I was chatting with a fellow independent ‘sletterer the other day about my various efforts to grow ye olde boozeletter into a sustainable business, and they expressed some surprise that I wasn’t, like, absolutely crushing it over here in the Fingers Accounts Receivable department. On one hand, this is very flattering, because it was clear that this person (and presumably others?) view my publishing approach/Twitter bullshit/etc. as self-evidently successful. But it also troubled me a little bit, because a) though this project is growing, it’s not financially viable right now; and b) I don’t want to give anyone any false impressions on that front, because media sucks enough as it is without sigma-grindset jabronis lying about the relative ease of building a successful subscription newsletter business.

So! To avoid any unintended jabronism, I’m going to once again open the kimono, as I periodically do, to give the Fingers Fam a jarring, unsolicited eyeful of the ideal male body better sense of how things are going. Some topline performance data from April 2022:

• Net new paying subscribers: 35

• Net new total subscribers: 98

• Additional gross annualized revenue: $3,246

• Average open rate: 49%

This was the biggest single month for subscription sale since I turned on payments for Fingers back in September 2021. Crucially, even the total list grew a bunch, open rates are getting stronger, indicating that the new members of the Fingers Fam are readers with real interest for the coverage, not just randos who signed up by accident and delete the shit outta my emails as soon as they arrive in their inboxes. Good stuff all around!

That said, I’m a large adult journalist with bills to pay, and to make the boozeletter you know and love sustainable long-term, I need to keep building on this growth. My total net income from Fingers since turning on paid subscriptions still works out to… like… under $5/hour after platform fees (not to mention taxes lol) when compared to the work that I put into each edition. My go/no-go goal is 500 paid subscribers by the end of September 2022; that figure represents the minimum viable recurring income I need to keep the project going longterm. If you haven’t yet bought a subscription, I hope you will today:

Get 7 day free trial

A year of Fingers works out to less than $7/month. If that sounds worth it for independent coverage and commentary about drinking in America, now’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is. Thanks for reading!