The defining characteristic of Nomads is actually the possession of a location independent income. Even if you live in Kansas City, own a home in Kansas City and have your friends and family in Kansas City, if your income is location independent, you are, in fact, a Nomad who has chosen to live in one, relatively expensive place. Why, is beyond me, but because you have the option to live anywhere, you are a Nomad and fundamentally different from people who are cemented to a specific place because their income is location dependent.
I have a base of operations in Tirana, Albania and a second home in Belarus that, sadly, I can't currently visit because of political tensions between the U.S. and Belarus. In both countries, you can rent a magnificently furnished, modern apartment in a great neighborhood for under $800 per month, or less that 1/3 of the price in most EUNA (European Union and North America) cities. As I have repeatedly pointed out, every city in the world has a first world area where one can enjoy all the benefits of a EUNA city at a fraction of the price. Tirana has a beautiful area, called Blloku, where I live.
My location independent income is primarily in the form of pensions. However, after spending a decade of frustration trying to use Blogger, Facebook Notes, etc. to build a writing career, a little less than 3 months ago I switched to Substack and everything changed. I have enough experience and the analytics are good enough on Substack that I can project future performance and income with a degree of accuracy.
On Blogger I had one article "The Inappropriately Excluded" that had over 300K views. Because the analytics aren't very good, I can't tell how many unique visitors I had. That article was, by far, my most successful one, though using Adsense, I made almost no money on all those views. While "The Inappropriately Excluded" was my most successful article, I did have another article, "Intellectual Sophistication" that has been viewed a bit over 10K times.
On Substack, I have determined that almost exactly one in eight unique visitors registers for my newsletter, so that I can notify them, via email, when I publish a new article. In all my years on Blogger, I got three 'followers' and one of them was I. Because I use the privilege responsibly, so far, nobody has unsubscribed. I have enjoyed a 50% open rate which is typical for a successful newsletter. So, my reception has been good.
Right now I am focusing on building a subscription list, not earning money. However, Substack's experience is that support runs at about $3.00 to $6.00 per year per subscriber, with 5% to 10% of free subscribers eventually becoming paid subscribers. So, 'The Inappropriately Excluded", assuming that the unique visitors were about 240K, would have generated between 90K and 180K USD of initial income with some, likely significant, income persistence into subsequent years. "Intellectual sophistication" would have generated an estimated first year income of 4K USD to 8K USD. In other words, Substack can create a full time income for its writers.
It is important for me to emphasize that all these views of my most successful Blogger articles did not come immediately. In fact, on blogger, both articles took years to accumulate those numbers. I have posted both of them on Substack and their views are growing. My articles that tend to be viral, but only slowly viral. They are extremely easy to find on Google and people bring up the concepts in conversation and then post links to them as citation. So, these articles are 'memes' that are slowly modifying people's world view. That is precisely what I want from them.
Now, because Substack has functionality that encourages virality for the most popular articles, I do believe that, over time, I will have articles that will easily exceed 10K unique views and create income of 4K USD plus each. However, as it did with Blogger, it will take time. The key is, of course, to write articles that are not ephemeral, but rather contain fundamental concepts.
The top ten Substack authors, right now, are earning an average of two million USD per year and Substack is not even close to its potential reach. Within the next few years, low to mid six figure income for Substack writers, I believe, will be relatively common.
Honestly, the current going rate for paid subscription is 60 USD per year. I think that is too high. It is a preliminary plan, but ultimately, I would like to see that $60 subscription provide access to, say, about ten of the best thinkers and writers that I can find. In that sense, it will be an Information Age equivalent to a newspaper or magazine. I think at that price and the implied amount of content, three million free subscribers and three hundred thousand paid subscribers will be possible. Those ten writers, at those subscription levels will earn over one million USD per year each, after expenses.
The global economy is going through an Information Age transformation and among its features will be the emergence of very affluent, location independent Polymaths. I have a preliminary plan for creating ten of them. It is a small part of a much bigger trend, but, as the saying goes, from small acorns, mighty oaks will grow.
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