📈 State of the BoozeletterTM️: June 2022 edition

Hello and welcome back to the State of the Boozeletter™️, the monthly-ish Fingers feature where we check in on the financial health and well-being of our beloved independent media project about drinking in America. June 2022 was OK!

The most popular editions published between 6/1-6/30/22 were:

• "It just gets too hyped up and almost becomes a parody of itself"

• The rise and fall of a top craft brewery, as told by the comments section

• Booze, Boomers, and bullshit: welcome to grifting's Barrel Age

Some topline metrics for that period:

• Net new paying subscribers: 17

• Net new total subscribers: 106

• Total subscribers as of 6/30: 2,285

• Paying subscribers as of 6/30: 280

• New gross annualized revenue: $1,757

• Average open rate: 48%

Lotta up-and-to-the-right trend lines in here, which is cool to see! Both overall list growth and paid subscriber growth are down a bit compared to May in raw numbers, but still healthy and trending upward year-to-date, so I’m not sweating it too much (not just yet, at least.) Open rate is also a smidge down, but again, it’s still up YTD, and besides, there’s some seasonality to take into account here, as readers try to unplug to enjoy the summer a bit more. Very reasonable!

That said, the march continues here at Fingers HQ to generate enough subscription revenue to turn ye olde boozeletter into a sustainable source of income so I can, y’know, keep publishing it. 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:

In an effort to convince more of the Fingers Fam to upgrade to a paid subscription, I recently sent out this extremely professional and legible infographic breaking down where Fingers subscription fees go/how much of each subscription I take in as income.

The gist here: even though the top line figures are good and growing, I’ve still got a ways to go in order to grow Fingers’ bottom line to the point where I can afford to keep doing this. So if you enjoy my independent coverage and commentary about drinking in America, now’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is:

And to those 286 Friends of Fingers who have already stepped up to support the boozeletter: I’m truly grateful. If you want to be extra generous, feel free to buy a pal a subscription:

Thanks so much for underwriting this project with your hard-earned beer money. I literally couldn’t do it without you.—Dave.