As one of the ones lured by the $2 sale, I thought I'd throw in why the sale made me jump:
1. While the usual money/stack is quite reasonable for one or two follows, it quickly spirals. I already subscribe to a lot of substacks and want to be careful adding more because it does add up. While I want to be the sort of person who follows and values foreign affairs...I also just don't find it as interesting or immediate to my life as other topics
2. Because I am the sort of person who wants to be into foreign affairs but really isn't, I (a) do not have a good way to gauge whether you are a good source or not and (b) routinely have trouble following along with what you're writing about. For $2/month, I feel both of these concerns can be waived. I've found some of your posts really valuable (explaining how that one Republican candidate didn't understand the Ukraine situation was very helpful and grokable!) but I am somewhat frequently lost or confused because this just isn't an area I have much familiarity with
I just read this. Please, please, ask when there's something that doesn't make sense to you. If you're confused, probably someone else is, too. Remember: I have no way of knowing what my readers already know: I try to aim it at a place where most people will learn something new, and most people won't be lost. But I'm just guessing. You know me much better than I know you, so you just have to tell me when I've misjudged.
love how you are getting into price elasticities and optimization - welcome to my world! However, the reason I voted against dropping your regular price is the confound: was it the price drop or the member referral that caused the subscription hike? In our 'attention economy', people have to be reminded to subscribe, most can afford the price. As I wrote in 'from Free to Fee', it is better to keep your regular price and run occasional promotions/campaigns: https://marketingandmetrics.com/moving-from-free-to-fee-how-online-firms-market-to-successfully-change-the-business-model/
Claire, it is not easy, but think about trying to segment out your clients/subscribers. What are they seeking from the newsletter, how do they use it, which pieces/content do they value the most, etc. That may help you price-discriminate in a strategic way to know when and what level to offer discounts, incentives, etc. This is not easily done, but even a little work may yield results as to those who could/should pay full-price and those subscribers which you will need to offer a more flexible pricing model/price-point.
As always, keep up the good work. It is a quality newsletter even if we don't tell you regularly.
No idea what the formula would look like, but I'm wondering if increasing the incentive for an annual membership might have long-term benefits... you know, cutting down on the kind of impulse cancellation of which I am guilty.
In a word (or half-a-word) : merch. Yeah, I was trying not to be the person to suggest it but, since you asked, it might be time for Claire's coffee mugs and Berlinski tote bags. Or maybe --trying to go a little more haute couture here-- you could have this very cool line of cat collars or your own line of fragrances... or scarves... or berets... or whatever... and now I'm thinking that, you really get this racket rolling, you might not even need to promote this Substack gig. 'Cause you wouldn't need it at all.
Glad you got a good response to the sale. I have no idea what the best pricing scheme would be. I would pay more, but no idea if that's typical. Maybe potential new subscribers would balk at paying more before they know what the content looks like over a few months? But maybe the "high price = quality" reaction would kick in. Dunno. "Teasers" are probably a good idea, though.
I don't really get your brother's reaction to the cross post notifications. I can see from the subject column in my inbox that it's a cross post, and if I didn't want to see cross posts I'd just ignore them. It would also be the work of 20 secs to create a filter to dump all the cross posts to the bin if they really bothered me.
Ah - email notifications for cross posts are also a setting in Substack, on a per subscription basis. So your brother can just turn off notifications for cross posts from you if he wants.
Hi Claire - I should probably be annoyed by the sale. I just paid a year's subscription two weeks ago! BUT I'm not. I paid because I find your writing and the topics covered really interesting and sometimes covering topics or issues in the global community that aren't being cone so (or at least in a more in depth way) in mainstream publications. I subscribe to The NY Times buut my credit card is about to expire and I am considering dropping it (I started in the $1/year promo during Covid and definitely still read it every day but unsure whether the $15 is worth it. My husband Wordles every day and we sometimes read the same articles (he uses my log in at work) to discuss or share later (I wish I could get him into some Substacks but that's a whole other can of worms - ha ha!). I also discovered the This Week In Africa sub stack because of you. I have not yet been to the continent but have several friends who are either from there or have done working stints there so have always had an interest. I don't have any advice on the economics but I am enjoying the content. I'd also maybe love to see some interviews/discussions hosted by you with other female journalists (Clarissa Ward and Lyndsey Addario come to mind) or news faces we wouldn't normally have access to at a more personal level if that makes sense (in a non-creepy way!).
