My Audience
Those of you who have followed me for several years know that I often explore controversial issues, without concern for political alliances or popular opinion. As a consequence, those first drawn to my work on one topic may be later startled—or worse—by my views on another. It is never my goal to be merely provocative, much less offensive, but the resulting whiplash has produced exactly the type of audience I want: One that is steadily purged of partisans and dogmatists.
I’ve built an audience that values how I arrive at conclusions, rather than the conclusions themselves. As a consequence, I’m free to say exactly what I think about politics, religion, science, philosophy, spirituality, violence, and any other topic that captures my attention. As a matter of principle, I wouldn’t do this any other way, but I couldn’t do it this way without my subscribers.
My Digital Business Model
No one knows what the best business model is for digital media—and what seems right today, might prove ruinous in the future. As consumers, each of us now limps and lurches across the information landscape, tethered to dozens of competing apps and platforms. Some media companies charge subscriptions. Some extract and sell our data. Some assail us with ads. And some do all these things at once and damage their brands in the process.1
No one has figured this out, even if some are succeeding financially. And yet, I believe I’ve found the best business model available to me.
If paying for any of my digital work (including this Substack, the Making Sense podcast, or the Waking Up app) causes you financial stress, you need only send an email to support@samharris.org, and you will be given the option to pay less, or to pay nothing at all. No request has ever been denied, and no questions have ever been asked.
This has been my business model from the very beginning. Over the years, I’ve seen people try to dissect it, and most of their intuitions are wrong. Some assume that while subscribers can get my content for free, almost no one does this (so my apparent generosity is just a form of virtue signaling). Others assume that while many people might take my work for free, I’m merely implementing the tried-and-true “freemium” strategy, wherein most free subscribers eventually convert to paying (so my apparent generosity is nothing more than tricky marketing). But the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people take my content for free, and few of these people ever start paying for it. There’s no trick. I just keep putting the rabbit in the hat while everyone watches.
During the Covid pandemic, there were days when over a thousand people would request my podcast or my app (often both) for free. And we still receive hundreds of such requests each day. I staff a team of 20 customer service agents, and most of their time is spent servicing free accounts. (This is expensive.)
But I love this business model. It is an extraordinary luxury to be able to give my work away for free, without having to rely on ads, and to still be building a successful digital business in the process.
However, there is a reason why most content creators and platforms aren’t rushing to copy what I’m doing. Many worry that offering everything for free will discourage people from paying. Unfortunately, this is a perfectly rational fear. If Netflix adopted my business model, there would be no Netflix.
But I’ve been lucky enough to find an audience of subscribers who pay, in part, because they know that others can get my work for free. Like me, they understand that some people will abuse the policy. But they want to keep it in place for those who actually need it.
Those of you who support my work, to whatever degree, have given me the freedom to explore new ways of using my time creatively, unencumbered by pressure from sponsors or publishers—or even from you, my own audience. This is an absolute gift. And it is one which I will strive to return to you by speaking and writing honestly about things that matter.
Once again, please email support@samharris.org, if you need any assistance.
My Terms of Service
Having abandoned the digital killing fields of Twitter/X, I know what I don’t want in an online community. This Substack should be a place for productive conversation, on more or less any topic. But intentions matter.
There will be an ironclad no-assholes policy, enforced with the apparent capriciousness of a bolt of lightning. If you ever find yourself wondering whether to say something vicious to another subscriber here, please take a moment to wonder some more. Just like in life, once you’re gone, you’re gone for good.
So don’t think of this page as another town square, where decent people can cross the street to avoid your ranting or frottage. Think of it as a dinner party, where your host seems to know more than you expected about the arms trade, how people sometimes disappear without a trace in the developing world, and where Vladimir Putin keeps his money.
Enjoy!
—Sam
Sam Harris
Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
Sam’s work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), The Annals of Neurology, among others. He also hosts the Making Sense podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of the “iTunes Best” and has won a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education category.
Sam received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He has also practiced meditation for more than 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. Sam has created the Waking Up app for anyone who wants to learn to meditate in a modern, scientific context.
Even the most prestigious publications are not immune. If you’ve ever been reading The Atlantic, for which you happily pay, only to be enticed by a banner ad promising to reveal how ugly some celebrity has become—and then found yourself directed to a website whose business model requires a mastery of string theory to understand—you know what I’m talking about.
