The Short-term and Long-term Future of Family Stuff

Plus, a sale!

Hello everyone,

Here is the promised update. Right on time, per usual.

The short version: Starting in mid-August, I’m going to partially paywall these round-ups. Free subscribers should stick around because the headline study, complete with charts and context and my take, will always be above the paywall for all to read. Plus, I’m going to continue publishing some one-off essays alongside the round-ups, most of which will not be paywalled. Finally, in an attempt to convince as many as possible to upgrade, I’m running a 50% off sale on annual paid subscriptions until August 18th. That’s at least 48* research round-ups for $32.50! Only $2.70 a month, less than the price of a cup of coffee from 7-Eleven according to ChatGPT (that seems…sort of expensive but I haven’t been to 7-Eleven in a minute). The only catch is that I may be tinkering with the length and structure of the round-up come November (the one year anniversary of Family Stuff) depending on how the whole paywalling experiment goes. More details below.

A sketchified picture of my little baby boy, who is now officially an American citizen. They even gave him a little American flag sticker to put on his jammies.

The longer version: When I first launched Family Stuff last November, I explained that, eventually, this round-up would almost certainly go partially or completely behind a paywall. I have been resisting doing that because honestly this little newsletter has generated so much more interest and engagement than I anticipated (we’re at nearly 2,000 subscriber atm!) and I am scared that if I paywall it, no one will sign up as a paid subscriber and all the engagement will die off and that will make me very sad. Unfortunately, that is a risk I have to take because, while I really like obsessively staying on top of research on families, it requires a lot of time and effort to do so. I started this newsletter as sort of a Hail Mary attempt to monetize that work. I currently have 22 paid subscribers, which I think is pretty cool considering I’ve never paywalled anything! But for this newsletter to continue in its present form I’d need to eventually get to, like, ten times that.

I know that sounds like a very pathetic attempt at a threat or something, but it’s more like: I need to figure out if my little neurotic research-tracking habit can be an income generating part of my job, or if I just need to accept that it’s a hobby. And if it’s a hobby then I need to devote hobby-appropriate time to it, which according to

Lyman Stone

is somewhere under an hour a day. Or as I put it last November, “I’ve reached a weird juncture where I have to either find a way to monetize all this other work I’m doing, or stop doing it altogether.” Growing up means accepting that not everyone gets to turn their hobby into a side hustle. Might be time for me to grow up.

I’m not putting the paywall up immediately because I just had a baby so the round-ups will be in lower quality form for the next several weeks. In fact, I might skip a few weeks now that my husband’s paternity leave is up. But then, starting the week of August 18th, I will be back in business and the paywall will go up. The basic format will be one headline study above the paywall for everyone to read. And then everything else below the paywall. Also, just in case this helps convinced any annoyed unpaid subscribers to stick around, I will continue to publish one-off essays that mostly will not be paywalled. The round-ups are the thing that require all the work I’m trying to monetize, so they are the thing I’m paywalling.

Depending on how that goes, I’m going to reassess and potentially (if I don’t make much progress on the money front) restructure the newsletter come November. (Again, this was always the plan. In my launch post, I said that, because I wasn’t sure if I could pull this off, I would do “what I did when I started freelancing, which is to unthinkingly commit for a year and reassess after that.”) I’m not sure what that will look like—I’d basically need to see what sort of income I’m generating by then and sort of tailor the round-up to fit that. We are letting the market decide the fate of Family Stuff. At this point, even if I literally get zero new paid subscribers, I would keep Family Stuff going in some form, but it would have to be much more scaled down and less time/resource-intensive for me to put together. Basically: we gotta wait and see.

Because I desperately want as many of you to stick around as possible, I am running a 50% sale on annual paid subscriptions until the paywall goes up in mid-August. I think that’s a very good deal! Upwards of 48 research round-ups every Tuesday** for like $2.70 a month. The one catch here is that, because I am planning to reassess the format and structure of the newsletter in November, accepting the annual deal does mean accepting the possibility that the round-up changes somewhat in a few months. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way around that.

Finally, I just want to say that I understand a lot of people won’t be able to become paid subscribers. That’s okay! I can’t pay to subscribe to every Substack I think deserves my money. Free subscribers are still very much helping Family Stuff succeed! I’m sure I’d have already given up without so many of you commenting and sharing and restacking and hearting my posts, so I do hope those of you who can’t upgrade will stick around.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

*I have yet to skip a week but I reserve the right to do so up to 4 times a year.

**Or whenever I get around to it.