My sister was partially laid off from her job.

I'm having her help with some stuff at Starter Story, and paying her a little - she works in hospitality so there is literally no work for her.

She helped me write a guide about 20 businesses you can start while working at home during these times. I published the guide, and then I decided last minute to paywall it and ship it in the newsletter.

Starter Story has mainly been free for the last 2 years. But I asked her how she could help it make more money, and now we have a fun project to work on together while we literally sit at home all day.

I pushed out the newsletter with the paid piece and traffic spiked like crazy! People must really be interested in this content because open and click rates were through the roof.

And then people got mad, emailing me back and saying things like "shame on you" and calling me out for taking advantage of the situation. I didn't write this article and intend to paywall it because of covid-19, it was an article I intended to write before the virus (about general business ideas) - and generally - I'm focused on pushing the paid membership on Starter Story more.

I can understand why people are mad though, and every time I got an email like this, I felt really shitty. I definitely could have positioned things better, but I just pushed it out quickly - plus I just wanted to try something new and see if I could get some momentum on the project with my sister to keep her motivated.

Funny thing is though, unsubscribes were very minimal. People complain, but they don't unsub....