Dear Readers, I am pausing paid subs (but will still be writing).
Substack is no longer financially viable for me.
Dear Readers,
I have paused paid subscriptions indefinitely as of today. This means that if you are a paid subscriber, your credit card will not be billed and I will no longer be accepting new paid subscriptions. I will also be deactivating my Ko-Fi account.
I am doing this because accepting paid subscriptions on Substack is no longer financially viable for me.
Rest assured, I will still be writing.
Here is the official information from Substack about what it means to pause billing:
When you pause paid subscriptions, the billing cycles for all existing paid subscribers will be frozen and new readers won't be able to purchase subscriptions. Your current paid subscribers won't be charged during the pause period, and there's no time limit on how long you can keep subscriptions paused. When you're ready to resume, billing cycles will pick up where they left off, and note that your current paid subscribers won't be notified when you pause payments.
If I were to cancel all your paid subscriptions right now, or all of you rushed to cancel upon this announcement, Stripe would automatically refund them all at once and it would bankrupt me with outgoing funds and fees:
Turn off paid subscriptions
This will disconnect your Stripe account from Substack, cancel all paid subscriptions, and refund paid subscribers for any time remaining on their subscriptions.
The reason why I am pausing subscription billing (with a view to eventually decoupling from Stripe in the future) is because it is no longer financially viable to accept payment for my Substack work due to exorbitant Australian government taxes for small independent operators, Stripe processing fees, time spent with my accountant, and headaches figuring out the Stripe payment system which is always changing.
Stripe has also increasingly moved to an AI model which means that I can no longer easily access customer support, and transaction disputes are now ‘encouraged’ to be settled via AI – this is both alarming and against my ethos.
The situation with Stripe and in Australia is not good, and over the past year it has gotten much worse, so I need to put this on pause before it gets out of control.
I had the idea that maybe I could make a living doing this work, but it was not to be. Not because people did not like my work (well, some do not), but because there is a threshold for success and I was unable to achieve it.
As you can also see, being in the Stripe system has also become a purgatorio, carrying a heavy load on my back. Time to straighten up a bit and shift the load. It is up to all paid subscribers how they wish to manage their accounts and what they wish to do with this information.
Thank you deeply to everyone who has subscribed, donated, emailed, and commented. I will have an article out very soon - I am not going anywhere.
I will still be writing, and hopefully my friends out there in 90 countries will still be reading.
God Bless you readers, wherever you are.
Yours Faithfully,
ExcessDeathsAU