Gidday [CYNIC NAME HERE],

We hope you’re enjoying all the cynicism and self-improvement the Cynic’s Guide to Self-Improvement has to offer. We’re updating our our prices to bring you more great entertainment.

This update will allow us to deliver even more value for your membership like new logos I made using Canva, stories about lifting weights, not doing pull-ups, or just telling tales that simply make your day a little more cynical.

Thank you for choosing Netflix The Cynic’s Guide To Self-Improvement, and we hope you stay with us for years to come. We look forward to arbitrarily removing your favourite content in the near future with absolutely no explanation as to why.

The catch

I hope you enjoyed my best parody of a price rise email. The catch is that I really am putting prices up, to $10 a month, but don’t worry. I’m only doing it so I can bring prices down.

On the face of it, this makes even less sense than Netflix telling you it’s putting prices up so it can cancel yet another critically-acclaimed or audience-beloved show for tax  reasons, so let me explain.

I’ve wanted to move the Cynic’s Guide to a pay-what-you-want model for a while now. People have told me they’d like to pay for my stuff, but that $8 USD a month is a lot in these financially-cursed times, and I agree. Substack doesn’t actually offer pay-what-you-want functionality yet, but I’ve figured out how to emulate it with some carefully-arranged perpetual percentage discounts. That’s why the price has gone up to 10 bucks — it’s a lot easier to fiddle with percentages when you’re working in tens. And now that I’m done fiddling, you have quite a few more options when it comes to supporting the Cynic’s Guide:

If you already pay for my work, and you’re happy paying $10 a month, carry on! It’s very much appreciated.

If you already pay for my work, but you’d like to pay less than $10 a month, this allows you to continue to support the newsletter at a rate that’s comfortable for you. Simply cancel your existing subscription (oof) and pick a new price from the links below (yay.)

If you don’t yet pay for my work because it’s a bit pricey, but you’d like to, the new perpetual discounts will allow you to contribute at any level you’d like.

If you’d like to keep paying me (a person with a day job) but you’d rather the lion’s share of your limited subscription budget went to someone who needs it more (because they make their whole living from Substack,) please, make it happen.

If you don’t yet pay for my work and you don’t want to, that’s fine. Carry on. The plan is still for the Cynic’s Guide to remain free. Please, repay me for the free content by sharing it everywhere you possibly can.

Here are the new pricing tiers. Have fun!

Hopefully these work. If something looks broken, let me know.

• Pay $1 a month / $10 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/onedollarydoo
• Pay $2 a month / $20 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/2do
• Pay $3.50 a month / $35 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/treefiddy
• Pay $5 a month / $50 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/fiver
• Pay $6.66 a month / $66.6 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/666
• Pay $7 a month / $70 a year: https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/straight7
• Pay $8 a month / $80 a year (current subscription price)
• https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/8outof8
• Pay $9 a month / $90 a year (more than the current subscription price, if you’re so inclined) https://www.cynicsguidetoselfimprovement.com/nine
• Pay $10 a month / $100 a year: Uh, just find the link to my current subscription page. Ah, here it is:

In self-improvement news, I did a workout today. Managed a few sets of 5 pullups. There you go. That’s what you came for, right?

Thanks again for reading. All going well, there’ll be an actual, non-price-related update later this week.