Wednesday, November 4, 2026
In today's issue
The news: Fiverr lost about a quarter of its buyers in a year
The Quiet Solution: beehiiv: a free email list you can take with you
Advantage Introverts: Cal Newport on why good work gets found
Try this: A 15-minute door of your own
Marketplaces look like the quiet way in. No pitching, no calls: buyers search, find your listing and pay. Fiverr's new numbers show the catch.
Today: those numbers, a talk on why good work gets found without a personal brand, and a free way to own the line between you and your buyers.
Quiet Win: the news
Fiverr lost about a quarter of its buyers in a year.
In its third quarter results (Oct 29), Fiverr reported 2.4 million annual active buyers on Sept. 30, down from 3.3 million a year earlier, a 25.8% drop. The buyers who stayed spent more, $373 each on average, up from $330. Fiverr blames AI changing how people search, and says it expects marketplace traffic to keep falling through 2027.
A marketplace can be a fine quiet start, but the traffic belongs to the platform, and it can shrink for reasons that have nothing to do with your work. If one marketplace brings most of your buyers, keep it, and start a second door you own on the side.
The Quiet Solution
beehiiv
Right now, every place people can find you probably belongs to someone else: a marketplace profile, a social account, a platform's search results. You do the work, and the platform decides how many people see it. When its traffic drops or its rules change, your reach drops with it, and you can't even send a note to the people who already liked what you made.
beehiiv gives you an email list you own. You get a free website with a signup form, people who want to hear from you subscribe, and you write to them when you have something worth saying. No feed deciding who sees it, no camera, no posting schedule. Data exports are included on the free plan, so the list goes with you if you ever leave. Full disclosure: this newsletter runs on beehiiv, and this is not an affiliate link.
Free tier: the Free plan is $0 with up to 2,500 subscribers and unlimited email sends. Paid plans start at $59 a month when you want automations or paid subscriptions (checked on beehiiv.com/pricing today).
Advantage Introverts
Quit social media
Dr. Cal Newport · TEDxTysons · 14 min
Cal Newport is a computer scientist and author who says he has never had a social media account. In this talk he takes on a fear a lot of us carry: that without a well-cultivated social media brand, "people won't be able to find me." His answer is that the market rewards work that is rare and valuable, and if you can produce that, "people will find you."
He's blunt about posting, too: "anything a six-year-old with a smartphone can do is not going to be what the market rewards." You don't have to quit anything to take the point. Deep, careful work is the part that gets rewarded, and it's the part quiet people are built for.
You don't owe anyone a personal brand. Do the work well, give people one quiet place to find it, and keep going.
Try this today (15 minutes)
Go to beehiiv, start a free account and create a publication. Give it a plain name that says who it's for, and write a one-sentence description: who it helps and what they'll get. Then copy the link to your publication's website, where the signup form lives, and save it somewhere you'll see it. You don't have to send anything yet. You'll have a door no marketplace or feed controls.
Hit reply
Where do most of your buyers or readers find you right now? Reply with the place, and whether you own it.
Quietly sovereign,
Sterling
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