There was a lot of us in the web 1.0, right? I started after the NASDAQ collapse and I think it was April of 2000. That was also a different time because there was an enthusiasm for advertising supported models. We had a big audience measured in the tens of millions on a, on a good month. It was like going to a party where everyone was so drunk they didn't know that the party was over.
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.