Happy new year!

First things first. Here’s the pricing.

$15/month or $150/year (16% cheaper).

Promotional Pricing till Monday, January 14, 2025

For a limited time, you can get the annual subscription at $99/year (34% off) for the first year. This offer is to get the paid subscription plan off the ground, and thank you for being an early supporter.

Upgrade for $99/year

The first paid post will be tomorrow, on the regular Sunday schedule.

This has not been an easy step for me to take. I’ve long battled taking this Substack paid because paywalling will limit the reach of educational content. But given the enormous amount of effort that has gone into publishing this newsletter, the time has come to enable a paid tier that hopefully compensates for the work put in.

While this goes against my purpose of making engineering accessible to everyone, there is a way to draw a balance. Let me explain.

Is free content going away? Definitely not.

Free subscribers will get up to two full articles per month. Paywalled posts will have a free preview, with extra content for paying subscribers. Overall, 50-60% of the content will still be free and should give you plenty to read if you’re not yet convinced on the paid subscription.

If you feel this is sufficient, stick with the free plan, and I’m always grateful for your readership. You can always upgrade if and when you feel ready, and your support is greatly appreciated.

Why upgrade to paid

Think of it this way:

If you get a promotion, job offer, idea for paper/patent, or found a startup, or speed up your understanding of a topic allowing you to focus on more important things, the subscription would pay for itself many times over.

Since 70% of this publication’s readers are working professionals or investors and I’m hoping that you can expense the paid subscription as part of your organization’s learning budget. Your employer substantially benefits from you being a more knowledgable employee!

If you are a student, think of this Substack as supplemental education. Every article will have plenty of references you can use to dig into the topic in greater detail.

If you feel that the price point is too high but you want to support this publication, email me at substack(at)vsekar(dot)com and we will work something out.

What will paying subscribers get?

Extra content: Deeper technical insights, analysis and extensive reference lists.
Curated lists: Collections of articles and papers I’ve encountered that provide deeper understanding of various topics.
In-depth tutorials: These are always evolving documents that take you from the basics of a subject to full understanding of the field, in a practical, non-academic way. I will always keep adding to these tutorials over time. Currently I am working on a tutorial that explains the physics of solid-state devices from atoms to transistors. Over time, I plan to add additional topics depending on how much I can learn, and where my professional expertise lies (semiconductors, RF/analog, but I can probably stretch to photonics and power). I’ll have to reach out to experts for topics outside my immediate reach.
Conference reports: Detailed reports from conferences I attend that provide you with an overview of what is happening at the forefront of a technical field.

If you want to understand the directions for this newsletter in 2025, please read my vision in the annual review post. I might add more paid subscriber benefits in the future if I feel I can support it long term, or if there is sufficient interest, like private communities, AMAs, zoom sessions etc. So write in and let me know!

Upgrade for $99/year

Trial Period and Referrals

I am not offering a trial period, but the entire archive of already free articles, and any that I add in the future will always remain free. From these, and from previews of paywalled posts, you will have a good idea of what paid content will look like.

There is an easy way to earn a paid subscription and try out the benefits.

Get two people to sign up using the referral link below and you get 1 month of paid subscriber benefits.

The more the referrals, the more comped months you get of the paid subscription. Learn more about the referral program here.

Refer a friend

Group Discounts

You will get a group discount of 20% if 3+ paid subscriptions are purchased at once. Learn about group discounts here.

Break Policy

If I am not able to write articles on this Substack (health, extended holiday, other commitments, etc.), I will pause paid subscriptions until I can get back to it. When this happens, billing cycles are frozen.

For example, if I take a hiatus1 for a month, then your paid subscription will expire one month later than it would without the pause. So you will still get 12 months for a yearly membership. New paid subscribers will not be able to join during the hiatus. Existing paid members will still have access to the full archive.

I’m not doing a paid time-off policy because that sounds too much like a corporate job. I’m trading freedom for revenue.

Why I am going paid

I could only write as much as I did last year (48 articles, ~100K words) for two reasons:

A supportive family who understands that I love learning new things and writing. I spend a lot of my time outside working hours on this project, taking time away from family and friends. It’s a passion project which my wife understands makes me happy, and my kids see that teaching is a way of learning.
A supportive employer and its management. Although I had to seek approvals from legal and management due to company policies, they have green-lighted my content and the monetization of this newsletter. I am thankful for that.

There are two major reasons I decided to offer a paid subscription plan:

Income: Direct reader support will provide remuneration for all the time and effort that goes into the research and publishing of the weekly newsletters. Getting paid to write technical stuff is a dream come true!
Conference Travel: The semi landscape is rapidly changing, and content will only stay relevant if I attend conferences and talk to people in the forefront of technology. This is a cost I cannot ask my employer to bear since I’m mainly doing it for the newsletter. My hope is that paid subscriptions will fund it. Insights from the conferences will be passed on to paying subscribers.

Contact me with your questions

If you have any questions, reach out to me and I will do my best to clarify them.

You can reply to this email, or contact me directly at substack(at)vsekar(dot)com. If you prefer social media, connect with me on X, LinkedIn or Bluesky. There’s also a discord server you can hop on for lengthier chats.

Thank you for your readership.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this newsletter are solely mine; they do not reflect the views or positions of my employer or any entities I am affiliated with. The content provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or investment advice.

1

Most notably, Venkatesh Rao’s excellent Substack “Contraptions” uses the hiatus approach. My policy is inspired by this.

Vik’s Newsletter

Introducing paid subscription plans