Celebrating One Year Writing on Substack

Plus what you can expect in the next year

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of when I decided to make Substack the home of Making of a Millionaire (MOAM) and the focus of my writing career moving forward.

Thank you to the 7,458 people who have subscribed.

Why I moved over to Substack

Many of you first discovered my writing on Medium, where I have 66,000 people who “follow” me.

First, I should say; I owe my writing career to Medium, and it will always hold a special place in my heart as the place I got started and built an audience and a second career. I will continue to publish pieces on Medium but make no mistake; Substack is the new home of my writing and where I will be dedicating all my energy to moving forward.

You might be thinking, why would I shift my focus from a platform where I have 66,000 followers to one where I have 7,406 subscribers?

Because an email subscriber is worth more than 100 “followers” on any social media platform.

When I publish on Substack, I know with certainty that the post will be viewed more than 4,000-5,000 times within the first week. When I publish on Medium, I’ll be lucky if 500 of my 66,000 followers see my article.

The mission of Making of a Millionaire is to help people use money to live their best life. It’s pretty hard to accomplish that mission if an algorithm decides which of the people who chose to follow me ever see my work.

Much more than a “newsletter”

Most people still view Substack as a newsletter platform.

Yes, email is the primary distribution method for Substack, but the most valuable publications on Susbtack are not “newsletters” sharing a roundup of links. They provide long-form, deeply researched articles.

When I moved to Substack, I referred to MOAM as a blog with email distribution.

That sells it short. Substack has allowed me to turn MOAM into a standalone media company with an ever-growing number of ways to create content and connect with readers.

• Long-form written articles (my bread and butter)

• Podcasts—which I have used to distribute the Audiobook of my Book The Financial Freedom Equation.

• Video (I have not gone down that road yet, but It’s something I am exploring)

And my favorite new feature, chat.

Substack’s chat feature is a way to create a private discussion forum with myself and subscribers of Making of a Millionaire. Right now, it’s only available in the Substack app for iOS, but it’s soon rolling out to Android and desktop.

Here’s how to take advantage of the chat feature

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

The true power of the chat feature

Once again, the purpose of Making of a Millionaire is to create resources to help you use money to live your best life.

But, to do that, I need to hear from you.

• What are your financial goals?

• What parts of personal finance and investing have you baffled?

• What roadblocks stand between where you are and where you want to go?

My primary goal in year two on Subsatck is to leverage the chat feature to gain insights into these questions and create resources that directly address your money-related stress points.

The more people that start interacting with the chat feature, the better I can customize content to address your concerns.

If you haven’t already, click here to jump into the chat, introduce yourself and let me know what you hope to learn about money.

The future of MOAM: Beyond personal finance

Making of a Millionaire has evolved from “personal finance” to a publication where you can master money. Think of this as grad school for money.

We now have four standalone sections on MOAM.

1. The Financial Freedom Equation. Where the bulk of my “personal finance 101” writing on things like expense tracking and budgeting will live + free access to my Audiobook of the same name.

2. The Rational Investor. Where everything I have ever written about investing will be housed. It’s also where paid subscribers will access the Audiobook of The Rational Investor once it is produced.

3. Money on my Mind. Where we dive deep into the research on behavioral finance and help you make financial decisions with confidence.

4. Buying Happiness. Where I will begin digging into a new field, research-backed ways to use money to maximize happiness instead of total wealth.

Are there topics you’d like me to write about in the next year? Leave a comment or jump into the discussion forums in the chat and let me know.

A new price for monthly subscriptions

In my first year of writing on Substack, I experimented with a unique pricing model; $10/month or $50/year.

The goal was to entice as many people as possible to sign up for the annual plan by offering them a steep discount. My reasoning was simple; if you commit to this newsletter for an entire year, I am confident you will get so much value you will gladly renew your membership.

But, we are living through a difficult economy with a high cost of living, and I have received dozens of emails from readers who simply couldn’t spend $50 all at once, and $10/month was too high of a price for them to afford.

I hear those concerns, so I am lowering the monthly subscription option from $10 to $5. If you already subscribed at $10/month, don’t worry; I have already reached out to the people at Substack, and your monthly subscription cost will be lowered to $5.

I still encourage you to sign up for the annual plan, but I hope this will help address the concerns of those with tight budgets.

(If you can’t afford to pay anything right now, reply to this email, and I’ll comp your membership until you can afford it.)

3 ways you can help build the greatest financial resource on the internet

#1 Get involved in the discussion.

Use the comment section of articles and the subscriber chat. I am serious when I say I need your constant feedback to build you the most useful financial resources out there.

#2 Consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

MOAM remains a part-time business. To dedicate the time required to make this publication the #1 money resource in the world, I need more folks to upgrade to a paid subscription.

In celebration of MOAM’s first birthday, we are running a 10% off sale. This takes the annual cost of a subscription down to $45/year or $3.75 per month—less than a Venti-size latte.

#3 Share MOAM with your friends

I don’t have the budget to run advertisements for MOAM, so I need to rely on your word of mouth. In each post I publish, you’ll see a green share button; the more often you hit that button, the faster we grow.

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This is just the tip of the Iceberg; I can’t wait to share with you all some of the projects I have begun but aren’t yet ready to share publically.

Stay tuned, and thank you again for an amazing first year on Substack.

Cheers,

Ben