Sub-Stack

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I was in charge of rad business that, you know, we had a bunch of sales people. And I've looked at that repeatedly. Could I build some sort of a complimentary ad product for my newsletter? One of the things that's been great about subsack is they let me become an angel four months after I launched. So I'm also an angel investor in subsack because I just liked what they're trying to build. But part of the deal was, you know,. I brought my list over. and so now I have like 142,000 free, 142,000 people on my free email list.

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.