Hey, thanks for becoming a CPA Nag subscriber. I’m excited to be invited to your inbox as a recurring guest, and chances are good the email notification about your subscription made my day. (It will be a thrilling day when I need to turn those notifications off, but we’re far from there.)

As a special treat, here are some answers to questions I always want to ask other newsletter writers:

Q: Why did you pick the email platform you’re using?

A: Buttondown first came to my attention because Jeremy over at Data Is Plural uses it, and won out in my product comparison because of their excellent documentation and support. I was also optimistic about their commitment to accessibility, and that’s been justified: they’ve already made access improvements based on my requests.

Q: How does monetization on this platform work? How much of the money do you get?

A: Buttondown gives you options! But regardless of what you pick (I’ve got a choose-your-price annual subscription), they don’t take a cut, so if you decide to become a paid subscriber, the only haircut is the payment processor, which is Stripe. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, plus sometimes an additional amount for recurring transactions (between 0.5% and 0.8%); I haven’t been monetized long enough to know what the fee will be on renewals. So of an initial $2/year subscription, I get $1.64 (or 82%) and on a $20/year subscription, I get $19.12 (96%). Buttondown does charge a platform fee that varies based on features you opt into and number of subscribers. The other two very popular platforms for creators, Patreon and Substack, don’t charge a platform fee, but do take 8-12% and 10% of your revenue, respectively, as well as processing fees.

Q: Do you experience big feelings in the gap between writing a thing for your subscribers and getting that thing into a test-sendable email on your platform?

A: It’s rare now that I’ve switched to a platform that (accurately) assumes I want to send words with the occasional picture. On my prior platform frustration to the point of tears was common in this gap.

Q: Do you enjoy writing a newsletter?

A: Heck yeah! I’ve always enjoyed writing letters, and this is a beautiful evolution of that.