The Daily Doom Might not be Doomed!

A little push could get us there.

There is no editorial today because I was not even sure there would be a Daily Doom today. This could have just been a day of issuing refunds. As I’ve mentioned a few times recently, continuance of The Daily Doom would depend on it getting to, at least, the same level of support my former Great Recession Blog had in past years, and we didn't reach that level. Publishing on Substack has been an experiment in improving convenience for Patrons and the amount of weekly content they get by saving me the time of maintaining my own site. I also made the change in hope of getting some cross-promotion from other Substack sites that my own site couldn’t provide, which has been happening to a small degree.

So, I’ve spent the morning evaluating how the changeover from my old site to Substack went now that most complimentary full subscriptions to The Daily Doom for Patrons of my old site expired as of this morning. (If you were a Patron of The Great Recession Blog and find you cannot see the headlines section below anymore, it is because you did not choose — yet, anyway — to continue as a paid supporter via Substack, so are no longer on Substack’s automated mailing/access list for paid subscribers now that the complimentary month I extended has expired. I, of course, cannot keep sending articles to supporters who contribute via Patreon rather than via Substack paid subscriptions because that is against Substack’s rules and would be unfair to them as they wouldn’t get their 10% for running this site. I did it for one month just because my transition to doing all my writing here began right after Patreon billed Patrons for the month of June, so I comped those Patrons here on Substack so they would get what they already paid for.)

That said, it looks like The Daily Doom might not be doomed. While the number of Patrons who have converted over to Substack plus the number of new subscribers from Substack is still down about 20% from where support was for The Great Recession Blog alone, which is below the minimum bar I set for myself several years ago, things improved enough over the weekend to give a big breath of hope. Also, for reasons I don’t understand, there are still people paying an aggregate of $365/month on Patreon even though that doesn’t get them automatic access to all the articles and headlines published here on Substack now that their complimentary month has expired. I am thinking maybe they are intending to shift over and were just waiting for the expiration to make the shift, but now they’ve been billed for another month from Patreon, so I’m not sure what is happening there.

Since a few generous Patrons have even chosen to become Founding Members at a higher subscription rate purely for the sake of giving additional support to help push The Daily Doom over the minimum support level I’ve set as a basis for deciding whether to continue, I’m going to give some more time from my end, too. Some have even said, “Don’t refund me if this doesn’t work.” It’s their strong effort to try to make it work and help me with my own costs if it turns out it doesn’t.

Therefore, I’ll keep putting out The Daily Doom through the end of this week and maybe a little longer if the week shows good progress in case there are more of my old Patrons out there still intending to move their support over from Patreon to Substack. (And, again, if The Daily Doom does have to come to an end because I can’t keep giving my own time away to it only to wind up going backward, I’ll give prorated refunds to anyone who paid for months in advance.)

We’ll see if support for The Daily Doom can, at least, get back to that level where writing articles and putting together the daily headlines pays me $5/hr for the total amount of time I put in — the rest of what I value my time at being my contribution because I think there is truth that needs to be told. (It’s not really so much about $5/hr but about whether things are moving forward with hope beyond that bare-bones minimum and whether there is enough interest that costs a little to tell me others find it worth something, too. I set that very low threshold long ago because I didn’t want to dedicate such a major part of my life to an effort that meant nothing to anyone. It also would be too much for me to make this experimental change to try to improve reader experience and give more time to writing only to wind up having taken two steps backward.

(Headlines appear in a section below for everyone who is now a paid subscriber to The Daily Doom, and we’ll be back to editorials for everyone tomorrow for, at least, the remainder of the week as well as the weekly special article for paid subscribers only and the aggregated news headlines that go to paid subscribers.)