I'd rather my posts be as widely accessible as possible. (I expect only a tiny portion of interested readers would be interested enough to pay for the extra content, and a few dollars isn't worth blocking everyone else's access to it.)
Substack says that usually between 5 and 10 % of subscribers go paid. Paid Subscribers give you 7 dollars a month. When you get to 3000 subscribers, that would mean, by low estimates, that you'd get about 12,000 dollars a year, which could save multiple children!
I'd be very surprised if 5% of philosophy blog readers would opt for a paid subscription, esp. if it's just for like 1 paywalled post per month. (Did you get that high of a % when enabling paywalls on your blog?)
No, but I only paywalled two articles and those alone got me 7 paid subcribers. If you paywalled like a third of your posts, I'd imagine you'd get a decent number of paid Subscribers (I'd pay!).
But it's very hard to know how to value EA-aligned public philosophy. My sense is that some grants in the longtermist/"EA community-building" space go to support and publicize work that's (IMO) not obviously better than my blog posts. So there could be significant value to having my posts be more widely read. (Most obviously, if the broadly beneficentric perspective on offer eventually inspires some readers to take the GWWC pledge, or pursue other significant EA activities, when they otherwise wouldn't have.) It seems akin to a kind of "hits based giving", where most posts presumably have no real impact, but *some* could (unpredictably) have much more effect than the possible subscription revenue.
To reduce that risk, I could perhaps just paywall especially theoretical (incl. non-ethics) posts. They're presumably less likely to have positive effects. Though even they might at least have reputational effects: if a philosopher at a top program finds my work interesting, they might be more likely to invite me to give a talk there, or even end up hiring me into a more impactful (or better paid!) academic position. Or perhaps others would just think a little bit worse of me for putting my work behind a paywall (I tend to think better of academics who support a more "open access" ethos!), and again, that could limit my future opportunities on the margin. Unlikely to make a huge difference, perhaps, but there are at least some hard-to-assess downsides to deliberately restricting the reach of my work.
But I may be thinking about it in a biased way because I just don't *like* the idea (since I'm pretty emotionally invested in the "open access" ethos myself) -- it would feel like a norm violation to add an unnecessary paywall. If it was *clearly* very much worth it, then I might eventually overcome this aversion. But otherwise... *shrug*. I'm happy to have an open-access blog :-)
Yeah, that's sensible. Though I'm sort of skeptical that most of your posts do much good. Take your article "commonsense moralists should be idealists." I don't know how many people read it--maybe 2,000? I'd be surprised if that post had significant positive impact (this isn't picking on you--I'd guess this is true of most posts like this, mine included).
Congrats, probably the best substack on moral philosophy!
Second best . . .
Jk, definitely the best.
Have you considered paywalling some posts and then just donating the proceeds to effective charities?
I'd rather my posts be as widely accessible as possible. (I expect only a tiny portion of interested readers would be interested enough to pay for the extra content, and a few dollars isn't worth blocking everyone else's access to it.)
Substack says that usually between 5 and 10 % of subscribers go paid. Paid Subscribers give you 7 dollars a month. When you get to 3000 subscribers, that would mean, by low estimates, that you'd get about 12,000 dollars a year, which could save multiple children!
I'd be very surprised if 5% of philosophy blog readers would opt for a paid subscription, esp. if it's just for like 1 paywalled post per month. (Did you get that high of a % when enabling paywalls on your blog?)
No, but I only paywalled two articles and those alone got me 7 paid subcribers. If you paywalled like a third of your posts, I'd imagine you'd get a decent number of paid Subscribers (I'd pay!).
Huh, maybe I should consider it!
But it's very hard to know how to value EA-aligned public philosophy. My sense is that some grants in the longtermist/"EA community-building" space go to support and publicize work that's (IMO) not obviously better than my blog posts. So there could be significant value to having my posts be more widely read. (Most obviously, if the broadly beneficentric perspective on offer eventually inspires some readers to take the GWWC pledge, or pursue other significant EA activities, when they otherwise wouldn't have.) It seems akin to a kind of "hits based giving", where most posts presumably have no real impact, but *some* could (unpredictably) have much more effect than the possible subscription revenue.
To reduce that risk, I could perhaps just paywall especially theoretical (incl. non-ethics) posts. They're presumably less likely to have positive effects. Though even they might at least have reputational effects: if a philosopher at a top program finds my work interesting, they might be more likely to invite me to give a talk there, or even end up hiring me into a more impactful (or better paid!) academic position. Or perhaps others would just think a little bit worse of me for putting my work behind a paywall (I tend to think better of academics who support a more "open access" ethos!), and again, that could limit my future opportunities on the margin. Unlikely to make a huge difference, perhaps, but there are at least some hard-to-assess downsides to deliberately restricting the reach of my work.
But I may be thinking about it in a biased way because I just don't *like* the idea (since I'm pretty emotionally invested in the "open access" ethos myself) -- it would feel like a norm violation to add an unnecessary paywall. If it was *clearly* very much worth it, then I might eventually overcome this aversion. But otherwise... *shrug*. I'm happy to have an open-access blog :-)
Yeah, that's sensible. Though I'm sort of skeptical that most of your posts do much good. Take your article "commonsense moralists should be idealists." I don't know how many people read it--maybe 2,000? I'd be surprised if that post had significant positive impact (this isn't picking on you--I'd guess this is true of most posts like this, mine included).