The BaileyLineRoad.com newsletter has been part of my life — and many readers’ lives — for a long time. The email newsletter has gone out every week without fail since 2007. For all of those years, the newsletter has never included ads, sponsors, or paid promotions. That wasn’t an accident. Independence has always mattered more to me than growth or monetization.
The website, BaileyLineRoad.com, grew alongside the newsletter and now holds years of articles, guides, and courses built the same way — practical, long-form, and not optimized for clicks. There are more than 2500 pieces of content in all. But independence has a cost.
The Economics, Plainly Stated
Running the newsletter costs about $400 per month just for email delivery, and takes roughly 15 hours per month of my time to write and prepare. That doesn’t include the time spent maintaining the website or creating new material.
The website currently carries ads, but they bring in only about $400 per month — not even enough to cover basic hosting and newsletter broadcasr, and not enough to justify the clutter or distraction. I would very much like those ads to disappear.
The newsletter and website have always been a labour of love. But after 19 years and nearly 1000 editions of the newsletter (never missed a week), I’m having to decide whether production is still sustainable.
A Simple Fork in the Road
There are two realistic paths forward:
- Shut the site and newsletter down and step away from the ongoing costs and time commitment, or . . .
- Make the work directly reader-supported, so it can continue without ads or outside influence.
If 100 people out of the 28,000+ newsletter subscribers chose to support this work at $20 per month, it would be enough to:
- remove ads from the site
- keep the newsletter going
- justify continued writing and new content
- keep Bailey Line Road independent
That’s the entire math. No tricks, no upsells.
What Supporters Receive
Supporters aren’t buying a product in the usual sense. They’re making it possible for this work to continue.
That said, supporters will receive:
- ad-free access to BaileyLineRoad.com
- full access to the existing course library
- new courses and long-form material as they’re created
- and the knowledge that the newsletter remains independent and uncluttered
Most importantly, supporters make it possible for the work to remain thoughtful, slow, and non-commercial in a world that increasingly pushes in the opposite direction.
An Invitation, Not an Obligation
If BaileyLineRoad.com has been useful to you over the years — informative, grounding, or simply a place you trust — you’re invited to help sustain it. If not, that’s completely fine, too. The newsletter will continue as long as it can, and if it ends, it will have done so honestly. Either way, I want to be transparent about the reality and let readers decide.
Thank you for reading — whether you choose to support this work or not.
Steve Maxwell, BaileyLineRoad.com, Manitoulin Island, Canada
I hope you found this content useful!
Your generous support helps me produce more practical, hands-on content that I hope you’ll find useful.
Steve Maxwell
