How You Can Help Me Build This Newsletter

What I write about and why I need your help doing it

2026 is my twenty-fourth year of calling journalism a profession. And even while that job becomes more and more essential, it’s also becoming harder. Since journalism is inherently a project in public service, I need the support of the community I serve. Here’s how you can help.

First, some math (something I am very bad at): Tens of thousands of you currently subscribe to this newsletter for free, and 98 percent of you read every article that I write. Versus my last employer, that means the floor for traffic on any given article is much higher. That’s awesome, and it really means something that so many people are loyal to my work.

But, only two percent of you currently pay for a subscription. And that’s a problem, because it means I’m not able to earn enough money to call this a full-time job.

Building an independent editorial project supported by subscription revenue will never be easy. Making one successful requires one of two things: a high take rate, or a very large readership.

Based on previous experience building a motorcycle publication supported by reader subscriptions between 2007 and 2012, I’ve learned that a reasonable forecast for take rates is somewhere between two and five percent of total readership. That means there’s two mechanisms for boosting revenue: fostering reader support, and increasing the number of readers. I want your help achieving both.

Paid Subscriptions, And Why They Work For You

About a year ago, when I started treating this project as a serious effort to achieve independence from fickle employers, I forecast that I’d be able to reach about the number of total readers I now have within that first year. And I did that despite my previous employer denying me access to the mailing list of people who signed up to read my byline over the last decade. That achievement feels good.

Working backwards from that number, I asked my calculator what subscription price it would take to earn a reasonable full-time income from 5 percent of that audience, minus all the taxes and fees that exist between this platform and my bank account. The result was the $15/month price I decided to charge. If you buy a year up front, one month is knocked off the total.

Convincing people they need to financially support journalism covering the worlds they care about is a big lift. The original sin of the Internet was giving away content for free, something that has hidden the cost of its production from its consumers. That doesn’t mean you haven’t been paying for it all along—you have—it’s just been hidden in the cost of all the other stuff you buy. Your car was more expensive because a big part of any automaker’s budget is spent buying ads and achieving coverage on the car websites you were then able to read for free. Everyone likes to complain about the price of eggs, a big part of which is spent creating ads trying to convince you that Vital Farms is some sort of wholesome independent operation, then buying placement for those on whichever news site you read.

It may sound counter intuitive, but shifting the cost of journalism away from advertisers and onto readers is actually preferential if you care about things like quality, objective content, or the efficient use of your money. It means you, rather than corporate America, get to choose the winners. And it means that content can then be free to serve you, rather than those advertisers.

The reason the Internet originally chose to give content away for free is one that still very much matters. Thanks to all those ones and zeroes, it means journalist like me can reach more eyeballs than ever before. That’s why I made the choice to keep everything I publish as part of this newsletter free. And it’s also the first value proposition baked into act of signing up for that $15/month subscription.

If you care about topics like public lands, or climate change, or animal conservation, and want other people to be able to consume the kind of factual, insightful, meaningful coverage that only a veteran journalist like me can create, then paying for a subscription pays for that coverage to exist. Your money goes to ensure the worlds you care about get journalism applied to them.

Take yesterday’s article following the money behind the GOP’s attempt to destroy the Boundary Waters for instance. Hopefully reading that might convince more people to re-think the way they vote, or what they ask of their elected officials. Heck, it might even convince a Senator or two to change their support for the measure. If you care about the continued existence of our country’s most popular Wilderness, then upgrading to a paid subscription should feel like good value as a result.

I Need Your Help Finding New Readers Too

One of the fundamental issues across all forms of media right now is that discovery is entirely broken, and that’s making it difficult to impossible for good content to reach new audiences. Just a year or two ago, an established website could publish an article, drop a link to it in Facebook, wait for Google to crawl the metadata, and suddenly you’d get tens of thousands of new people clicking over to read it. That no longer happens, the way publishing works on the Internet has been broken.

All of those big FAANG companies have realized they can make more money by keeping eyeballs within their sites, rather than serving as a middleman between interest and content. And a replacement for discovery has not yet been found. Substack itself (the platform I use to publish this newsletter) is astoundingly bad at fostering discovery. I find myself working as much to benefit the platform as I do trying to serve you, as I go in search of new audiences I can bring back here to read my stuff.

