7 Answers to Your Biggest Biz & Tech Questions
Back in July, I sent an email to paid Clubhouse members asking if I could offer them some advice. I opened a two-week window for folks to send me questions about anything, and I promised answers! Tout suite!
I ended up getting 18 questions (with a handful of repeats), and I sent personal replies to those queries back in August. Then things went a little quite for a while... but today I'm back with answers for everyone!
Keep reading for the Qs and As, as I get super honest about business struggles, marketing tactics, and how I actually bought a house...
Let's dive in! 💦
🤖 On Tech & Tools
Subscription prices for tech services keep going up—Mailerlite and Squarespace are two recent examples. How do you vet whether to bite the bullet and stay vs. migrate and leave?
What a great question! Especially in this landscape where prices are increasing while revenue stagnates or decreases for many of us.
When apps I use raise prices, I typically panic for a second because rate hikes make me stressed! But then I try to bring my heartrate back down by getting real about the math.
Here are my math-informed mental gymnastics–
First, I calculate how much more my annual cost will increase with the new price. Then I take a guess at how many hours it would take me to duplicate whatever I have or do on that app elsewhere. I divide the increase in cost by those hours, and I ask myself if I'm willing to "pay" myself that hourly rate to make the move and/or if I could hire someone at that rate.
For example, when Mailerlite raised rates this year, that shift meant I had to pay Mailerlite $120/year instead of $0/year. I estimated it would take me at least 8 hours to move my Interweb audience + workflows from Mailerlite to an alternate, free platform like Sender. So if I were to make that shift, I'd need to spend a day or two doing $15/hour work to make the shift.
For me... that just didn't feel worth it right now. At this point, I'd rather pay the extra $120/year. But maybe that'll change if my financial situation shifts!
One other factor that's important here is how satisfied I was with the app before the price increase. If I was dissatisfied to begin with, I'm more likely to make a shift due to a price increase, because it feels like the nudge I need to actually find a tool that works better for me. But if I was happy enough to begin with, I typically stay, because there's no guarantee a "cheaper" tool I move to will stay cheaper – unless it has guaranteed lifetime pricing, which I do take into account.
I feel a bit self-conscious sharing this, because it's rather silly mental math and logistics! But hopefully it helps you think through your own method of navigating price increases.
I opened a Proton Mail Plus account three months ago, and I have yet to do anything with it. How do I start using it? Where and with whom should I start announcing a change of my email address? What else do I need to know?
This is an easy one, because Proton actually has a one-click tool called Easy Switch that will hopefully make this move simple for you!
Here's more from their site on how to transition from Gmail to Proton specifically: https://proton.me/support/switch-from-gmail-to-proton
From there, I recommend sending an email to your most frequent contacts letting them know you've changed your email address and asking them to update your contact info and start reaching you at the new address. You can also set this up as an email auto-responder, so everyone who emails you gets the memo.
Then for updating the email you use with different platforms, I like to take an incremental approach. Each I log into something with my old email, I take a moment to change that log-in to my Proton email. Doing this over time reduces overwhelm and helps you focus on changing the things you actually use most!
What made you choose Ghost as the post-Substack environment for your newsletter rather than something like Buttondown?
