Is Your Newsletter a Sign of Communism?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

I think that particularly with newsletters that are tied to like an individual, it provides like an amount of leverage. And if you can get to that moment where people feel like if they're not subscribing, they're missing something that they need for their professional career, that gives you a lot of leverage in the business and a lot of staying power. I'm also like someone called my newsletter, sign of communism because I'm too much of a panda hugger sort of communist party lover. So it's like you can't win. But to your point early on, definitely the people who paid me with people like they wanted to be patients. They wanted to see this product keep going.

Bill Bishop likes to make clear he’s not a journalist. Instead, he’s a China analyst who brings his deep understanding of the country to an English-speaking language through his newsletter, Sinocism. In 2017, Bill became the “original Substacker” after teaming up with Substack’s co-founders to be the first newsletter on the platform.

On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, Bill and I discuss his independent path, and how a subscription model has created different dynamics as opposed to his experiences in the dot-com era as a co-founder of Marketwatch. What’s telling to me is that Bill is also now considering advertising. The Substack model of “only ads” doesn’t make much sense long term for most writers. Even if they convert 10% of their audience, they’re making no money from 90%. Most businesses don’t operate that way.