Happy 5th birthday to Volts!
A note to readers and listeners.
Hey everybody,
TL;DR: It is Volts’ fifth birthday! I would like to continue for five more years, but the only way I can do that is if more people sign up for a paid subscription. If you haven’t done that yet, and you value what I do here, please chip in. It’s about the cost of a nice latte per month, whereas my gratitude is immeasurable.
And now, a few quick reflections, if you will indulge me.
I launched Volts five years ago, and I gotta say, I dig it.
When I launched it, I had been writing for Vox for five years — a general interest publication, which meant a certain sort of writing. I wanted to do something a little deeper and more targeted, and above all, more useful to people on the front lines. There is so much good work going on that gets so little attention in our stupid, stupid attention economy.
I wanted to bring the good work out, put a spotlight on it, so that people can see what’s happening, see what sparks their own imaginations, and figure out how they can get involved.
It has gone better than I possibly could have anticipated. The pivot from writing to podcasting was not something I would have chosen, but given the circumstances, it has been an absolute feast. I’m privileged to talk to fascinating, smart, ambitious, socially-minded, good-hearted people every week. Turns out there are lots of them!
I have heard from people who have passed state legislation based on Volts pods, people who have chosen or changed academic paths, chosen or changed careers, raised money, won awards, or simply bought heat pumps for their homes.
It really seems like it’s working, like Volts is useful for people! That is gratifying to me beyond my ability to express.
That said, the Volts business plan is something of a disaster. I don’t have any sponsors. I don’t take advertisements. I don’t consult. I have no income other than the kind souls who agree to pay me to do this through the newsletter.
Unlike a written post, which is free to produce, it costs me money to record, produce, edit, and release a podcast, which I regularly do twice a week. On a busy month it’s close to $10K in expenses. It takes a lot of $6 monthly subscriptions to compensate for that, much less to pay for my groceries.
As I’ve said before, a lot of this is just due to my Gen X orneriness: I don’t want anyone telling me what to do, and I don’t want to sell out. And beyond that, I just want to do the work. I like doing the work; I hate doing the rest of it. The whole point of launching Volts was to focus on the work and try to avoid the rest of it.
But I’m coming around to the unavoidable conclusion that at least some of the rest of it needs doing. At least if I want Volts to thrive in the long term. Which I do!
So that’s something I am going to be thinking about this year: how to professionalize a bit, like a real grownup. Do more for paid subscribers. Do more promotion and marketing. Maybe hire someone to write a fundraising email less halfass than this one. Maybe even see about ads.
In the meantime, you can help me continue to be useful:
Sign up for a paid subscription yourself.
Buy one for someone else, as a holiday gift!
Tell your friends about Volts — there is no substitute for word-of-mouth.
Give Volts a good review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. It helps.
If this earnest post didn’t do it for you, stay tuned for later this month, when I’ll have a fun, data-rich post on Volts history to share!
In the meantime, thank you for subscribing, thank you for reading, and thank you for caring about decarbonization.
Volts is where I go when I want to get to the bottom of the bullshit and find out in listener-friendly terms what is really happening in the clean energy marketplace. Just moved from listener to paid subscriber!
Think about adding a higher subscription tier with bonus content. I have one subscription that I upped from $70/year to $1k/year so that I could join a zoom that meets most Fridays where I can interact with the Substacker and the other $1k subscribers. Something like that, or live meetups when you go places.
Take on advertising if you need to. We understand!