My free idea for Substack: Allow people to pay for emails they’ve read and enjoyed, rather than forcing them to only pay for emails that haven’t even been written yet.

A subscription is a big commitment. But when I read a great email like @CaseyNewton’s yesterday, I would love to pay him a buck or two to say “thank you for doing that reporting, this was great.”

An ex-post payment system has other advantages. For one thing, it encourages broader distribution, rather than paywalls. For another, it’s a great real-time indicator of what your audience loves and values and wants to read more of.

Micropayments are logistically difficult, but that’s where Substack’s scale comes in. Over the course of a month, readers might rack up enough payments to make the processing fee more manageable. And writers could be paid monthly too.

The risk of course is that micropayments will cannibalize subscriptions. But Substack could use them as a driver of subs, too. “You paid Casey $15 last month. Would you like a $100/yr subscription instead?”

Micropayments also encourage and monetize high-quality occasional newsletters from people who don’t have the time to make them a full-time job.

The central insight here is that newsletter subscriptions are already a way to pay an individual more than they are a way of accessing specific information. So, make those payments easier!

cc @hamishmckenzie & @cjgbest, obviously