Ask HN: Which blogs/newsletters would you be willing to pay $5/month for?

I'm in the same boat. I have a subscription to a music service and a VPS provider but that's it.

Recurring charges are weird, maybe stressful is the right word. I'm constantly pressured to use the service to feel like I'm not waisting money but then when I do I have to keep evaluating whether it's worth it.

Perpetual licenses I have no trouble popping though.

I think my gaming habit is a good example, I probably spend on average $10-20 on games every month from the same service but I wouldn't pay $15/mo for their entire catalog.

I'd pay $5/mo for a digital-only Lapham's Quarterly, and I'd be willing to pay separately for The World in Time.

There aren't many. HN is the closest, but the truth is that I'd not start out paying $5 a month for it: I'd have to have 3 months free to test, then .... maybe. I'd probably pay for Reuters, AP, or BBC. The thing with these is varied content or content I check on my own.

The problem with most things bogs is that I don't get that much out of them. They are like newspapers or magazines: Might be OK every now and then, but nothing I'd read daily without getting bored of the content or finding it not nearly as useful as paying attention to them occasionally. I really wish advertisements were responsible and non-intrusive, but unfortunately this is rarely so. It wasn't so with television, newspapers, and magazines pre-internet either. Paid cable was filled with so many ads! Even paid channels advertising their own advertising long after a decent cable guide on demand existed.

My other big exception might be a cooking blog if it lacks the horrible ad experience and stops people from forcing their morals on me (I can buy organic flimsy brand butter if I choose, but listing it as an ingredient annoys me to no end). But again, I'd not pay it upfront and a free full-access trial would be necessary.

5/month is too much. Consider how many different websites you're reading in one month, then imagine they all cost $5/month. It will start to hurt.

On the other hand, sites that charge you directly have to charge a minimum because of banking fees etc.

What we need is some middleman that will charge you $15/month then distribute it somehow along all the sites that you wish to support. Criteria to be done, maybe evenly, maybe based on how much you read from each...

I've been blogging since 2004 with no real ads or affiliate revenue to speak of, and it's news to me that it's "unsustainable." But then, I guess it depends upon whether we mean "sustainable as in keeping me motivated to write," or if we mean, "financially sustainable as in keeping me in fresh sock garters and Camambert risotto."

I get maybe $500 a month from people buying my books, and another $20 a month in amazon affiliate revenues from links to other people's books. If I tried to live on this, I'd starve. But this is not unusual, and I suspect that I am making more money than most people who blog.

Let's be clear: It's very rare for someone to make their primary living from blogging. But that's true of most creative things, be it writing, music, art, custom bicycle frames. These are, by and large, terrible businesses from a venal point of view.

Most people are in it for the love, because writing scratches their own itch. It's an awful business to be in: Like pop music, it's mostly a few big winners scooping the lion's share of the revenues, with everyone else scraping by or having a day job to pay the rent.

I am ok with people paying me zero dollars, because I write for myself. If I tried to live off it, I'd have to make insane compromises, like putting out a new book every time a new language looked to become popular, or writing clickbait blog posts on a schedule. And even then, the odds are that I would just get by, and need to supplement that income with speaker's fees and consulting.

Writing for money is a questionable model for a vocation, and a terrible model for an avocation.

Writing for yourself is an excellent model for an avocation, but unsustainable as a vocation.