What's Happening at The Hatchet?

A look at our finances, paywalls and new offerings.

Hard at work at The Hatchet offices a.k.a. Arshy’s apartment.

It’s been two and half months since we launched The Hatchet. And so we decided that it’s about time that we give all of you — our wonderful, intelligent and beneficent subscribers — an update on how things are going. And let you know about some of the exciting new things we have coming up.

First off, we’re just so grateful to everyone who has signed up to the newsletter and the podcast. And especially to all of the people who are supporting us financially.

For Jordan and I, these first few months have been about figuring out the answer to one question — can we make this thing work? And I’m very happy to report that The Hatchet is here to stay.

So let’s dig into some of our numbers.

How We’re Doing

As of the time I’m writing this, we have 2094 total subscribers, 230 of which are paying us. Because most people are purchasing an annual subscription, that means we’ve made $19,121 through Substack.

That’s been just enough to cover most of our start-up costs. To this point, neither Jordan or I are paying ourselves a salary, but we’re fairly hopeful that we can get there eventually.

In order to be fully self-sustaining, we’ll need to get to around 2000 paying subscribers. At our current rate of acquisitions, we should get there in little less than two years.

Obviously, we hope that we can reach that point sooner than that. But our goal has never been explosive growth. And so we have no problem with a slow-and-steady approach, as long as it allows us to keep doing the kind of work we think is important.

So how are we going to finance ourselves in the meantime? Jordan and I are still mostly living off of money we saved or borrowed from family, but that will only last us so long. In the meantime, we’re supplementing that with some money from occasional outside work.

And we’re in conversations with a few people about potential financing that could tide us over, and allow us to invest a little in the things that neither of us have the time or skills to do (like social media and promotion).

But none of that is finalized. So if you happen to know anyone who might be interested in investing in the thriving world of online media, please get in touch!

And because of all of this, it’s all time to start talking about paywalls.

Paywalls and New Offerings

Paywalls are coming! So far, all our journalism has been available for free to anyone who might be interested. But going in, we knew that wasn’t likely to last.

So over the next few weeks, we will be implementing some paywalls on both the newsletter and the podcast. Our goal is still to keep our best work, especially on the podcast feed, free and public, though some of it will now only be available to paying subscribers.

But as we bring in that paywall, we’re going to expand our offer to subscribers. This week, we’ll be introducing The Chopping Block, a newsletter that will allow us to go in-depth on some of the most interesting and urgent stories in Canada.

And we’re also excited that this week we’ll have the first, of what we hope are many, commissioned pieces from some of the country’s best journalists. Look for both of them in your inboxes this week.

We’re also starting to think about other ways we can reward paying subscribers. Monthly chats? Bonus episodes? If there’s anything you’d like to see from us, please get in touch.

So I think that about covers it! I can’t emphasize enough how much your support has meant to us. We feel that credible, deeply-researched Canadian journalism has never been more essential than it is now. And we’re incredibly grateful that so many of you have shown that it’s important to you too.