Please Advise: Should I Monetize This Substack?

I want to hear from you -- whether you are a new subscriber or an old one.

I’ve been astounded at the attention that this Substack has gotten since I launched it a few years ago. I’m flabbergasted that the work here has wound up in the papers, in the halls of Congress, and at the National Security Council. The tech folks and the journalists who read my work and who befriend me have made this endeavor all very worthwhile.

Here’s my concern: I have other work that occupies my day-to-day. I am CEO of Traitwell.com — I recently invested a lot of my personal money there — and I also invest in deep state friendly startups which make the world a better place for all of in the Western alliance. The work has been somewhat synergistic, of course, and I’m very grateful that so many of you share my varied interests.

I think the content that’s here should always be free. That’s a promise I made the readers when I launched it and I intend to keep it. I don’t believe in paywalls, especially for work that’s in the public interest. I remember being too broke to afford the subscription and I never want to turn away a reader who can’t afford to pay for something.

But I’ve also been inundated with requests to back this work financially and I’m also increasingly asked for my time beyond just what I write here to explain things.

Every piece I publish gets dozens of emails and texts and comments. I frankly can’t keep up with all of it alone.

Folks also want me to host a podcast and to do that I’d have to buy quality audio equipment lest I embarrass myself. We could even do weekly calls where we discuss the week’s news.

So here’s how I’m thinking about going about a subscription model and what I plan to roll out over this year should I be successful.

I’d like to hire additional researchers so that this isn’t just my work but more of a collective.

• I want to be a sort of place where people feel comfortable sending me research. I want to be able to pay some of those people.

• I want to do serious commissioned reports on public figures which are ultimately released to the public. (Ironically this desire was what led me to being banned on Twitter the first time in 2015 when I offered to crowdfund an investigation into Deray McKesson — remember him? — of Black Lives Matter fame.)

• I want to pay lawyers to drive discovery and especially to FOIA the FBI files of the recently deceased.

• I want to protect myself from reprisals both physically and legally. I’ve won lawsuits in the past against my persecutors and I intend to continue filing them as long as I deem a public interest.

• Ultimately I want us to build the preeminent OSINT publication on the Internet.

• And yes, I know I need an editor — not just someone who is voluntarily reading these pieces before I publish them.

By now you’ve seen that I’m not afraid to write about difficult or controversial subjects. If I’m not intimidated by the (formerly) richest man in the world or by hostile foreign intelligence agencies, do you think I’d really be rattled by anyone?

But what do you think I should do?

Please let me know in the comments below or more privately.

I’m debating whether or not it should be $30 a month, $300 a year, and $1500 as a founding member. I don’t really know enough on how to price these things.

Frankly I wish Substack offered multiple options for subscriptions.

I’d do it like this: $10 a month, $100 a year, $1000 as a supporter, $10,000 as a collaborator but alas they don’t let you do that, and it’s a shame.

So let me know what you think I should do below.

On and a final thing: please do share the content here. Search the archive. Steal the research. And now that I’ve been banned from Twitter, please make sure you share it online and with others there too.