You think getting Valentines in 4th grade is weird? We exchanged Valentines at my boys’ elementary school. The He-Man Valentines were quite prized. It’s amazing that only 10% of my class ended up gay.
The difficulty here is the amount of work you put in far exceeds that of your competitors. The resulting quality and depth are frankly not available anywhere else in one site. I did vote for a reduction in price based on your calculations coming up with just less than five dollars a month. If that is the sweet spot, it might make the difference. If the "once in a lifetime" sale is enough to jumpstart the laggards, you may never need to do it again. Sadly, I am one of those who take advantage of the dollar a month repeated teaser rates that the Journal and Telegraph offer. I appreciate what they do, but feel no commitment to keep them in business. Thankfully, I believe you are seeing the response of those who would make that commitment in your case.
As one of the new joiners, I can at least share my subscriber thinking... there are a lot of "artisanal" publications or 'stacks I'm interested in, and I'm happy to pay for good content but don't want to end up clocking up £$00s of subs per year. 50/yr seems to be about the going rate for more corporate/old-media publications I like (like Prospect in the UK, TPM in the US); so that's my reference point for subs in general.
As a result I've only signed up for two - Comment is Freed (which has definitely delivered, and you've been known to cross post) and now yours...
If other people also find more promising content around than they are happy to pay for then dropping the price to $4.50-5/month ought to pay off...maybe.
One other thought. Sam Freedman hooked me in with a short "teaser" on a subscriber preview post that I really wanted to read to the end. If it were me (and thank god and St Cross it's not) I'd definitely be sharpening my teaser game too. In a spirit of candour (bloody brits) I just looked back at my emails as a free subscriber and saw a couple of previews that didn't tempt: "The Unlikely Hero and the Charlatan" - no set up, I had no idea what I was going to get from the brief (albeit high-impact) intro; pt II was then easy to ignore because it referred me to pt I that I couldn't read; pt III similar but interesting in its own right but just stopped in the mi... with no cliffs hung.
Pricing in the digital economy is a fascinating question, with pretty much everyone having their opinion and zillion examples of of conflicting data. I agree with most of Atlay's comments.
I don't think it is a coincidence that when Bezos bought WaPo, he dropped the digital sub price to $4/month with Amazon. At time when NYT was $15, and full price for the WSJ was near $25. WaPo is now profitable and NYT and WSJ routinely sell trial subs for $1/week. Please don't do what WSJ does, and dramatically jack up the price for long time subscribers.
It will be interesting see how many of the $2/month folks resubscribe. BTW, there is no law that says everybody has to the same price. You can offer some $2, some $4, and some $6, that's what the big guys do. I think there is a fair amount of data to say that over $99/year is going to see pushback, conversely less than $5/month is an impulse buy.
But it wasn't just the price, that was an amazingly effective sales piece. I laughed, but also felt empathy and sadness, and the marriage application was a thing of beauty. But under 30 or over 85 really? , I never pegged you as a cougar.
Seriously, your product is well worth the price you currently charge and seems consistent with the cost of other newsletters. Occasional sales may be an effective way to build readers and allow them the opportunity to appreciate the value of your work and continue to subscribe at the regular price.
Your Good Sale column and your (hopefully satirical) Prigozhin column this week were gems! Well worth the nominal amount you charge for a subscription. When one considers the additional news columns you publish each week, your subscription rates are wildly low! I'm glad many people are realizing this and taking the opportunity to subscribe while the rates are so reasonable!