Luckily, there’s (tens of thousands) more of you than there are of me. Let’s use yesterday’s Boundary Waters article as an example again. If you think more people should know that the GOP is selling out Minnesota’s economy in order to give its copper away to China, then I need you to forward articles like that to people you think would benefit from learning that information.

Do you know people who rely on tourism jobs in Minnesota who voted for Pete Stauber? I bet they’d be surprised to learn that he’s picking their pockets, an awakening you can foster simply by forwarding the email containing that information to them. Do you know people who care about the outdoors who have been hoodwinked by the culture war into voting for the destruction of the outdoors? Just think how stupid they’re going to feel when they realize they’ve been conned.

Sharing this content is free. And if you all start doing it, I will be able to accrue more readers, and even at my current two percent take rate for paid subscriptions, that will begin to move this project closer to a full-time income, allowing me to create more articles like that one, and better ones.

My goal this year is to reliably publish at least one article on this newsletter every weekday. I need your help getting revenue to the point where I can make that my priority.

What You Get In Return

In addition to paying me to make journalism you care about, what do you get in return for your $15? Personal access to me.

I’ve been writing about topics like policy, public lands, trucks, camping, and animals on the Internet since 2002, and in all that time, I’ve developed more experience with outdoors gear and skills, travel destinations, vehicles, and topics like that than pretty much anyone else out there. And at the same time I’ve amassed an incredible network of subject matter experts. That means I’m uniquely positioned to save you, my readers, time and money, all while improving your experience.

Paid subscribers are welcome to email me anytime at [my first name] @wessiler.com. I do my best to respond in a timely manner, and establish ongoing communications tailored to your individual needs. But I want this to be as much a community project as one that’s one-to-one. Just last week, readers jumped into the Substack chat room and saved another reader a couple grand, after both his shell and puffy jackets spontaneously combusted at the same time. That’s exactly they kind of value I think bringing all of you together can create.

To make that kind of stuff easier to find over time, I also recently created a community Discord forum. If you’re comfortable using that platform, I’d appreciate it if we could shift as much of our communication over there as possible, so other people can benefit from it too.

My goal here isn’t for your $15 to feel like a burden, it’s to make it feel like ridiculously good value. Use your access to me.

Just a couple days ago, I helped two readers plan an entire trip to Alaska, even though they’re visiting a part of that state where I haven’t spent much time. How? I found them they help they needed. I don’t think a service like that exists anywhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I upgrade to a paid subscription? Simply click one of the prominent “Upgrade to Paid,” or “Subscribe” buttons you’ll find scattered all over this email or website, and follow the instructions to select the plan that best serves your needs. Your payment will be handled by Stripe, one of the largest payment processing services around.

Do you offer group subscription rates? Yes. If you represent a brand, non-profit or similar entity pursuing coverage from me, I would appreciate it if you subscribed. If you sign up five or more employees at once you’ll get a discount. Subscriptions like this one are 100 percent tax deductible for businesses, so you’re spending money you were going to spend anyways, just on feeding me instead of the Trump family.

Can I cancel if you upset me? Yes, at any time. There’s a cancellation link at the bottom of every newsletter that arrives in your inbox.

Why do you charge more than other Substacks? A few very big names with very big email lists have been able to earn unbelievable incomes on this platform while charging the lowest available rate: $5/month. This has damaged the ability for other hardworking journalists who weren’t able to simply import a .csv with hundreds of thousands of readers to earn a living by undervaluing their work. Since I was denied access to the list I spent a decade developing for Outside when that outlet fired me, I’ve been forced to start from scratch. And the math there is simply a case of applying the two to five percent take rate on subscriptions that is possible to the total number of readers I’ve been able to accrue.

Also, versus the simple hot takes on the day’s news that are most popular on this platform, I feel I offer significantly higher value. Not only do I create original content around important, lesser-covered topics with a level of factual accuracy and insight that exists nowhere else, but I also offer subscribers personal access to me for help buying gear, planning trips, and preparing for everyday life. I will save you many times the cost of your subscription.

Surely plenty of other people are paying, so I don’t have to. I assure you this is not the case. In order to continue working in your service, I need each of you reading this to upgrade to a paid subscription.

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.