Unsubscribe From Everything (Except For…)

Hypocrisy Abounds

The conventional thinking for any writer/blogger/”solopreneur” is to create a marketing funnel to capture email addresses for a mailing list. The purpose of the mailing list, the purpose of the funnel, is ultimately to turn readers into customers.

Studies show this is, by far, the best way to monetize written work.

But I can’t do it. I cannot write about productivity, tell people to unsubscribe to everything, and simultaneously have a subscription mailing list. It makes me feel dirty.

(To be fair, my productivity-related writing is a passion project, not my career. If it were my career — if my family depended on monetization of my writing — my calculus would surely be different.)

I don’t blame the productivity folks who do this (which is most of them), but is there a less hypocritical way to do it? Maybe there’s a way no one has thought of yet. Maybe email will go obsolete and writers will have to come up with new strategies.

Maybe I’m just pontificating.

Probably.