Don’t panic—I’m not getting rid of the newsletters. But I *am* changing the business model. Please read on for the reasons why, the important details of what happens next, and how you can participate most effectively for your own needs.

—Shel

Sustainability, the idea that something can maintain itself, has been important to me for decades. I’ve been part of the environmental movement since at least 1972, and writing about it since at least 1974.

When something is sustainable,

• The energy that comes out of it at least compensates for the energy that goes in—whether that energy is represented by money, time, solar, wind, oil, coal, etc.
• The materials and labor that go into it can be regenerated in ways that don’t deplete or damage the environment
• The end product does not pollute, and wastes created in its production, use, and disposal don’t have a negative impact

When I’ve written and spoken about sustainability, I’ve tended to focus on environmental sustainability. But as you see above, economic sustainability is also important. In fact, environmental and economic sustainability go hand-in-hand; when looking at the big picture, you really can’t have one without the other.

And the unfortunate truth is that these newsletters are currently not economically sustainable. I’ve been writing four complete newsletters a month, basically for free. And I can’t do that any more.

Most people with long-running free-subscription newsletters fund them with some mix of ad sales, affiliate commissions, and their own product sales. For a few years, I was able to cover the costs of hosting and maintaining all my sites and newsletter lists with Google ad sales, and the only area that I was losing money was in my uncompensated time to write the newsletters and put them together (a significant amount of time that could otherwise be used for income-producing activity). But in the last couple of years, Google has fallen away to about one-third of previous revenues, as people become inured to the ads and stop clicking on them.

Affiliate commissions have never been more than a pittance, with one exception for a one-time event that I promoted very heavily, and even that was not exactly a ticket to the moon. And while I do sell a few of my own books to my readers, once again, it’s not a large number and usually involves some kind of discount.

If I am to continue spending many hours writing and organizing these newsletters, it has to be economically sustainable. Income has to cover (at a bare minimum) the cost of the domains, the e-mail service, and the person I pay to keep the sites maintained. Ideally, it would also cover my time. And to date, neither of those have happened.

So…here’s what we’re going to do. November and December will continue as they’ve always been. Beginning with the January issues, I’m going to experiment with three different models:

For Positive Power of Principled Profit and Frugal Marketing Tips, you’ll have a choice of either a straight subscription or a much more comprehensive membership program, The Clean and Green Club. The membership will include a bunch of pretty cool stuff, such as audio interviews with thought leaders, live group consulting with me, and a special collection of hand-picked no-cost resources each month, as well as full access to the archives dating all the way back to 1997; the subscription will be just that, a subscription.

Interestingly enough, while I was preparing this, I received a notice from an online publication I subscribe to, announcing that it was converting from zero cost to 99 British pounds (US $163.60 as of this writing) per year. While I’m certain the information I’m providing is worth that much, I’m not going there. Instead, a single-year subscription to both Positive Power of Principled Profit and Frugal Marketing Tips will be a mere $24.95 for the first year That works out to a paltry 69 cents per main article for the spotlight business profile, the recommended book or resource, AND the Frugal marketing Tip. Plus of course the offers from people who want to help, the special deals I negotiate for you, etc., all included at no extra cost. Such a deal!

The membership will be a more substantial investment, but will include a lot more. Watch next month’s newsletter for an announcement with all the details.

For Book Marketing Tips and Frugal Fun Tips, I’ll try an entirely different approach: voluntary contributions. Kind of like a public radio station, I’ll ask for your financial support based on the value you receive.

Each of the four newsletters has to bring in a minimum of $1000 by the end of March; regretfully, I’ll have to shut down any that don’t achieve this goal.

I have been doing two of these newsletters since 1997, one with both a feature profile and a book review since 2003, and one since 2007. In all, this is almost 500 articles. I’ve saved you a big pile of money, pointed you at fabulous books, and highlighted companies you need to know about. I’ve done this from an attitude of service, but after twelve and a half years, there needs to be something in it for me. I’m one guy doing this, with the help of a very-part-time virtual assistant, and that means every hour I spend on the newsletters has been an hour I could have been getting paid by a client. When I’ve created newsletters for clients, they’ve paid me a few hundred dollars per issue. Nobody is paying me to do the newsletters I do for you.

If there’s something in it for you too—if you’ve found value in this vast amount of content I’ve created and distributed in little manageable chunks every month, please show some appreciation by investing in its continuation. (I’ll tell you exactly how you sign up, next month.)

Thank you for being there for me, and with me, on this journey.

Sincerely,

Shel Horowitz

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 10:53 pm and is filed under Newsletter Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.