Why don’t more people pay to subscribe to receive this amazing content with a personal touch? Simple answer in my humble opinion - It’s not you it’s us. We simply have been trained by 20 years of mismanaged news websites that quality news content is (should be) free. This is wrong but it’s sticky. People simply have a tendency to want to not pay more than they have to for something and feel silly when they pay x for something only to find that it is made free some time later or offered at a discount via a sale later. Sadly sales and free trials can reinforce this and make people wait to wait until the inevitable free trial and sale discount becomes available again. However if you don’t offer sales and make it clear your content must be paid for to be accessed then maybe over time your on the fence readers will be converted to paid subscribers. I am an example of this annoying type of content consumer. Take me and how I do streaming. I mostly watch Apple TV and Disney+. I have yet to pay a dime to subscribe to Apple TV because it is always somehow somewhere offered to me for free either via iPhone or some other way. When does free subscription period end, I simply wait for the next one to come along, and then binge all the content then. Similar with Disney+. I wait for it to come on sale or to come free via something else, whichever comes first. I don’t see myself ever paying full price to subscribe to either Apple TV or Disney+ even though I would watch them consistently. So they have so far failed to convert me into a full price paid subscriber by offering sales and discounts and free periods. Netflix on the other hand, I pay them religiously whatever they charge me every month, even though I probably spend more time browsing and adding to my watchlist, rather than actually watching anything there. Ditto with Amazon prime albeit that has other benefits. Note these two streaming providers categorically do not offer sales or free periods or discounts. In terms of news content, I consume news content regularly however I only pay for two sources of news. The Economist. And the cosmopolitan globalist. Why? Because the content is too good and worth paying for and I know I’m not getting it for free. If I wasn’t already a paid, subscriber, I wouldn’t want you to tempt me to think I can get it for free by offering me too many free trials or discounted subscriptions. My humble opinion is that your sales campaign yesterday and your campaign last year, when your cat had taken ill (our hearts go out to you) were very effective because of the personal touch (not because necessarily of the discount). The personal touch creates a unique connection with you and the reader that something like the Economist would not be able to replicate. So maybe consider continuing to lean on the personal connection and continue to provide the great content and not second-guess these great elements. perhaps a few more campaigns like the ones I just mentioned. That said there is a reason why this advice is free - Maybe I’m completely wrong. So maybe test this theory with a few more opinion polls to get better data on your readers. For example, not now, but a bit further down the line when these new subscribers have settled in, maybe run an opinion poll where you flat out ask the Reader if they remember off the top of their head how much the subscription to cosmopolitan globalist costs. If the majority of them cannot tell you off the top of their head how much it costs, that means your subscriber base is not as price sensitive as the seeming resistance to paying for subscriptions might make you think. If so, it’s just a matter of getting people over the hump, which more personal touch campaigns like the one yesterday could do. Another good indicator of price sensitivity is your renewal rates. If the vast majority of your subscribers are renewing that means you are probably pricing it correctly. I would suggest to try to get more data through polls like this before making any change the price. I hope this helps and apologies if these points are obvious and you already know all this. There is a reason why this advice is free and the cosmopolitan globalist isn’t.
I can think of 2 podcasts where you’d be a perfect substitute host or guest and I’m pretty sure you already know some of the parties. You may have been on them already: National Review’s Three Martini Lunch and Commentary Magazine’s daily (my favorite). May the subscriptions continue to rise!
Jonah Goldberg’s Remnant would be a great one, too. Big audience. Start out with Thatcher, transition to Ukraine, US/EU and US/French relations. If you want me to reach out to the Dispatch folks on your behalf, I’d be happy to, Claire.
