“I would ask current subscribers how much they would be willing to pay in order to maintain their subscription.”
That’s interesting! I could definitely give that a go. I think that might be a bit off though because the more relevant thing is how much money I have access to in our budget/ could access by making the right case to OP (and what it would be spent on otherwise). I’ve also never really understood how individual willingness to pay is a good signal when people have wildly different resources available to them. Could be a useful benchmark.
Another point on that—I don’t trust myself when it comes to valuing things monetarily. I’d never pay for social media or a newsletter, because it just isn’t something I’m used to (I’m used to them being free), but if I actually calculate the time I’m spending on social media/ newsletters I count as a valuable use of time, and use something like this to calculate the value of my time, I get surprisingly high figure.
This is a good question—I should prioritise comparing these. I do expect that some of those programs (and possibly the EA opportunities board) are cheaper per click, and have a higher intent audience. The EA Newsletter hasn’t been optimised for job clicks (and probably shouldn’t be). I’ve been a bit bottlenecked by what I can most easily measure.
That’s interesting! I could definitely give that a go. I think that might be a bit off though because the more relevant thing is how much money I have access to in our budget/ could access by making the right case to OP (and what it would be spent on otherwise). I’ve also never really understood how individual willingness to pay is a good signal when people have wildly different resources available to them. Could be a useful benchmark.
You can ask the subscribers which fraction of their net annual income they would be willing to spend to get an annual subscription of the EA newsletter, multiply the mean fraction across the surveyed subscribers by the number of subscribers to get the total value of the newsletter in terms of doublings of net income, and divide this by 2 doublings of net income per DALY averted to get the impact of the newsletter in terms of averted DALYs. Then you could divide this impact by the cost to get the cost-effectiveness in DALY averted per $, and compare with the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities of around 0.01 DALY/$.
Another point on that—I don’t trust myself when it comes to valuing things monetarily. I’d never pay for social media or a newsletter, because it just isn’t something I’m used to (I’m used to them being free), but if I actually calculate the time I’m spending on social media/ newsletters I count as a valuable use of time, and use something like this to calculate the value of my time, I get surprisingly high figure.
I wonder whether people are sometimes thinking about the total instead of marginal value. I would pay for additional/marginal air because I can get air for free, but I still get lots of value from air, and would pay a lot to keep what I have relative to having nothing. Similarly, you may not mind losing access to a single newsletter due to the other abundant online content you can continue to check for free. The marginal value is what matters from the perspective of assessing counterfactual impact. The product between one’s net hourly rate, and the time checking a newsletter would only be a good way of estimating its additional impact if the alternative to checking the newsletter had no value, which is not the realistic counterfactual.
This is a good question—I should prioritise comparing these. I do expect that some of those programs (and possibly the EA opportunities board) are cheaper per click, and have a higher intent audience. The EA Newsletter hasn’t been optimised for job clicks (and probably shouldn’t be). I’ve been a bit bottlenecked by what I can most easily measure.
I also expect job boards to have more clicks per $.
Also also—this isn’t included in the post but 70% of clicks on the newsletter go towards content links, i.e. articles, podcasts, videos etc… which are great resources on something EAs care about, but don’t have clear CTAs. I’m not sure how to measure the value of this yet—but in surveys, many of the responses show people changing their minds/ plans because of content they read in the newsletter. Seems likely this is a very important part of the newsletter’s impact, but currently it counts for 0 in my impact-weighted-clicks metric.
“I would ask current subscribers how much they would be willing to pay in order to maintain their subscription.”
That’s interesting! I could definitely give that a go. I think that might be a bit off though because the more relevant thing is how much money I have access to in our budget/ could access by making the right case to OP (and what it would be spent on otherwise). I’ve also never really understood how individual willingness to pay is a good signal when people have wildly different resources available to them. Could be a useful benchmark.
Another point on that—I don’t trust myself when it comes to valuing things monetarily. I’d never pay for social media or a newsletter, because it just isn’t something I’m used to (I’m used to them being free), but if I actually calculate the time I’m spending on social media/ newsletters I count as a valuable use of time, and use something like this to calculate the value of my time, I get surprisingly high figure.
Fair point on click-rates!
“How does your 0.167 impact-weighted-click/$ (= 1⁄6) compare with the clicks per $ regarding 80 k’s, Animal Advocacy Career’s, and Probably Good’s job boards?”
This is a good question—I should prioritise comparing these. I do expect that some of those programs (and possibly the EA opportunities board) are cheaper per click, and have a higher intent audience. The EA Newsletter hasn’t been optimised for job clicks (and probably shouldn’t be). I’ve been a bit bottlenecked by what I can most easily measure.
Thanks, Toby!
You can ask the subscribers which fraction of their net annual income they would be willing to spend to get an annual subscription of the EA newsletter, multiply the mean fraction across the surveyed subscribers by the number of subscribers to get the total value of the newsletter in terms of doublings of net income, and divide this by 2 doublings of net income per DALY averted to get the impact of the newsletter in terms of averted DALYs. Then you could divide this impact by the cost to get the cost-effectiveness in DALY averted per $, and compare with the cost-effectiveness of GiveWell’s top charities of around 0.01 DALY/$.
I wonder whether people are sometimes thinking about the total instead of marginal value. I would pay for additional/marginal air because I can get air for free, but I still get lots of value from air, and would pay a lot to keep what I have relative to having nothing. Similarly, you may not mind losing access to a single newsletter due to the other abundant online content you can continue to check for free. The marginal value is what matters from the perspective of assessing counterfactual impact. The product between one’s net hourly rate, and the time checking a newsletter would only be a good way of estimating its additional impact if the alternative to checking the newsletter had no value, which is not the realistic counterfactual.
I also expect job boards to have more clicks per $.
Also also—this isn’t included in the post but 70% of clicks on the newsletter go towards content links, i.e. articles, podcasts, videos etc… which are great resources on something EAs care about, but don’t have clear CTAs. I’m not sure how to measure the value of this yet—but in surveys, many of the responses show people changing their minds/ plans because of content they read in the newsletter. Seems likely this is a very important part of the newsletter’s impact, but currently it counts for 0 in my impact-weighted-clicks metric.