I'm going broke sending these "free emails"

I’m tired. And costs are rising.

I pay Klaviyo $800 a month (btw, the most expensive monthly email spend I've ever had was $1,200) to send “free” emails to over 40,000 subscribers, you included.

Of those 40,000, only 600 are clients, about 1.5%.

Something’s gotta change.

I thought long and hard about charging $5 a month for my “good” content.

And, I want you to understand what went into that decision. Because it’s something that small businesses in every industry are thinking about right now.

Maybe you’ve already felt the shift happening.

Or, free and valuable information is over.

Social media has become entertainment-focused, and most people can only handle about 30 seconds of highlights rather than in-depth, helpful education.

You might notice this:

A post on Instagram sparks your curiosity, you Google it, and all the good, deeper information is behind a gated paywall.

This is by design. And it’s partly due to social media cancel culture and internet mobs.

You see, real learning, these days, happens in private communities where people discuss and disagree. Disagreement is part of growth.

Social media trains us to be right at all costs and defend our views, but that isn’t progress.

So, people are leaving to find communities where they can grow, not be trapped in an echo chamber chasing engagement by any means necessary.

And, those communities are protected by paywalls; they aren’t free to drop in and share a quick opinion. They’re for members who want to engage and connect more meaningfully.

The good content. Not the churned-out AI slop, that we all know is a waste of time.

Like it or not, content has become a full-time job for any small business owner. I spend as much time on content, sometimes more, than I do with my clients.

Algorithms push us to create more because the more we create, the more ads they can run (cha-ching). It’s no secret that Meta prioritizes quantity over quality these days.

And I’m not about to start pumping out AI slop to meet content quotas.

Everything I create is intentional, well-researched, and designed to give you the most value possible in understanding the fashion industry. So it takes me a really long time to create these Substacks. More time than I would like to admit.

At the end of the day, when we make decisions to invest our most precious resource in the world, time, into anything, we need to ask: Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Especially when I could be doing so many other things.

⬆️Recent photo after dinner in Bangkok. Because we should all be out doing things like this - not grinding away at a laptop to provide strangers “value” ⬆️

The $5 subscription fee is set intentionally low because I’m curious how many of the 40,000+ of you on here value what I share.

It’s not really a “money maker” for me; it’s more symbolic.

If you don’t value everything I do at $5 a month, or 16 cents a day, what am I really doing with my time creating all these posts?

Maybe I just stick to the free, sensational, surface-level Insta stuff and pause the long, information-packed articles that take me so long to write.

If you’re following me because you just enjoy my life, what I do, and learning a little bit about how the fashion industry works, this shift won’t change much for you, because all that more fluffy stuff will always remain free.

But if you want the good stuff, the stuff that will actually help you source a product, start a brand, and sell it without going broke, you’re going to have to pay me for it.

Again, it’s only $5 a month, so I feel like that’s pretty reasonable.

See you next week,

Melanie