How Did the Newsletter Come About?

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Cina Weibel's blog became a newsletter in 2012. He was writing about the corruption scandal involving his friend, who had millions of followers on Chinese social media site Weibo. The post got so much traffic that he decided to make it available as an email for people to send him their own updates. But then China blocked all posts from Cina Weibel and now there are no more blogs or emails coming out of China.

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.