The Free Content Dilemma

And why I'm going paid

I started my Substack back in September 2021. It was at a moment when I was going through a difficult time in my career, finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet as a single income (parent) household, in an industry which is not particularly well-known for rewarding its creatives just the celebrity authors.

Substack gave me the opportunity to offer something back, to write craft essays, to express opinions that I had spent the last 25-plus years writing (and being paid for) by newspapers. I knew that I could reap financial rewards from a paid newsletter, yet it didn’t feel quite right to me to ask for money in return for my words. How odd considering that exchange – money in return for words – is how I have paid my bills since I was eighteen years old and started working as a reporter on my local evening paper.

I remember, after a few months, having a zoom chat with Farrah @Substack and her telling me that the content I was producing was valuable, both to readers and potentially me if I turned …