Swag! Plus: get your TCW subscription covered (or cover it for someone else)
This is me begging you to pay me for my work, or tell me why you won't (no seriously, I need your candid feedback)
Hi Subscribers, Happy Sunday!
Tomorrow’s JOB SEARCH DIARY No. 4 (VP of Product) ships to your inbox in about 16 hours, and I can’t wait for you to read it! Check out No. 3 (Jill of all Trades), No. 2 (Product Designer), and No. 1 (Staff PM) if you’re behind on the series.
I’ve never asked, but please consider paying for your subscription if you’d like to continue receiving thoughtfully curated, vigorously actionable tech career experiments and tips 🙏
We recently reached 4,000 subscribers, and Substack awarded us a Recommended Publication designation (essentially like Twitter's blue check). Thank you for reading, engaging, and giving credibility to The Career Whispers.
Today, I have four goals:
(1) THANK all ~160 paid subscribers of The Career Whispers. You’ve all been with me on this journey for varying amounts of time, and I am so grateful that you support my work. I want you to feel like you’re getting career-accelerating value from TCW, so if you have suggestions for me, even little nitpicky ones, I want to hear 👂
(2) Remind all subscribers how to get your TCW subscription covered by your employer. (and if you choose the “I’ll get it reimbursed” payment tier, I’ll even send you swag 😋)
(3) Remind you that you can gift The Career Whispers to others. It’s probably the most affordable and highest-leverage gift you can give a job seeker who is in-flight or about to start a job search. You can also refer TCW to friends and colleagues to earn free months for yourself!
(4) Source your ideas and feedback. If you’re not willing to pay for this newsletter, that’s a strong signal that I would love to understand better. I don’t think you’re a bad person, and I don’t expect everyone to be a paid subscriber. Please consider sharing your reasons with me so I can improve:
Is it about price? If so, what monthly or annual price feels more fair? Or what price are you willing to pay?
Is it about frequency? If so, do you want more, or less frequency?
Is it the content mix? If so, what content do you want to see more of? Less of?
Is it a quality issue? If so, where am I missing the mark?
Is it something else? Please share!
Thank you for reading this far! To thank you for your kind attention, I have a bonus announcement:
✨ BONUS ✨ I’m launching three new series on The Career Whispers, and I can’t wait to see how these land with all of you:
CLEVER GUERRILLA is an upcoming series that highlights creative, non-traditional tactics used by real job seekers and recruiters to source and convert out-of-reach career opportunities and talent. If you know (or are!) a tech sourcer or recruiter who convinced an exceptional tech talent to interview, or if you read or heard a super clever job search tactic, please reach out to me. It’s OK to forward a LinkedIn post with a clever story, too! hello@coacherika.co
8(ish) is an upcoming series that follows under-the-radar tech superstars through a day in their work life. Learn how they spend their energy, where they find the most leverage, and how they convert work minutes into impactful products and experiences. If you know one such under-the-radar tech superstar, nominate them here.
JOB SEARCH DIARIES is a recently-launched series that follows a job seeker through a full week of job searching. The series' participants share their unguarded thoughts, tools and tactics for the current job market, and timely advice for fellow job seekers. Nominate yourself or another job seeker here.
That’s all I wanted to share!
Below is a complete guide to becoming a paid TCW subscriber with various discounts: workplace reimbursement, gifting, group discounts, referral bonus months, and purchase price parity.
Expensing The Career Whispers newsletter
Many subscribers expense this newsletter using their (informal or formal) learning, professional development, or training budgets. Here is an email you can send to your manager.
When becoming a paying subscriber, you immediately receive a receipt that you can submit to your internal system or your manager for reimbursement.
You can always go to your account page to generate receipts or invoices for reimbursement now or in the future.
(and if you choose the “I’ll get it reimbursed” payment tier, I’ll even make and send you swag 😋)
Group/company subscriptions
You can purchase discounted group subscriptions here. Once you have bought a group subscription, manage your group on this page.
When setting up a group subscription, an administrator can purchase X annual seats. They can then add/remove/replace organization members who receive newsletter issues.
Large group discounts: Contact me if you’d like further group discounts when purchasing more than 10 seats.
Invoices: Invoices can be generated for expense reimbursement, and additional group members can be added later.
To add more group members: the group admin can add additional seats. Follow the steps outlined here.
Individual Discounts
Purchase pricing parity: if you are based in a country with lower income compared to the US and Western Europe, you’ll notice there is purchase price parity for your country (and you will pay less to read TCW). Enjoy!
Gift subscriptions
Refer friends and get free months!
Check out the leaderboard, grab your referral link, and see how to get TCW for free here.
I appreciate your follow-ups (in advance!). Your candid feedback helps me see my blind spots and improve TCW for everyone.
Thank you in advance if you decide to start a paid subscription today. I’ll keep working hard for you. 💛
📣 Coach Erika
Hello Erika! I thought I might chime in on (4) if it's helpful as a pretty consistent reader (but not yet activated paid member) and fan of your work.
1. I hope others don't get mad at me for saying this haha, but I actually already get a lot of value from your free content. Your free content actually already debugs a lot of my questions/issues.
I was a long time 3yr+ subscriber of Peter Yang before converting to paid. I remember he didn't activate monetization until he had ~50k+ subs, but when he did it was quite aggressive. It really impacted my free reader experience and 50%+ of content became paywalled. I guess it worked though (on me) that I eventually converted to paid.
Looking at his substack, his is like 5+ paid articles per 1 free article which seems to be the inverse of yours? Maybe this is an alternative strategy you can consider.
2. Related to #1 I don't think I see the value difference / significance between free and paid and I think you could actually be more aggressive in your upsell imho?
For ex, I always notice the "Upgrade to paid" buttons throughout your articles, but I've never known what the upgrade gets me or the cost. I actually did a lot of manual work right now to learn a. which is the pay gated content and b. how much is the upgrade price. TBH your monthly price was lower than I expected! Imho maybe you can be more explicit/aggressive in your upsell through your free content of *what value* they'll receive and for how much $.
3. Subscription fatigue. Not sure about others, but I currently have 4 creator subscriptions (1 was an accidental renewal...). I think subscription fatigue makes me a little choosey that I only upgrade to paid if there's a very explicit value I can't access with free only (e.g. based on my current subs this is either: extra content, specific knowledge not shared in free, OR content format (I wanted to listen to the content as a podcast while driving)).
Thank you for sharing your knowledge as always! 🙏 I'll upgrade to paid now haha.