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Substack — Paid email newsletters made simple
Substack makes it simple for a writer to start a paid or free newsletter. Writers get a CMS built for publishing email newsletters, integrated payments through Stripe, and a website that can host free and subscriber-only content.
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I've hosted workfutures.org on Substack, after experience with Patreon and Steady. A great experience so far, a month in.
Pros:Easy to set up/use, responsive team
Cons:Single tier of subscriptions
@hamishmckenzie I love this idea of "social media incentive structures were increasingly encouraging content that stoked outrage and sensationalism, making it hard for people to have reasonable conversations with each other. We wanted to build something that provided a better way for writers to get paid, and for readers to have quality reading experiences."
I have used Wordpress and other CMS systems for newsletters. Nothing compares to how simple it is too create and send content. I used to spend 20-40% of my time on back-end work that is now taken care of.
Not to mention page load times are as fast as I've seen. Which is important when you are trying to get people to your website from Facebook and other social channels.
Really cool project, excited to watch it develop!
Curious what you guys are seeing in terms of at what point it makes sense for someone to launch a paid newsletter.
I.e. Are there any metrics/rules of thumb for when it makes sense to switch from platform/audience/brand building with free content to adding a subscription model?
@taylorpearsonme So far there's no rule of thumb, but the one non-negotiable is that your free newsletter should have a hard core following of at least a few devotees who *love* it. If your niche is valuable enough, you don't need many people paying you, say, $10 a month for the finances to become really interesting. If you have several thousand free subscribers and open rates north of 40%, we think it's worth adding a paid element so that the readers who care most about you have an option to join a kind of insider's club. Most will be grateful for the opportunity to pay for the person/thing that is bringing such value to their lives.
Really awesome to see this take flight. A lot of great content taking life through Substack - huge fan already of Mixtape and the Second Arrangement. Great work @hamishmckenzie and @cjgbest
@cjgbest @jalrobinson That's awesome to hear, James. We love Mixtape and The Second Arrangement, too. Long live Steely Dan!
We need to introduce ourselves! I'm Hamish McKenzie, a journalist who has wandered through a couple tech companies (Tesla, Kik). Chris was the technical co-founder of Kik. We're both fans of Ben Thompson's Stratechery newsletter, and we wondered what it would be like if it were easier for writers to do something like that. So now, instead of wrangling a bunch of different tools like Thompson did to start Stratechery, writers can just use Substack as a simple, all-in-one solution to do paid newsletters. At a time when social media has distorted the incentives for media, we think the Substack model offers a better way forward for writers and readers.
Thanks for hunting @katmanalac, this is a pretty neat innovation @hamishmckenzie I notice more and more entrepreneurs starting with a community first approach and tools like this help monetization happen quicker -- what led you to build this?
@katmanalac @abadesi Thanks! Basically, Chris and I were sad that social media incentive structures were increasingly encouraging content that stoked outrage and sensationalism, making it hard for people to have reasonable conversations with each other. We wanted to build something that provided a better way for writers to get paid, and for readers to have quality reading experiences. We love the idea that readers pay not so much for content but for relationships with the writers they love and the community around them.
Good to see Substack getting featured on PH, I was keeping tab on Substack since it was showcased on TechCrunch. I would like to know whether it still has Subscription paywall (Membership area) or it's discontinued
@tahaqadri Thanks! We definitely still support membership areas for every publication - the author just needs to link a Stripe account and they can set it up.
A couple examples:
- Shatner Chatner: https://www.shatnerchatner.com/m...
- Versioning: https://versioning.substack.com/...
- Griefbacon: https://griefbacon.substack.com/...
That said, we've found that the best way to have a subscription newsletter is to start with a lot of dedicated readers of a free newsletter, so we support starting out without a paywall if you'd like.
Whilst I think Substack makes it super easy to have a paid newsletter. I'm still super shocked that they don't have an API.
The challenge is that my visitors currently have to go to another page to subscribe. Substack is meant to be supporting creatives with building email lists who also want to increase subscribers. The added friction to users of having to wait for another page to load, is annoying and will hurt conversions.
The embed form you have is an iFrame and is limited. I would prefer to use a native form and pass information to Substack
Great idea, disappointing company and poorly executed/lack of communication.
Shame, as it could be a great product if they replied to support emails from people who want to use it.
Once I convert my existing Substack newsletter (which I am offering for free) as paid then what exactly happens ?
Is the newsletter sent only to paid subscribers? Can I choose while publishing whether it is for all users or only for paid users ? How do I continue to keep email subscription open for all and some content for paid subscribers?
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