As one of the ones lured by the $2 sale, I thought I'd throw in why the sale made me jump:
1. While the usual money/stack is quite reasonable for one or two follows, it quickly spirals. I already subscribe to a lot of substacks and want to be careful adding more because it does add up. While I want to be the sort of person who follows and values foreign affairs...I also just don't find it as interesting or immediate to my life as other topics
2. Because I am the sort of person who wants to be into foreign affairs but really isn't, I (a) do not have a good way to gauge whether you are a good source or not and (b) routinely have trouble following along with what you're writing about. For $2/month, I feel both of these concerns can be waived. I've found some of your posts really valuable (explaining how that one Republican candidate didn't understand the Ukraine situation was very helpful and grokable!) but I am somewhat frequently lost or confused because this just isn't an area I have much familiarity with
I just read this. Please, please, ask when there's something that doesn't make sense to you. If you're confused, probably someone else is, too. Remember: I have no way of knowing what my readers already know: I try to aim it at a place where most people will learn something new, and most people won't be lost. But I'm just guessing. You know me much better than I know you, so you just have to tell me when I've misjudged.
love how you are getting into price elasticities and optimization - welcome to my world! However, the reason I voted against dropping your regular price is the confound: was it the price drop or the member referral that caused the subscription hike? In our 'attention economy', people have to be reminded to subscribe, most can afford the price. As I wrote in 'from Free to Fee', it is better to keep your regular price and run occasional promotions/campaigns: https://marketingandmetrics.com/moving-from-free-to-fee-how-online-firms-market-to-successfully-change-the-business-model/
Claire, it is not easy, but think about trying to segment out your clients/subscribers. What are they seeking from the newsletter, how do they use it, which pieces/content do they value the most, etc. That may help you price-discriminate in a strategic way to know when and what level to offer discounts, incentives, etc. This is not easily done, but even a little work may yield results as to those who could/should pay full-price and those subscribers which you will need to offer a more flexible pricing model/price-point.
As always, keep up the good work. It is a quality newsletter even if we don't tell you regularly.
Cheers.
No idea what the formula would look like, but I'm wondering if increasing the incentive for an annual membership might have long-term benefits... you know, cutting down on the kind of impulse cancellation of which I am guilty.
Interesting. Like what?
In a word (or half-a-word) : merch. Yeah, I was trying not to be the person to suggest it but, since you asked, it might be time for Claire's coffee mugs and Berlinski tote bags. Or maybe --trying to go a little more haute couture here-- you could have this very cool line of cat collars or your own line of fragrances... or scarves... or berets... or whatever... and now I'm thinking that, you really get this racket rolling, you might not even need to promote this Substack gig. 'Cause you wouldn't need it at all.
Glad you got a good response to the sale. I have no idea what the best pricing scheme would be. I would pay more, but no idea if that's typical. Maybe potential new subscribers would balk at paying more before they know what the content looks like over a few months? But maybe the "high price = quality" reaction would kick in. Dunno. "Teasers" are probably a good idea, though.
I don't really get your brother's reaction to the cross post notifications. I can see from the subject column in my inbox that it's a cross post, and if I didn't want to see cross posts I'd just ignore them. It would also be the work of 20 secs to create a filter to dump all the cross posts to the bin if they really bothered me.
Ah - email notifications for cross posts are also a setting in Substack, on a per subscription basis. So your brother can just turn off notifications for cross posts from you if he wants.
I did not know that.
Hi Claire - I should probably be annoyed by the sale. I just paid a year's subscription two weeks ago! BUT I'm not. I paid because I find your writing and the topics covered really interesting and sometimes covering topics or issues in the global community that aren't being cone so (or at least in a more in depth way) in mainstream publications. I subscribe to The NY Times buut my credit card is about to expire and I am considering dropping it (I started in the $1/year promo during Covid and definitely still read it every day but unsure whether the $15 is worth it. My husband Wordles every day and we sometimes read the same articles (he uses my log in at work) to discuss or share later (I wish I could get him into some Substacks but that's a whole other can of worms - ha ha!). I also discovered the This Week In Africa sub stack because of you. I have not yet been to the continent but have several friends who are either from there or have done working stints there so have always had an interest. I don't have any advice on the economics but I am enjoying the content. I'd also maybe love to see some interviews/discussions hosted by you with other female journalists (Clarissa Ward and Lyndsey Addario come to mind) or news faces we wouldn't normally have access to at a more personal level if that makes sense (in a non-creepy way!).
