctions prevent me from doing it, so once again free enterprise falls victim to geopolitical games. I might not agree with all of your views, but I still find your blog very interesting and illuminating, so for now, please accept my thanks for keeping writing it.
I'm happy to be a subscriber and really enjoy your writing. Thank you!
I mostly read on my phone, which logs me out every so often. I used to notice this because I could see locked subscriber posts, and then log back in to read them. But nowadays I just don't see the locked posts, so I didn't realize I had missed the last six months of them! This is only a minor problem, but I wanted to add my two cents that it'd be nice to still display subscriber-only posts when not logged in.
This sub has been relatively free of good writing lately ... mostly free of any writing lately; just a bunch of open thread posts.
I have zero experience in this, but the graph does not feel like it is showing a high churn at all. I wonder of you can't see microbumps when some articles are posted more than others. Maybe the re-subscription rate is fine but you should aim to get new subs at a better rate to keep up. Maybe slowly getting into new niches and doing some minimal marketing effort (like, dunno, posting a link to a relevant subreddit), or sprinkling in more fiction/politics/whatever if data says those cause tiny subscriber bumps, etc.
Subscribe Drive
Isn't it annoying when your only typo is in the title?
Speaking of a subscribing, I'm inclined to take advantage of the 2.50 per month option, but I don't see it anywhere.
I have slightly above average social-security income which should provide for me quite comfortably, but for the fact that I give away the majority of my income to the people I live with and other friends here in the Dominican Republic. Therefore I watch my pennies.
I've been a subscriber since the beginning, was just skimming thru the post and I noticed that "Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson" didn't seem to ring any bells to me. I searched my email and it wasn't there. Perhaps it went to spam, perhaps I accidentally deleted it, or perhaps it was never delivered at all.
Just noting this here in case the same thing happened to any one else. It seems like a good one, may be worth going back to read that one.
I also saw a dramatic increase in free subscriptions but static revenues in 2023.
I'm probably not your typical SSC/ACX reader. Long, overly verbose posts about rationalist-adjacent content never appealed to me. What did appeal to me was the community it fostered that commonly interrogated important social issues with the same insightfulness and clarity of thought that was typical of the content of the blog. Despite the obvious downsides of such communities, I felt it was extremely valuable. I was hoping ACX could recreate that experience. It seems that the only successful online communities that are viable now are either narrowly focused on a specific topic/ideology or are communities formed around internet personalities. The viability of a community centered around debating important social issues in good faith across ideologies seems to be almost nil. I would easily pay $10/month for a community that managed to create that aspect of the old blog.