Day Soda: Year One

A look back at the first year of Night Water’s paid tier

Hello, and welcome back to Day Soda, the only internet newsletter that costs money. Day Soda launched a year ago last month—on April 21, specifically—and I thought it would be fun to look back at the first year of this paid subscription. I’ve done deep dives into the first and second years of Night Water before, but this will be the first time I reveal information about Day Soda. Let’s take a look behind the curtain (assuming you’re a Day Soda subscriber)!

What was the goal of Day Soda, and did I achieve it?

In my introduction to Day Soda, I wrote:

My goal for the paid tier is that it grants me some income to invest back into Night Water, which then grows the audience, which leads to more paying subscribers, creating a virtuous cycle of growth that will never, ever end (the Capitalist’s Dream).

And it absolutely did that! Or, at least those two things—the income, the audience growth—occurred. But correlation is not causation and all that. Hopefully, at least some part of the audience growth can be attributable to the investments in guest content, small experiments with advertising, and vegan junk food. Oh yes, the vegan junk food.