Watch Me Work

What does it actually take to build a financially sustainable newsletter from absolute zero, under a pen name?

This page is my public working ledger for Unmarked Bounty. I record the hours I work, what I accomplish, my energy before and after each session, the things that get in my way, subscriber numbers, and what I spend.

I’m interested in what it truly costs in time, money, energy and attention, to build this thing. I update the ledger at least once a week, and sometimes more often.

A note about the data

This is an edited public record, not my complete project journal. Before entries appear here, I lightly edit them to remove private or identifying information, repetition, etc.

I try to preserve the substance of what happened including uncertainty, frustration, wasted time, failed experiments and null results.

This is also one person’s experiment, not a controlled study. My results won’t necessarily predict what will happen for somebody else.

Want to use the template?

You can download a blank Excel version of the Watch Me Work template and adapt it for your own project:

The blank template is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). You’re welcome to use, adapt and share it for non-commercial purposes, provided you credit Unmarked Bounty and link back to this page.

This license applies only to the blank template. It does not apply to the data, written observations or other original content in my live Watch Me Work record.

Are you a researcher?

If you’re a researcher and think this project or dataset could one day be useful for an academic publication, research project or other substantial piece of work, I’d love to hear from you, my email address is here on the Contact page.

Depending on the project, I may be able to make additional material available for research purposes.

I’d be particularly interested in hearing from people working on the creator economy, digital labor, pseudonymous publishing, online identity and privacy, burnout, sustainable work, or related areas.