You think getting Valentines in 4th grade is weird? We exchanged Valentines at my boys’ elementary school. The He-Man Valentines were quite prized. It’s amazing that only 10% of my class ended up gay.
Claire,
The difficulty here is the amount of work you put in far exceeds that of your competitors. The resulting quality and depth are frankly not available anywhere else in one site. I did vote for a reduction in price based on your calculations coming up with just less than five dollars a month. If that is the sweet spot, it might make the difference. If the "once in a lifetime" sale is enough to jumpstart the laggards, you may never need to do it again. Sadly, I am one of those who take advantage of the dollar a month repeated teaser rates that the Journal and Telegraph offer. I appreciate what they do, but feel no commitment to keep them in business. Thankfully, I believe you are seeing the response of those who would make that commitment in your case.
Really pleased to hear this worked out so well!
As one of the new joiners, I can at least share my subscriber thinking... there are a lot of "artisanal" publications or 'stacks I'm interested in, and I'm happy to pay for good content but don't want to end up clocking up £$00s of subs per year. 50/yr seems to be about the going rate for more corporate/old-media publications I like (like Prospect in the UK, TPM in the US); so that's my reference point for subs in general.
As a result I've only signed up for two - Comment is Freed (which has definitely delivered, and you've been known to cross post) and now yours...
If other people also find more promising content around than they are happy to pay for then dropping the price to $4.50-5/month ought to pay off...maybe.
One other thought. Sam Freedman hooked me in with a short "teaser" on a subscriber preview post that I really wanted to read to the end. If it were me (and thank god and St Cross it's not) I'd definitely be sharpening my teaser game too. In a spirit of candour (bloody brits) I just looked back at my emails as a free subscriber and saw a couple of previews that didn't tempt: "The Unlikely Hero and the Charlatan" - no set up, I had no idea what I was going to get from the brief (albeit high-impact) intro; pt II was then easy to ignore because it referred me to pt I that I couldn't read; pt III similar but interesting in its own right but just stopped in the mi... with no cliffs hung.
Right, enough writing, lots to read!
Pricing in the digital economy is a fascinating question, with pretty much everyone having their opinion and zillion examples of of conflicting data. I agree with most of Atlay's comments.
I don't think it is a coincidence that when Bezos bought WaPo, he dropped the digital sub price to $4/month with Amazon. At time when NYT was $15, and full price for the WSJ was near $25. WaPo is now profitable and NYT and WSJ routinely sell trial subs for $1/week. Please don't do what WSJ does, and dramatically jack up the price for long time subscribers.
It will be interesting see how many of the $2/month folks resubscribe. BTW, there is no law that says everybody has to the same price. You can offer some $2, some $4, and some $6, that's what the big guys do. I think there is a fair amount of data to say that over $99/year is going to see pushback, conversely less than $5/month is an impulse buy.
But it wasn't just the price, that was an amazingly effective sales piece. I laughed, but also felt empathy and sadness, and the marriage application was a thing of beauty. But under 30 or over 85 really? , I never pegged you as a cougar.
I was told there would be no math.
Seriously, your product is well worth the price you currently charge and seems consistent with the cost of other newsletters. Occasional sales may be an effective way to build readers and allow them the opportunity to appreciate the value of your work and continue to subscribe at the regular price.
Your Good Sale column and your (hopefully satirical) Prigozhin column this week were gems! Well worth the nominal amount you charge for a subscription. When one considers the additional news columns you publish each week, your subscription rates are wildly low! I'm glad many people are realizing this and taking the opportunity to subscribe while the rates are so reasonable!
