A surprising number of NYC “startup” bloggers have started to adopt Letter.ly, a subscription email newsletter service. The root might simply be friendship with the creator, Sam Lessin, but I really do not understand or particularly like the trend. I have no problem with publishers charging for content, but if you don’t make your living as a publisher, why would you close things up behind a paywall? I don’t believe that any of these guys are doing it for the income, and that’s the root of my discontent.
The blogosphere may be diverse and fractured, but it is still a community. It is a place for global dialogue. It is a place for sharing, teaching, learning, and participating out in the open. Ideas are shared, discussed, commented upon, rebutted, hyperlinked, aggregated, etc. The quality of a blog post isn’t decided by how much it costs, but rather the content it contains.
A paid email newsletter is about one-way broadcast. It is a rejection of open discourse and giving back to the community. It smacks of ego. And if you are struggling to find the motivation to write, I suspect that this won’t be your answer.