My son on his scooter, by me.

I’m ambivalent about paywalls. Most Substack writers probably are. On the one hand, they make money — my paywalled stories usually turn at least a few free subscribers into paid ones. On the other hand, they limit each story’s reach — I count my paid subscribers in the low hundreds, so that’s the ceiling of my total readership for each of my paywalled essays.

My aspirations for Social Studies are pretty modest. I don’t plan to get rich off of it, and in fact I don’t expect to ever make a living off of it, either. That’s fine with me. I enjoy freelance writing for other publications. Even better when I can get paid to make the occasional short documentary film. Substack doesn’t need to be my sole or even my main source of income.

But I do have to earn enough off of it to make the time I put into it economically feasible. Right now that’s sort of happening. I make enough to keep up a pace of about a post a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. But on a per-word basis, it pays poorly compared to freelance work. If it were just a question of money, I’d be better off discontinuing Social Studies and spending that time freelancing instead.

But it’s not just a question of money. I enjoy writing this newsletter and I benefit from it in important, non-monetary ways. It’s a place where I can experiment with ideas. Most of the places I get paid to write for aren’t dying for yet another essay on Pierre Bourdieu or Michel Foucault or Karl Polanyi or feudalism or colonial American history or westward expansion or a history of mental asylums or whatever I just happened to read an interesting book about. Here, I can just hit publish. Sometimes those posts do well with you, my curated and self-selected audience. Sometimes they don’t, but even then, it’s usually worth it anyway, because each piece I write affords me the chance to hone my opinions and learn a few new things.

I’d like to paywall less. That would allow my stuff to reach a slightly larger audience. It would also mean that readers could post links to essays they like without bait-and-switching your followers right smack into a paywall.

Of course, what removing paywalls would mean for paid subscribers is that you’re paying money for writing that you could get for free, and that thousands of others are getting for free. But my suspicion is that most people who pay for their subscriptions don’t really think of their decision to do so in these kids of transactional terms (I could be wrong). I imagine most are just chipping in because they like the content and would like to see the project continue, like you would with your local NPR station. Once you’re paid, I don’t think you can tell what is or isn’t paywalled in any case.

If I’m right about that, then it makes sense to lift the paywall. What it will mean for me in the short term is that my growth in paid subscribers will slow precipitously. With attrition, it might start going backwards. If that happens and doesn’t stop, then I’ll have to go back to putting up the paywall again for most of my content.

But if my hunch is correct that, with my periodic entreaties, people will still chip in even though the posts are free, then I can switch over to a largely paywall-free format. I would like that.

I’m considering trying this out on a trial basis — say, a month or two of no paywalls, but more frequent appeals to your conscience to switch from free to paid. Then I can find out for sure whether such an approach is realistic or not, and I can share what I learn with you.

My goal for this year is to roughly double my number of paid subscribers. That would put the economics of writing for Social Studies on a more equal footing with my freelance work. That, in turn, would allow me to spend more time writing here, which means more frequent and better posts. I’m hoping that moving to this less transactional and more voluntary subscription model will get me closer to that goal. It’s a little counterintuitive and a bit of a gamble.

But before I run that experiment I want to invite your feedback. Maybe my assumptions are wrong, and most of you will say no way will you pay for a free product, and will cancel your subscriptions if there’s no paywall standing in your way. If you feel that way, I would love to hear it — I’d much rather know that upfront than find out by spending the next two months losing money.

So I’m opening up the comment thread here to both free and paid subscribers to let me know what you think. I’ll also start the discussion on Notes.

Please let me know what you’d like to see happen here. I’ll decide which direction to go in largely based on what you (collectively) say.

Thanks for your thoughts!

P.S. If you’re a free subscribers and you want to, of course, you can just switch to paid right now!