Support My Writing
Sidenote: Paid Subscriptions and Donations
Thank you for reading the Economic Justice and Progress Newsletter! I also want to thank all the grassroots supporters like you who help keep my articles free to read for anyone interested in (or even skeptical of) progressing towards a more just economy.
If you learned something reading this newsletter, if you want to see more articles like these, and only if you are comfortably able to contribute, I humbly ask you to please consider supporting my independent journalism with a paid subscription.
If you have already subscribed, you can further support my writing by donating or gifting a subscription to a friend or family member.
This article outlines the details of how subscriptions and donations work, which is why I call it a Sidenote. The following is less of an economics article and more of a “note from the editor” about the Economic Justice and Progress Newsletter, but for those who might be interested, I will still throw in a bit of educational information about the economics of newsletters towards the end!
Continue reading if you want to learn more about becoming a paid subscriber, purchasing a subscription as a gift for a friend or family member, or donating to support my writing.
Support Independent Journalism
I don’t intend to charge for access to my writing because I want to reach and inform as many people as I can. However, I encourage you to subscribe and/or donate if you enjoy my writing and have the means to do so. Ultimately, I hope to strike a delicate balance between keeping most of my articles free to access while also rewarding the generosity of paying subscribers.
In maintaining such a balance, I plan to write articles like this free sample as subscriber-only articles. Such articles would likely be tangentially related to economic justice and progress, since I would want to keep core articles free to read for everyone. Subscriber-only articles may cover a variety of topics, such as D-Day Reflections covering political history and assaults on democracy.
Still, preserving democracy is essential to economic justice and progress, because without a functioning democracy, the people won’t necessarily have any say in government policy. While I may make some similar articles free for everyone to read, writing this type of subscriber-only article is how I plan to reward the generosity of paying subscribers, and I would be happy to hear your feedback on other subscriber-only benefits.
I would use any proceeds to further access high quality information, such as purchasing new books or subscribing to reputable news sources. If I reach a critical mass of support, I could even make writing these articles more of a full-time endeavor. At that point, I could possibly cover a broader variety of topics or do more detailed explanations of certain important but complicated subjects. I could also attempt Q&A sessions or other more direct forms of interaction with a community of readers, such as subscriber-only discussion threads, if this generates enough interest.
Paid Subscriptions
If you are interested in signing up for a paid subscription, these four steps outline the primary way to do so:
1—Click the blue Subscribe button in this article, or go to https://jjpecon.substack.com/ and click the one near the top right corner
2—Choose a subscription plan:
Monthly - $5/month
Annual - $50/year
Founding Member - $150/year (or enter any amount between $50 and $150 you choose)
3—Enter your credit card information in the box below the plans, including the expiration date and security code, which is usually located on the back of the card. This credit information is kept secure and confidential using the payment processing company Stripe.
4—Click the blue Subscribe button towards the bottom once you have chosen a subscription plan, entered your credit card information, and have double checked that all the information looks correct. You should then receive a confirmation screen if everything went through. Thank you for the subscription!
Gifting Subscriptions
You can also purchase subscriptions as a gift for your friends and family. The process is similar to purchasing one for yourself, but this involves going to https://jjpecon.substack.com/gift or by clicking the button below.
Once at the Gift a Subscription screen, you will recognize a familiar layout, but this time there are also boxes in which you type the recipient’s email address and an optional message you might like to send along with the gifted subscription. If you would also prefer to gift the subscription anonymously, you can check a box to do so.
Another difference is the “Schedule for later…” option, which would allow you to purchase the gifted subscription at your convenience but schedule it to be delivered at a specified date and time in the future, such as on a holiday or birthday, for example.
Click the blue Buy Gift button towards the bottom once you have chosen a subscription plan, entered the recipient’s email address, entered your credit card information, along with any of the optional information, and have double checked that all the information looks correct. You should then receive a confirmation screen if everything went through. Thank you for gifting the subscription! I hope your friend or family member enjoys reading my articles as well.
Donations
If you have already subscribed and wish to further support my writing, then first of all, thank you for your generosity, but you can “buy me a coffee” at my Ko-fi page here or by clicking the Donate button in this article.
To avoid any confusion, donations are not a substitution for a subscription, and will not provide any benefits that subscribing will bring, but donations are nonetheless appreciated. Donations start out at roughly the cost of a cup of coffee.
If you are interested in donating, you can once again follow four simple steps. After clicking the Donate via Ko-fi button above, the process of donating is similar to subscribing.
1—Press the + or – buttons to adjust the number of coffees you’d like to buy me, or simply enter an amount in the box below. Fill out your name (if you want to) and a message you’d like me to read, and hit the Donate button towards the bottom right when you’re ready to continue.
2—You can enter your email address in the top box, and click the Pay with Card button if you want to use a credit card to make the donation.
3—Entering your credit card information at this point works just like subscribing, since these donations also go through Stripe for payment processing.
4—Click the red Pay Now button towards the bottom once you have entered your credit card information and double checked that all the information looks correct. You should then receive a confirmation screen if everything went through.
Thank you for the donation!
Brief Newsletter Economics
To give you a better idea of the costs associated with operating a newsletter, and in case you were wondering how much of your generous support ultimately ends up in my pocket, here is a breakdown of some expenses and fees.
Substack (newsletter hosting platform): 10% of proceeds
Source: Substack Pricing
Stripe (payment processor): 2.9% of proceeds + $0.30 per transaction processed
Source: Stripe Pricing & Fees
Self-employment taxes (standard U.S. federal tax rate for independent contractors): 15.3% of net profit from business
Source: IRS Self-Employment Tax
See the table of figures below to see how such fees and expenses apply to each of the previously mentioned Subscription Plans, and how the Net Income on the “bottom line” is the amount ultimately ending up in my pocket.
Substack fees help pay for the technical infrastructure on which this newsletter relies to reach you readers, both via email and by hosting the archives, and allows me to interact with readers through comments. Although I hope to never need legal assistance, the Substack Defender program also helps provide writers on their platform with resources to defend themselves against frivolous lawsuits initiated to intimidate those who speak truth to power. These resources and the ease of access are some of the reasons why I chose to write on Substack.
Donations via Ko-fi are also subject to Stripe processing fees and self-employment taxes.
I hope this gives you a better idea of how to support my writing, where some of this money goes, and that you also enjoyed a brief look “behind the curtain” at how some of this works!
Thank you for reading my newsletter and taking the effort to learn about making the world a better place. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on how we can make progress towards a more just economy.
-JJ
Updated 6/28/2022 - Added card link to D-Day Reflections; added captions to screenshots; updated numbering formatting; updated home page screenshot; italicized signoff; added divider lines.
Updated 9/15/2021 - Removed update text at the top of the article to streamline embedded article previews
Updated 6/11/2021 - Updated information about subscriber-only articles, including a free sample
Updated 2/10/2021 - Created section outlining the process of gifting a subscription.
Donated!