There are a few reasons I like keeping this Substack going. One of them is that I like writing and often have things to say. Another is that it helps me work out ideas I’ve been mulling over. Another is that it’s a place I can report out stuff directly without needing to pitch an editor and get a green light.

On top of that, it generates a bit of income. It’s pretty consistently about $20,000 a year. That’s not a trivial amount of money. On the other hand, it’s obviously not enough to live off of and it’s probably not enough to justify the hours I put into it. It kind of hovers over that hazy line separating “remunerative” from “not worth it.”

That’s not likely to change much. Here’s a graph of my revenue over the life of this Substack.

That peak and precipitous dropoff is where I paused for a year and a few months to work for Public. I rebooted it when I left that job, and as you can see, it’s gone up a bit and then down a bit but on average, I’ve basically plateau’d. Zooming into the last 12 months makes it even clearer:

I’m not complaining here and I’m not urging you to give me more money. I like what I’ve made Social Studies into and wouldn’t do it any other way. I never sought to create a Substack that would dominate the leaderboard and make me rich. If I had, I would have taken a different approach. I probably would have ridden the anti-woke train to fame, fortune and hackery. And even then it probably wouldn’t have worked.

But there is a little bit of a problem with the persistently middling level of income attached to this project: it’s stressful. Because people are paying for a product, I feel obligated to provide one. If I go much longer than a week without publishing, as I have between this post and the last one, I feel guilty and I worry that people will start unsubscribing. But then it isn’t really enough money to justify such guilt. More often than not, a post I publish will make zero dollars. From one week to the next I’m usually losing paid subscribers, not gaining them.

So what I’ve decided to do is to stop feeling obligated to keep this Substack up, and just write whenever I want to. I expect that sometimes that will mean several posts in a week, and sometimes it will mean gaps of weeks with no posts at all. Basically I’m going to treat this newsletter as a blog rather than as a gig.

As I said before, I’m not asking you to give me more money — I’m in fact doing the opposite. I’m going to stop paywalling my posts altogether. If you want to get everything I post for free, you’re welcome to do so. You can cancel your paid subscription and you’ll get the same content you’d get if you didn’t. If I don’t feel obligated to produce enough content to make it worth your money, then you shouldn’t be expected to pay for it. It’s only fair.

Don’t get me wrong, though: I will take your money if you want to give it to me. If out of the goodness of your heart, you’re happy to keep your paid subscription going, I’ll be very grateful for your generosity. I’m just not asking for it.

So what you can expect going forward with Social Studies is a less consistent publishing schedule. I don’t think the quality will change; the money was never large or reliable enough to be the motivating factor in the time and effort I put into any given post. When I write, I’m going to write my best, whether I’m compensated for it or not. I’m just not going to sweat it if I’m too busy to write something, or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say.

So I hope you’ll look forward to reading this as you would a blog: no paywalls, no money asks, but also no expectation of a regular product. I’m always interested in what people think about Social Studies, so please don’t hesitate to leave any thoughts you might have in the comments. I’ll post again when I have something to say and the time to say it.