Year 2 of Monday Morning Economist starts today!
Last week’s post was the 52nd post as the Monday Morning Economist, which means this post officially marks the start of Year #2! This project has grown so much more than I could have imagined, and it all really started as a fun way to occupy my mind with something that wasn’t about the pandemic or teaching remotely. My social media feed was filled with things I was tired of seeing, so I figured it was time to put something different out there.
I have always tried to share different news articles with my students when they clearly show some sort of economic concept. It’s really no different than when I show clips from movies or tv shows. Those moments of going “look, here’s an application of that concecpt” have always been so much fun in class. Why not write about it each week and share it with a much larger audience? Exactly 1 year ago today I announced the newsletter on Twitter:
In the beginning, I was incredibly confused about my target audience. The majority of the initial batch of people signing up were other economic educators. That was probably because I posted it on my Twitter account. Eventually, I posted the link on my LinkedIn feed and a wave of former students signed up. After a few weeks, I realized that I should share it on my Facebook profile and the third wave of subscribers included friends and family who maybe didn’t care about the economics as much as the educators and students would. Since then, the waves have come around popular posts or when I’ve given talks to groups of people.
The number of emails, comments, and general conversations I’ve had with people about this newsletter has been amazing. I know people are opening it, but it’s something different to know people are actually reading it. If you’ve been here since the beginning, you’ve likely noticed some changes over the year. It took me a few weeks, but I finally realized that the range of people reading each week was all reading for different reasons. For me, that meant just picking a topic I was interested in rather than something I thought everyone wanted to read. If you’d like to take a brief trip down memory lane, you can read the very first article from February 1, 2021:
I’m really excited for what’s ahead because I think I’ve finally started to figure this whole newsletter thing out. I don’t think the news stories will ever stop being interested, and they most definitely won’t lose their economic application. If it ever is a slow news week, I can always tell you about new projects I’m working on.
One of my goals for this year is to double the number of total subscribers by the start of the summer, but I need your help.
Spreading the word
A couple of months ago, I turned on the option for paid subscriptions. Before I go further, let me assure you that the regular weekly posts (both Monday and Tuesday) will always be part of the free plan. I’m passionate about improving economic literacy, and I think this newsletter is a subtle (and enjoyable) way of doing that. Each week I post articles on my social media channels and the number of subscribers increases. Many of you are here because you saw one of my posts.
You can help by sharing one of the articles from the archive on your favorite social media channel (Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn). Let your followers know you liked the topic of the post and copy/paste the link. Your social media account will automatically make it look fancy. If you would prefer to just invite them to the entire newsletter, you can click this button:
If you’re looking to share a specific post that you really liked, there is a share button (a little arrow) at the top of every post that will let you share that specific article through your favorite social media accounts or as part of an email. If you ever see a share button on the post, you can also click that one! Another way of sharing the newsletter with others is by purchasing a gift subscription for a friend or family member. These gifts aren’t subject to all those pesky supply chain issues you keep hearing about. They’ll be signed up immediately!
Some of my favorites
Are you willing to share an article, but aren’t sure which one to share? Here are a few of my favorite topics from the past year that I think would appeal to a bunch of different people:
There’s a new documentary on CuriosityStream about El Chapo and it includes a lot of economics
So many people are quitting their jobs that people have called this period The Great Resignation
The same company that rates the quality of restaurants also makes tires
Ghost kitchens are popping up all over the place and are a great example of monopolistic competition
Paid subscriptions
While I love how far we’ve come over the past year, I’m most excited about the possibilities of what’s ahead. A couple of months ago I introduced paid subscriptions for those of you who want a little more content and for those of you who just wanted to support me more broadly.
I discretely rolled it out in one of the posts and tweeted about it, but the response was immediately positive. If you’re in a position to treat yourself, consider becoming a paid subscriber. By signing up for a monthly subscription, you’re essentially buying me a beer every month:
You may have noticed some changes to the typical newsletter over the past few weeks as I start to sort out which features should be part of the paid subscriptions and which parts should be for the weekly newsletter. I hope to have the first subscriber-only post coming soon.
If you have ideas on what you want to see or what ideas would convince you to become a paid subscriber, please leave a comment! I love getting the notifications and seeing your comments:
There are over 1 million paid subscribers on the Substack platform [Substack]
Substack considers their value to be around $650 million [Axios]
The Monday Morning Economist has 500+ subscribers [Me]
My most-viewed post was a summary of The Great Resignation and had 2,938 views [View the post!]
I started an Instagram account a few weeks ago and have 58 followers [@MondayEconomist]
Adding a book review section for paid subscribers would likely be enough to tip at least one more person into that category.