Introducing Kellblog Subscriptions

(Edited 8/5 with expectations for more changes coming.)

I often tell founders to "test by doing," so in this post I'll be practicing what I preach. After nearly 20 years of publishing Kellblog for free, I'm introducing subscriptions.

I'll start by saying I'm experimenting with the subscription model while simultaneously learning how to use Ghost (my new blogging platform) to implement it. That means things can get a little rocky and it also means you shouldn't assume that what I've implemented is what I consider ideal [1].

The current model is simple: paid members will get immediate access to new posts, others will generally need to wait 30 days for more than the preview. Currently, the approximately 750-post archive will remain public and not require registration.

A lot of this may change. The one thing that won't is this: standard and founding members will get immediate access to new posts and full access to the archive.

Here are the current three tiers:

• Free members will receive new post previews by email. After about 30 days, they will have access to the full post [2].
• Standard subscribers receive new posts in full when they are published [3].
• Founding subscribers receive the same content as Standard subscribers. The Founding tier is for readers who feel Kellblog has had a particularly meaningful impact on their career or company and would like to say thank you at a higher level [4] [5].

The model is essentially:

Pay to read new Kellblog posts when they come out, or wait about a month and read them for free.

The Details

Here are some details:

• I may choose to make some posts public from the start [6].
• I may choose to have short, teaser previews or – as is the case with this post – put a huge percent of the post before the preview/paid divider [7].
• Given my intent, tips/donations might seem an obvious angle but I've not yet figured out how to do them in a sufficiently unobtrusive way that offers readers several choices.

Why I’m Making the Change

Several things are driving this change:

• People asked. Over the years, numerous readers have told me some version of: “I wish there were a way to subscribe. I’d be happy to pay you for doing this.”
• The internet is changing shape. Google’s front-running – through snippets, answer boxes, and similar features – and a growing collection of answer engines increasingly resolve queries without sending readers to the original source [8]. I never directly monetized that traffic, but the shift still matters. Like every other publisher, I risk remaining trapped in an old model while traffic steadily declines.
• Social media is no refuge. Jumping from the open web to social media is a frying-pan-to-fire move. The visibility of any post is at the whim of the algorithm [9], so you cannot necessarily even reach “your” audience. And I would never want to publish my work exclusively within the X or LinkedIn walled gardens [10].
• The world is moving toward newsletters. The natural response is to build and control a first-party audience rather than depend on search engines or social platforms to provide one. Call it a "database marketing" redux.
• I don’t want to write a book. I’ve flirted with the idea for decades, but as a writer, I’m more sprinter than marathoner. I get excited about something, dash off an energetic dispatch, and move on to the next thing. A blog – or perhaps now a newsletter – is simply a better fit for how I think and write.

Ray Rike and I recently put the Metrics Brothers podcast on hiatus so I could focus more on Kellblog. While doing the podcast with Ray was great fun – at least by the admittedly low entertainment standards of SaaS metrics – it cut my blogging rate roughly in half.

I do not have publishing goals or a fixed schedule. I publish when I’m inspired, sometimes in bursts and sometimes with long gaps. I’m hoping the additional focus will lead me to publish more frequently, but I’m not going to manufacture posts simply to satisfy a content calendar.

Kellblog will remain Kellblog.

I’ll continue writing about the enterprise software business, strategy, metrics, marketing, management, boards, and whatever else I find interesting and think might be useful for an audience of software startup founders and executives.

The goal is not to turn Kellblog into a subscription-content machine [11]. It is to provide a way for readers who have asked to support it to do so – and to give back a little something in return.

Whether you are a free member, become a Standard member, or join as a Founding member, thank you for reading.

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Notes

[1] In most cases, I am not. I am doing the intersection of what Ghost supports (and/or makes easy) and what I want. For example, I found no easy way to set an N posts/month limit for either free or non-members – though I think there might be a hard one. That's the nature of learning and – much as I like to write, and much as everyone, including me, is an armchair quarterback on media monetization models – I am not a professional publisher. TLDR: bear with me and consider everything prefaced by "depending on how it goes ..."

[2] "About" because it appears that I have to make the change manually, so this won't run with Swiss-watch precision.

[3] Remember that I often edit (or even rewrite) posts after their publication so always check back to the blog for the latest official version. See my FAQ for more policies and terms.

[4] It does not include a secret second blog, guaranteed access to me, secret handshakes or meetups, or any consulting services. I am dabbling with the idea of special group Zoom discussions or X livestreams, but that is only noodling at this point. Choose Founding only if you want to say thank you in a bigger way. Anything additional is gravy.

[5] Along those lines, stock options (usually as part of an advisory agreement) continue to be accepted as well, but that's not something I can set up in Stripe.

[6] For example, my annual predictions posts have broad appeal and are inherently time-sensitive, so I might publish them as public from the outset. Or, I might not. The argument cuts both ways.

[7] For example, as a test of the public preview functionality, I have to put the public/paid divider right below this bullet, so non-paid members will be denied the last four footnotes for ~30 days. (Oh, the humanity.)