Marco Peña on charging for what he gives away

Marco Peña has written Slow Signals, a letter about civic technology, every fortnight since 2015. About nine thousand people get it. Roughly six hundred pay for it. Nobody has to.

We spoke over a bad video connection while he was between trains.

Let’s start with the obvious one. Why is there a paid tier if it unlocks nothing?

Because the alternative was worse. I spent two years arguing with myself about a paywall. Every version I sketched made the letter less useful. The whole point is that a council officer in a town of nine thousand can read it. The moment I put the good part behind twelve euros a month, that person is reading the free half, which is the half I care least about.

So what do people get for paying?

The same issue everyone else gets, a day early, and a line at the bottom of it saying thank you. That is genuinely it. I tried adding a members’ thread. It was miserable. Twenty people posted, I felt obliged to reply to all of them, and it turned a writing job into a moderation job.

Six hundred paying for nothing extra is a lot of people paying for nothing extra.

They are not paying for nothing. They are paying for it to continue. That is a real thing to buy. I think the mistake people make is assuming money follows access. Sometimes it follows relief — the relief of not having to watch something you like go under.

On the years before it worked

How long before it was a living?

Seven years. I want to be specific because I read a lot of interviews at year three that made me feel like a failure. Seven years of writing it on Sunday evenings after a full week of consultancy.

Did you ever consider stopping?

Twice properly. Both times in January, which I now think is just a January thing. The second time I did stop, for four months. I told the list I was stopping and why. Six hundred people replied. That was the year it turned.

Telling people you might stop is the most honest growth tactic there is, and you can only use it once.

Did the list shrink in those four months?

By about eleven percent. Everyone panics about that number. What actually happened is that the eleven percent who left were people who had not opened anything in a year, and my deliverability improved enough that the next issue landed in more inboxes than the one before the break. I came back to a smaller list and more readers.

On the craft

What have you changed most about how you write it?

Length. It used to be two and a half thousand words. It is now about nine hundred. My open rate did not move but my reply rate tripled. People reply to things they finish.

And what have you not changed?

The ending. Every issue ends with one question to the reader and my actual email address. Not a form, not a survey. Eleven years of that.

Last one. Advice for someone on issue four?

Do not look at the number. Look at whether you wanted to write issue five when you finished issue four. That is the only metric that predicts anything at that stage.

Slow Signals goes out every other Tuesday. Marco pays for it with the paid tier described above and, as of last year, nothing else.