Is B2B a Better Model?

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B2B is preferable to be. Particularly if it's needed for to do your job, I mean, first of all, it's ideally expensive. One of the reasons I picked the price was I knew that pretty much almost every person like who would read it could probably expense it without having to go get permission. You keep it under 200. Well, I think Ben actually, if I do have them on the podcast, I'll tell him he like basically set the rate for like newsletters. Like it's like above and beyond. That's what they used to call it. Yeah.

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.