She Spends, Money & Me
On figuring out creative worth, valuing labor, and the new media economy
It’s time for me to come clean: She Spends The Business and I have a complicated relationship.
I’ve written this newsletter for 3.5 years, and despite having a Patreon, I have not paid myself for the work. The money sits in a separate bank account, and I use it to cover expenses for the newsletter.
It’s developed into this odd situation, where I spend hours each week on She Spends, but I never valued the work enough to compensate myself. Early on, I felt like taking no money from the project was the ethical thing to do. My feelings, however, have started to change.
I’m writing this because I think, as a creator, I’m not alone in this struggle. Assigning worth to work is difficult. So I want to talk about it! After all, it’s a personal finance issue.
Let’s start with the media’s business model, and how newsletters fit into it.
News organizations make money in a few ways: advertising, events, affiliate links, and subscriptions. As the internet has grown, these organizations have struggled to keep up with costs. They’ve turned to outside investors, who then make staffing cuts to save money.
Within this declining industry, writers like myself have found newsletters to be a space where we can explore our interests without the pressure of crushing deadlines and demanding investors.
As the newsletter hustle grows, more of us are trying to figure out how money fits in. We’ve taken cues from media giants: subscriptions, advertising, and affiliate linking all work on a smaller scale. For each of these models to be effective, a creator needs to grow a following — one that will eventually pay. That isn’t easy when there are so many newsletters to compete against.
Much ink has been spilled on the topic of “tangible value” as a necessity for a financially successful newsletter. But in a world where so many write for free, or “exposure,” in industry parlance, it’s hard to know what that tangible value is.
Is it enough, for instance, to deliver a news breakdown and a money diary every week? What about essays on top of that?
I think this is the reason I decided to try adding other offerings, like monthly meetings, to the Patreon subscription. It seemed easier to demonstrate the value in monthly meetings than in written media.
There is also a complexity to making money on personal finance media, particularly in an age where many expect news and analysis to be free.
Part of the reason I started She Spends was that I saw so many personal finance sites focused on writing content like shopping guides that allowed them to slide in affiliate links for cash. I still don’t think that’s appropriate — it invites in bias and encourages folks to spend money they may not need to.
But I see now, after three and a half years of working on this project, why people do it. It’s hard to convince readers to pay for media and to ask them for money.
I understand why people don’t or can’t pay, especially during a time where we’re all cutting costs to make ends meet. I empathize with the desire to simply use money for other things, especially when the content is already free.
On the flip side — and this is something I’ve certainly preached in past articles and posts — we should get paid for our labor. If I were to charge someone else for the work I’m doing on She Spends, it would cost between $200 and $400 per week, at minimum.
I don’t mind working for less than that: this is a passion project. I also know that continuing like this is unsustainable. It’s hard to spend a lot of time on a project when juggling a day job and a side hustle. With a little more money to go around, it would be easier to say no to gigs I’m not passionate about.
I came up with a solution recently. I want to be transparent about how I arrived at it, which means being transparent about She Spends’ financials.
Right now, there is $4,965.81 in the She Spends bank account. The amount we receive monthly from Patreon varies, but it ends up around $350 these days. If you’d like to see the actual number, we’ve kept it public on Patreon.
She Spends started 2020 at $180 in Patreon subscriptions, so that has grown significantly. I’m really grateful to the folks who have been able to support us financially this year. And if you haven’t been able to, that’s okay!
As for costs, we pay $35 per month to Mailchimp, $120 per year to Canva, $216 per year to Squarespace, and over $500 annually in taxes. We have to keep more than $2,000 in the bank account to avoid paying fees, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it (thanks Capital One!). We have also paid artists and writers, produced zines, and donated quite a bit this year.
The net profit for 2020 — the money made after covering these expenses — was $2,392.54.
I thought that at some point, it would just “feel right” to start paying ourselves. But either that time has not come, or I didn’t recognize it. After a grueling year, I decided that needed to change.
For the first time, I paid an end-of-year bonus to myself and Jemma for working on the project. It was small — $180 each, or 15 percent of this year’s net profit, split between the two of us.
I’m not sure whether this will be how we pay ourselves in 2021, or if we’ll figure out another method that works better. I do think, however, that the days of refusing to pay ourselves are over.
So to wrap this up, I want to offer a few takeaways. First, the creator economy is a difficult one to exist in. Keep that in mind as you participate, either as a consumer or a maker.
If you’re building something, particularly digital art or media, understand that your work has value and do what you can to charge accordingly. Likewise, if you’re able to, consider supporting people financially whose work you have benefitted from, as long as it’s within your means to do so.
If She Spends has helped you, and you have the means right now, consider supporting the work we’re doing via Patreon. And if you’re someone in a similar position, I’d love to hear from you about your experience. Reply to this email or shoot me a message at aliciamcelhaney@gmail.com.
