When to Go Paid With Your Newsletter

Reality and numbers

image courtesy of author

My experience is on the Substack platform, but there are other platforms, and I think the questions of “when to go paid” and how to be compensated for your blogging/posts are similar regardless of where you work.

Do you wait for a certain number of subscribers? Or a level of inter-action? Or maybe when people start to ask you, “When are you going to do this?”

There are always elements of trial-and-error, but you want to keep the “error” minimal. Think ahead and plan, but be open to changing it up. First, let’s think about:

Why you might NOT want to go paid

• you feel your writing isn’t strong enough
• you don’t want to commit to posting regularly or frequently
• you just do not feel right about asking for pay — you’re not sure why

Thoughts on the above — troubleshooting:

You learn to write by writing; the more you write, the more you will learn, grow, and strengthen. By committing to post and asking to be paid, you are setting your standards. The question for you: would you pay for this?

Posting regularly is more important than frequently; set a reasonable deadline, and see if…