Why don’t more people pay to subscribe to receive this amazing content with a personal touch? Simple answer in my humble opinion - It’s not you it’s us. We simply have been trained by 20 years of mismanaged news websites that quality news content is (should be) free. This is wrong but it’s sticky. People simply have a tendency to want to not pay more than they have to for something and feel silly when they pay x for something only to find that it is made free some time later or offered at a discount via a sale later. Sadly sales and free trials can reinforce this and make people wait to wait until the inevitable free trial and sale discount becomes available again. However if you don’t offer sales and make it clear your content must be paid for to be accessed then maybe over time your on the fence readers will be converted to paid subscribers. I am an example of this annoying type of content consumer. Take me and how I do streaming. I mostly watch Apple TV and Disney+. I have yet to pay a dime to subscribe to Apple TV because it is always somehow somewhere offered to me for free either via iPhone or some other way. When does free subscription period end, I simply wait for the next one to come along, and then binge all the content then. Similar with Disney+. I wait for it to come on sale or to come free via something else, whichever comes first. I don’t see myself ever paying full price to subscribe to either Apple TV or Disney+ even though I would watch them consistently. So they have so far failed to convert me into a full price paid subscriber by offering sales and discounts and free periods. Netflix on the other hand, I pay them religiously whatever they charge me every month, even though I probably spend more time browsing and adding to my watchlist, rather than actually watching anything there. Ditto with Amazon prime albeit that has other benefits. Note these two streaming providers categorically do not offer sales or free periods or discounts. In terms of news content, I consume news content regularly however I only pay for two sources of news. The Economist. And the cosmopolitan globalist. Why? Because the content is too good and worth paying for and I know I’m not getting it for free. If I wasn’t already a paid, subscriber, I wouldn’t want you to tempt me to think I can get it for free by offering me too many free trials or discounted subscriptions. My humble opinion is that your sales campaign yesterday and your campaign last year, when your cat had taken ill (our hearts go out to you) were very effective because of the personal touch (not because necessarily of the discount). The personal touch creates a unique connection with you and the reader that something like the Economist would not be able to replicate. So maybe consider continuing to lean on the personal connection and continue to provide the great content and not second-guess these great elements. perhaps a few more campaigns like the ones I just mentioned. That said there is a reason why this advice is free - Maybe I’m completely wrong. So maybe test this theory with a few more opinion polls to get better data on your readers. For example, not now, but a bit further down the line when these new subscribers have settled in, maybe run an opinion poll where you flat out ask the Reader if they remember off the top of their head how much the subscription to cosmopolitan globalist costs. If the majority of them cannot tell you off the top of their head how much it costs, that means your subscriber base is not as price sensitive as the seeming resistance to paying for subscriptions might make you think. If so, it’s just a matter of getting people over the hump, which more personal touch campaigns like the one yesterday could do. Another good indicator of price sensitivity is your renewal rates. If the vast majority of your subscribers are renewing that means you are probably pricing it correctly. I would suggest to try to get more data through polls like this before making any change the price. I hope this helps and apologies if these points are obvious and you already know all this. There is a reason why this advice is free and the cosmopolitan globalist isn’t.
I can think of 2 podcasts where you’d be a perfect substitute host or guest and I’m pretty sure you already know some of the parties. You may have been on them already: National Review’s Three Martini Lunch and Commentary Magazine’s daily (my favorite). May the subscriptions continue to rise!
Jonah Goldberg’s Remnant would be a great one, too. Big audience. Start out with Thatcher, transition to Ukraine, US/EU and US/French relations. If you want me to reach out to the Dispatch folks on your behalf, I’d be happy to, Claire.
Spend the effort getting the word out.
There is a wider market for smart, sharp tongued writings.
People just need to be exposed to them.
Glad that you didn't have to take on an old sugar daddy.
Hairy ears are hard to live with.
Do podcasts! How about a regular podcast chat with you and Vlad Davidzon, that would be fun!
Your wish is my command! We've already got one scheduled for tomorrow.