Boring Money tried to make some money

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Mar 04, 2025

I enabled paid subscriptions exactly a year back, and here are the results:

Almost 4500 subscribers in all with 0.8% choosing to pay for writing that is almost entirely available free anyway. This translates to about ₹1,14,000 in earnings.1

I never thought I'd make more than a lakh in a year just doing what I’d be doing anyway. Thank you—to everyone who read, shared, and paid. ❤️

As readers would know, I write without a fixed cadence. In writing circles, that might even count as a sin. I publish whenever I am done writing, rewriting, rewriting again, and maybe one last time for good measure. If I get a high from what I’ve written, a sense of satisfaction with whatever I was trying to make sense of, that’s when I hit publish.

The only consistency I try to maintain in the publishing schedule is that each post goes out precisely at 7:33 am. Occasional posts like this are a good opportunity to stay accountable.

My goal has always been to publish three posts a month, on average. Two free posts, one paid MYSTERY POST. That would mean 24 free posts and 12 paid posts in the last year. I did 19 and 9. Oh well, close but ah, not enough.

I might not have hit the ideal numbers, but it’s not because of a dearth of topics to write about. In fact, I have more things to write about than I can keep up with.

Time is the constraint. I have a full-time job, of course.2 And hobbies. By far the most time-consuming has been sitting on my sofa listening to my friend from college babble about his day. He moved to my building six months ago and I’ve lost both writing time and sleep. It’s not my favourite hobby, but it’s been a hobby nevertheless.

It gets cheaper

A Boring Money subscription is expensive. That’s intentional. I think I’ll get the most paid subscribers if the subscription price is between ₹500 and ₹1000—but will the number of subscribers go up 4–8X? I doubt it. And that’s just to equal what folks paid last year.

Another alternative is that I paywall more posts. I’d expect a bump in paid subscribers—a small bump—but it would come at the cost of free subscribers. Fewer readers is the last thing I want.

So here’s what I’m trying out: ₹3000/year. It’s still expensive, but not too expensive. Hopefully, I gain more paid subscribers than I lose in earnings.

If you’ve liked what you’ve read on Boring Money so far, please consider subscribing.

Upgrade via Card (5% off)

Upgrade via UPI

(I’m adding a 5% discount for card payments because UPI is external via Razorpay and that makes life tough. Please use the card option if you have the choice.)

If you’re a student or can’t afford the amount just yet, write to me and I’ll give you a discount.3

Some closing updates—

Help with social media pls

Most Boring Money subscribers have come from Reddit. But it’s clear to me that just Reddit won’t suffice. Still, I feel like a lame duck writing on anything but Substack.

If you like reading Boring Money, are decent at social media, and would like to help create a social media presence for Boring Money from scratch, hit me up. We’ll work out the ₹₹₹.

Oh, Boring Money now has a subreddit. Please join!

And a Twitter profile. Please follow :)

Fragments

Boring Money hadn’t begun as Boring Money. It began as Fragments. Similar to BM in quality and depth, just not focused on finance. I wrote just one post but I’ve been wanting to write more for a while now. Hopefully I will, this year.

Podcast

I had briefly touched upon the idea of co-hosting a BM podcast. If you submitted the form I put out many months ago, many thanks and apologies for not getting back. That idea’s shelved. I don’t see it happening in the next 6 months at least. Anything I do here is bound to come at the cost of my writing time, which I wouldn’t like at all.

Boring Money