Introducing the 'Clip Content' newsletter
Issue 1: A newsletter about Design systems, Product Design, Leadership, and Tech.
Firstly, hello! I’m Steve Dennis, a Senior Design Manager based in London, and I write about Design systems, Product Design, Leadership, and Tech. As long as this Substack experiment lasts, I’ll only be pushing emails via Substack, and not to Medium, so you won’t get things twice.
If you’re confused about why you’re getting a Substack newsletter, It’s because I’ve imported those of you who subscribed to me (Steve Dennis) on Medium. I’ll explain this change below, but if this format doesn’t suit you, feel free to unsubscribe, no hard feelings! I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
Over the last few months, I've been focussing more on writing in my spare time, and getting 20+ years of learning and experience out of my head and into a form that’s helpful and valuable to others. It’s been an interesting journey so far. I've been playing around with the Medium ecosystem, trying to figure out what kind of content resonates with people, how the Medium publications system works (badly, turns out), and trying to refine my own writing and editing skills.
While I’ve had some surprising success in the early days of this whole thing, I’m mindful that I don’t want to get too comfortable and complacent. I need to follow my intuition around how I’d usually build a product or brand, which is by trying new things, seeing what sticks, and constantly refining it over time.
So what are my goals?
I want to write engaging content for people who appreciate and get value from it.
I want to write as a way of processing my own thoughts on a subject, rather than speaking from the point of view of a subject-matter-expert all the time.
I want to figure out ways that I can cover the costs of writing that content, so it can be sustainable long-term.
For the goals above, Medium is a mixed bag. It has allowed me to write engaging content and find an audience. I get some money from a small percentage of those readers, but it’s unpredictable and at the whim of Medium’s algorithm. I’ve spent 40 mins on something that’s made me over $500, and 5 hours on an article that’s made me $3.40. The people who appreciate my content and engage with me the most aren’t the people paying the bills for the most part. Medium is also a great place for writing structured articles about design, but it’s less suited for more exploratory thoughts, or dare I say more blog-like content.
Introducing Clip Content
This newsletter, that I’m calling Clip Content is my first experiment in trying to foster a more direct connection with my audience. It will allow me to fluctuate a bit more between less-structured thoughts, and traditional articles I’d usually put on Medium. Partly, like many people joining Substack this week, this is a hedge against one potential, likely future of Twitter becoming a less useful place for connecting with other designers and talking about design.
So here’s the plan:
I’ll post long-form content on design systems, product design, leadership, or tech at least monthly, and cross-post both here and on Medium. This will be free to all subscribers.Initially, paying subscribers will get more frequent posts and articles that I’m going to aim to post weekly (not more often than that, I don’t want to spam you).Edit: The plan changed almost immediately! 😂 In order to grow this list to a sustainable size, I’m going to post weekly for free for the next few months.
I’m really open to how to add value to a paid tier in future, so let me know your thoughts in the comments. From the point of view of a paying subscriber, do you expect this paid content to be perpetually exclusive? Would you be comfortable with early access to content that was released free to others in the future?
Expect that I’ll listen to your feedback, and mix things up a bit early on to try and find a groove. Talk to you all next week!