"I am earning more money than I expected to, and I feel emotional about it."

A guest post from Katie Clapham.

Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m happy to have you here.

First, a smidge of housekeeping. At the beginning of the year (partly due to having three books to write) I decided one post per week was plenty and that I would alternate free and paid posts. Well. I feel like I’ve barely posted and did not enjoy that at all, so I’m going back to two posts per week. Probably Monday (free) and Thursday (paid), but I’ll sort that out next week.

In the meantime, today, I have something a bit different. A guest post - is it my first guest post? I think it might be - from fabulous

Katie Clapham

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A couple of weeks ago, Katie slid into my DMs to ask me if I ever feel stressed by my Substack income. I told her I don’t. I check Stripe every morning to see how much is coming and I still have payments set to weekly, so it’s not (yet!) an overwhelming amount. Katie said she has a lot of emotions about it, so I asked her to write about it for me. And she did!

Over to Katie…

I met a man once who rejected the word ‘tasty’ as an adjective. Tasty couldn’t be a word to describe something, because it was already the thing itself. Like calling something that had a smell, smelly. I mostly disagree with this, the right sentences can make those words sing, but I understand the theory. I suppose he might have had the same issue with the word emotional. So often we use it to mean just one or two types of emotion, but it should mean more.

Emotional is the right word for what I want to try and explain today. It means many emotions, smashing into each other, individual and sometimes indistinguishable. I am earning more money than I expected to on Substack, and I feel emotional about it.

·         I am HAPPY about it. Money is great. I am HAPPY about the new money in my bank account.

·         I am PROUD about this particular money because I made it on my own. I didn’t import subscribers, I don’t think I’ve tricked anyone into upgrading their subscriptions, I haven’t piggy-backed on someone else’s work and I write everything myself. It’s all me, baby!

·         I am SUSPICIOUS that it has been as easy as it has been. I was three months into Substack when I switched on a paid option, putting some of my posts behind a paywall. Almost every week, at least one person upgraded their subscription to access the paid content. Almost as if they were keen to read more of my writing, and felt that it was reasonable that I should get paid for it.

·         I am EMBARRASSED that I put my face on my posts and write things that a bunch of strangers and my parents will read. I love to pretend that online is a separate world, I hate to suffer the consequences in the real world of what I post online (nice people being genuinely nice and supportive TO MY FACE!).

·         I am SURPRISED that more people keep upgrading; people who don’t know me, people in other countries, people who didn’t follow me on Xwitter when that was a thing, people who don’t know my bookshop.

·         I am NOT SURPRISED because I bet my whole life on being a writer; I always knew I was good at it.

·         I am CURIOUS about the potential for my Substack income. It’s now a significant portion of my monthly income – this is because I have a very low monthly income! – but should I be focussing more on my growth here? Is this actually my job now? Should I be better, or at least, more professional about it?

·         I feel GUILTY that I’m not. I don’t have draft posts ready-to-go, I still don’t have a logo or any graphics. I don’t have a plan and a lot of people take out annual subscriptions because they’re so cheap – what if I don’t have another year’s worth of content for them??

·         I feel SILLY making a fuss about the money, going on about it all the time; it makes it sound like it’s so much more than it is, but what it is, is Extra. I already earned just enough to cover my bills, because my bills are low, and I do get sporadic payments for book stuff, but they’re all low-value payments, and so spaced out they just get absorbed into the boring bills. But now, suddenly, there’s this Extra money that has appeared. It’s like being given really good pocket money. It isn’t going to change my quality of life because I already had things under control, but it’s… fun!

·         I feel CONCERNED that I’ve somehow broken the law. Just generally, most of the time.

·         I wonder if I’ve BETRAYED myself, because I’m spending a day or two on Substack now, when I could be writing books. But those books might not sell.

·         I wonder if I’m SUPPORTING NAZIS, something I’ve never had to worry about before, not even in the darkest depths of the night when I tortured myself over every single regrettable thing I’ve ever said or done.

·         I feel CONFUSED about potentially devaluing an industry I’ve always been desperate to be part of; is Substack part of a future that doesn’t want print? I own a bookshop for crying out loud!

·         I feel NAUGHTY that I bought that jumper with that money that you sent me.

·         I feel WARM with that jumper on.

·         I feel NIGGLED by the idea I should put the pocket money into the savings account because maybe next year I’ll need it for a root canal or tax.

·         I feel NAIVE because I still want to be a traditionally-published novelist.

·         I feel OLD-FASHIONED that I still want that for myself, when all the signs seem to point to being more successful as an online writer.

·         Is it STUPID to not spend more time growing my Substack?

·         Is it STUPID to try and control a growth that is organic and manageable in its current state?

·         When I check my subscriber count, I think this is CRINGE.

·         When I check my subscriber count, I think about FEELING AMBITIOUS.

·         When I check my subscriber count, I think this is RIDICULOUS.

·         When I get a new paid subscriber, I feel RELIEVED.

·         When I get a new paid subscriber, I feel ASTONISHED.

·         When I get a nice comment about my writing, I feel MOVED.

·         When I get a nice comment about my writing, I feel TALENTED.

·         When I talk to people who don’t know about Substack I feel DECEPTIVE, like I’m keeping a whole part of my life secret. I can’t work out how to talk about it with out making it seem more, or less, than it really is.

·         I feel WILD with the unknowingness of it all. Don’t look at it in the eye or it might disappear. Don’t want it too much or it might go away. Don’t try to make sense of what might just be a temporary alignment of time and space and luck, ffs.

·         I feel like I should and I feel like I shouldn’t.

·         I feel good and I feel bad for not feeling better.

·         I feel like it makes perfect sense but it shouldn’t be trusted.

·         I feel like I overthink it.

·         I feel like I don’t take it seriously enough.

Read Katie’s brilliant and hilarious newsletter here:

And Katie’s interview from last year: