📈 State of the BoozeletterTM️: May 2022 edition

Hello and welcome back to the State of the Boozeletter™️, the monthly-ish Fingers feature where we find out whether your pal Dave is gonna make rent just kidding I live with my parents at the moment turn this into a sustainable project with the help of the Fingers Fam.

May 2022 was a pretty solid month! Some topline metrics:

• Total subscribers: 2,179

• Paying subscribers: 269

• Net new paying subscribers: 24

• Net new total subscribers: 214

• Additional gross annualized revenue: $1,718

• Average open rate: 48.75%

I think this is a pretty healthy set of newsletter metrics. Total list growth is really strong, in no small part due to the launch of my guest column with Throwing Fits and a great interview with Numlock news at the top of last month. Open rate is holding pretty steady; it’s ever so slightly down from April (49% on average) but nothing significant. The biggest challenge remains converting free subscribers to paid subscribers. While my ratio of free-to-paid readers is very strong by the standards put forth by Substack (the platform I use to publish Fingers), I either need to convince more existing free readers more often that my work is worth paying for, or go out and find like… 10x more free readers somehow and make up the difference on volume. Or both? Dare to dream!

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:

A year of Fingers works out to less than $7/month. If that sounds worth it for independent coverage and commentary about drinking in America, now’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is. Thanks for reading! And to those 270 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.