You definitely should be getting paid more than $12.60 per tutorial (1 day per week, $655 per year). What is that if you work it out hourly?
Your work is very niche but the information you’re giving is absolutely priceless to that niche. Your technical knowledge and expertise is incredibly rare.
Most of the stuff you write about goes way over my head but I flick through in case I understand something. But I’m mainly here because I’ve seen your name pop up a lot on forums and I know you know your stuff.
Is it an exposure issue maybe? Not enough people know about your work? The only reason I found this newsletter is because I was signing up to someone else’s and it recommended yours and I was like “oh I’ve heard of that guy”.
From your graph, it looks like you’ve had steady growth over the last year (it’s doubled?). That’s good, are you marketing it?
In my experience, putting things behind a paywall without substantial enough exposure / free content to get people in will stifle growth.
So imo, your idea of providing a skeleton newsletter for free and charging for the details is a good idea. But ultimately it’s rare that I even open newsletters (it tends to be when I’m bored).
My favourite kind of marketing is to make something pretty, but that’s tough to do when something is very technical.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but if I were to become a paid subscriber it would be on principle. I think the work you do is great and the fact you publish it for free is very honourable. If there had been a smaller donation option but for no benefit, I’d be much more likely to donate (eg one off, or just less per year).
When I first learned how to code as a kid, I had a budget of $0 so anything behind a paywall was simply off limits for me. So I truly respect any creator that finds a way to monetise something useful without charging the customer directly.
But you have to eat too. I don’t really know what to suggest. But I thought I’d post this in case you found it insightful!
You definitely should be getting paid more than $12.60 per tutorial (1 day per week, $655 per year). What is that if you work it out hourly?
Your work is very niche but the information you’re giving is absolutely priceless to that niche. Your technical knowledge and expertise is incredibly rare.
Most of the stuff you write about goes way over my head but I flick through in case I understand something. But I’m mainly here because I’ve seen your name pop up a lot on forums and I know you know your stuff.
Is it an exposure issue maybe? Not enough people know about your work? The only reason I found this newsletter is because I was signing up to someone else’s and it recommended yours and I was like “oh I’ve heard of that guy”.
From your graph, it looks like you’ve had steady growth over the last year (it’s doubled?). That’s good, are you marketing it?
In my experience, putting things behind a paywall without substantial enough exposure / free content to get people in will stifle growth.
So imo, your idea of providing a skeleton newsletter for free and charging for the details is a good idea. But ultimately it’s rare that I even open newsletters (it tends to be when I’m bored).
My favourite kind of marketing is to make something pretty, but that’s tough to do when something is very technical.
I obviously can’t speak for everyone, but if I were to become a paid subscriber it would be on principle. I think the work you do is great and the fact you publish it for free is very honourable. If there had been a smaller donation option but for no benefit, I’d be much more likely to donate (eg one off, or just less per year).
When I first learned how to code as a kid, I had a budget of $0 so anything behind a paywall was simply off limits for me. So I truly respect any creator that finds a way to monetise something useful without charging the customer directly.
But you have to eat too. I don’t really know what to suggest. But I thought I’d post this in case you found it insightful!