Happy New Year!
I hope you had a great year and found this newsletter added some value to your life.
I’ve been gone a while and while I apologise for my lack of professionalism,
I had allowed myself to go on hiatus.
After all, to not ebb and flow would make me less human.
I thought I’d make this, this year’s first newsletter in hopes of possibly reminding you to not make the mistake of incentivising passion with income.
Below, I’ve attached a screenshot of the statistics for this newsletter’s email list.
Why I’ve been inconsitent over the past few months:
As I grew consistently, the drive to publish these articles every week stayed relatively prominent, I wrote consistently and stuck to my weekly email schedule to quite an extent, and at this point I had neither demanded nor expected any returns from these articles.
As the graph started to plateau, I lost the drive to publish.
The subscriber count started to plateau sometime in September as a result of inconsistent emails and lesser promos, the lack of progress in terms of the subscriber count massively dimnished my drive to write these articles.
I feel, achieving a feat or making progress towards a goal of mine generates a sense of worth and meaning, which in turn pushes me to do more.
We sometimes, greatly undermine the power of small wins
After the plateau, the resistance to write had become far too great, it had turned into an uphill battle, a chore of sorts.
I had lost sight of the reason I sent out these newsletters in the first place,
I reminded myself that it was “a form of self-improvement which was solely guided by a wish to be better.”
or was it?
I came to the realisation that I had somehow incentivised this passion with possible future monetisation just by thinking of it. As a result, I had made the numbers my main priority, spending more time on collaborating with others for cross-promotions than actually thinking, planning and writing out these articles.
I questioned myself on the possibility that the idea of monetisation had somehow destroyed my creative process.
I had reached a point where this newsletter served as another task on my to-do list, another obstacle, to the hopes of a source of income and a larger audience.
Income can quickly cloud the process of the craft and the cultivation of self-discipline.
I remember myself thinking, “Wouldn’t It be nice, if I could quickly gain the attention of a large audience and monetise this newsletter?”
I was thinking of skipping the very process of writing weekly which was meant to be the end goal. The goal, atleast when it was set out, wasn’t reaching a massive audience and bombarding them with sponsors and advertisements.
I have to remind myself on a regular basis, that the ROI is always way too small when you're starting out, the only thing I should be doing is keep on writing and not really worry about the fact that very few people may be reading this.
The extremely ambitious goal I set last year was to reach 700 subscribers and to monetise parts of this newsletter, at near about 70 subscribers and a few hundred views per post, I haven’t made a very large dent yet,
but I hope, I still show up and do the work.
When income becomes a primary source of motivation, passion dwindles when it fails to show up.
I hope to see you soon!
Take care
See you next week!
with love,
:)
My work isn’t distributed by ads or algorithms. The growth of this newsletter is completely organic.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me out by forwarding this to a friend.
Also, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, I’d love to hear them.
THANK you for writing this, Vishisht!!
I've had this very question you speak of on my mind!
Right now, I'm watching a friend who has a much-more-followed newsletter compared to me--and I think every up and down is agony for him! I ask myself if I envy him, and I don't. (Now that I think about it, he's the first one suggested I "go paid"!)
I'm putting out my content, getting "a feel for how things go," like a bird testing its wings. I want it to be excellent. It will probably not be excellent until I have several more years of writing under my belt; therefore, I need the practice. If I "went paid," the pressure on me to "produce" would be crazy-intense.
This way, though, I can do it as an amateur--and that's a word derived from words for "love." Right now, I can tell myself I do it for love, not money.
The friend I described sometimes challenges me that I'm too timid--since I once told him I can't imagine posting my substack to my Facebook. And I can take some of his feedback (he's darn right that I'm too timid--he can tell, and he's totally accurate to grab hold of me and try to shake some courage into me!!) but I maybe will do things in my own way. (For me, pursuing my goals may never sharing a Substack post I make on Facebook--but I emailed 4 friends I respect highly and invited them to my Substack I haven't yet written one post for--so I will have an audience. Three are interested!!)
(Apologies for the unsolicited advice, but) from one Substack writer to another: Stop seeing the graph. At least until you start getting serious about monetization. Until then (and also after that) nothing will make your graph rise better than just putting in the work to show up every week. Regularity breeds creativity, monetization, expertise, and all their fancy cousins.
Looking forward to many more of your awesome posts!