9 ms·

Launch HN: Substack (YC W18): Paid email newsletters made simple

• amirathi 9y ago
  Neat idea. As a reader, I would also find it useful as a discovery tool for interesting newsletter.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Thanks! That's a great idea, especially now that people can create lots of these. I wonder what would be the ideal format for that? It could give you a list of newsletters and their descriptions, with some popularity signals or something.. It might be better to surface the free content though. Maybe "here are some recent free issues by newsletters you might enjoy." Just thinking out loud...
    • fovc 9y ago
      What if you let authors tag their newsletters with topics and then let readers browse by topic?
      • matchbok 9y ago
        I'm currently building an app for this. Very good idea.
      • cjbest 9y ago
        That’s a great idea. Could help existing readers find things similar to stuff they already like. Thanks!
    • vram22 9y ago
      >I wonder what would be the ideal format for that? Don't start with what might be the ideal format. Think of something, read comments here and in other places you announced this, consider them, and add a feature, then iterate on it based on experience and feedback. But try to be somewhat canonical and orthogonal (not 100%). That often helps, IME. I sometimes see startups missing out on these principles, maybe because of the rush to get something out. My 2c.
    • radley 9y ago
      Take a look at medium.com. I think their homepage is too heavy with content, but is comparable to your biz model.
• jonathanehrlich 9y ago
  This is a great idea.
• onassar 9y ago
  Very cool idea Chris & Hamish A friend of mine runs "what happened last week?" (http://whathappenedlastweek.com/ http://whathappenedlastweek.com/). She's got a journalism and economics background, and has a subscriber list of about 2,800 people, but has been struggling to find a way to monetize it. Would something like that be a good fit for your platform?
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Oh awesome! I see > Stay well-informed about the world each week with clear and concise summaries of important news ... That sounds like an exactly perfect fit for Substack. We've seen that if you have a committed newsletter following (look at open rates and reader comments) that loves it, up to 10% of your list might pay pretty quickly if you just asked them. Depending how they think they could price it could be worth over $1000 month to start. Of course, this depends on the audience etc. If they want to do it, it's a simple as signing up, connecting Stripe, and importing the existing list. They can send out a 'free' post saying that the newsletter is going paid, and it will go to that list, and come baked with calls to action to subscribe and stuff. We've done a couple of these now and would be happy to help. Feel free to point them to 'chris' or 'hamish' at substack.com
    • onassar 9y ago
      Okay great; I'll point her your way. Her name's Sham :)
      • cjbest 9y ago
        Great, thank you. This highlights one of my favorite things about the newsletter format: sometimes it can be worth more to you to get less content. If the goal is to stay informed, a writer that can do it in a shorter, less frequent email adds more value to your life :)
    • vram22 9y ago
      >That sounds like an exactly perfect fit for Substack. We've seen that if you have a committed newsletter following (look at open rates and reader comments) It would be good if you could put a list of supported features on the signup page. As of now I do not see it. Will let signuppers know what they will get. I am going to sign up and try it anyway.
• tkone 9y ago
  The creator of browserify is gonna hate your name
  • benatkin 9y ago
    I wonder if they'll have twitter hand the name over. Twitter certainly isn't above doing that.
• ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  Looks interesting, but 10% is really steep to me. That’s just going to heavily incentivize your most successful users to bail. I run a five figure paid email service and I’m using a membership management service that charges flat fee plus 2%, and it annoys me every month. I’ll be replacing them this year. Membership billing plus a synced email list on Mailchimp is really commodity at this point. Doesn’t make any sense to pay a percentage of revenue. If it was 10%, I’d replace them this week. I may get pushback because there’s a contingent of people on here who basically seem to think that ever worrying about price for software and services is the wrong move. I think that’s pretty stupid when you’re a small company. It’s stupidly easy for a lot of small companies who are paying hundreds or thousands per month in recurring subscriptions to shave 20-30% off. If you’re a solo founder, that’s a huge increase in your personal bottom line. EDIT: I'm probably coming across as too negative here, so let me add a few thoughts: 1. You built something useful, launched it, and have paying customers. That's HUGE and puts you ahead of 99% of "startups" so congrats :) 2. I strongly believe in the power of paid publishing and email marketing (it drives almost 100% of my income these days), and I think more cool tools and platforms in this space is excellent. This is the kind of thing that I would use. My only real issue is just that I think what you're doing with the pricing model is shooting yourself in the foot (since it incentivizes people to switch away) AND it's unfair to users (since switching away is REALLY hard, and you probably know that and are counting on it to some extent). Maybe charge flat + fee up to a cap? It'd be really comforting to know that I'd never pay more than $495 / month for this or something, and that would only be once I hit $10k / month in revenue or whatever.
  • no1youknowz 9y ago
    I'm wondering since you mentioned it. When does it make sense that the 2% is worth it? Or is it in your eyes, that there should never be an extra fee? Have you thought about it from the other perspective? That they are giving you the cheaper price at a cost to themselves, hedging the bet that the 2% will make them whole?
    • radley 9y ago
      > service that charges flat fee plus 2% The 2% is for card charges. The service charges a flat fee, probably tiered based on audience size (delivery requirements).
• raleigh_user 9y ago
  How easy is it to export your subscribers if you do choose to leave? I have a few hundred people on my list and have learned (the hard way)to not migrate without knowing this
  • cjbest 9y ago
    One click. The way we see it, you have a direct trusted relationship with your subscribers. We let you import them so it’s only fair :)
  • ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    The actual hard part when switching from something like this is migrating user accounts (users will be forced to reset their passwords, which is lame), order history, and active subscriptions so that you can seamlessly continue billing your paying users. And at 10%, you're definitely going to want to migrate at some point if you succeed, so keep this in mind.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• radley 9y ago
  I think subdomain user accounts are going to be an issue over the long term.
  • radley 9y ago
    Also, you guys should make a better blacklist for account names. I was able to claim "blog.substack.com". (It's ok to delete that account). https://github.com/marteinn/The-Big-Username-Blacklist https://github.com/marteinn/The-Big-Username-Blacklist
    • cjbest 9y ago
      Ahh thanks. I hope you don’t mind if we boot that one. How do you foresee sub domains being a problem otherwise?
      • radley 9y ago
        SEO will see each account as a separate domain, so your primary site ranking will be low. Further, there's too many ways for user subdomains to be mistaken or conflict with company products and promotions. It's usually best to reserve subdomains for company needs — you never know what you'll need 5-10 years from now.
        • amasad 9y ago
          It's also a potential cross-domain attack vector if you let your users insert arbitrary code. See, for example, why github pages was switched from `.com` to `.io`: https://github.com/blog/1452-new-github-pages-domain-github-io https://github.com/blog/1452-new-github-pages-domain-github-...
          • cjbest 9y ago
            All really good points. Thanks for the feedback.
      • radley 9y ago
• masukomi 9y ago
  i'm not seeing any mention of trials for users. let's assume i'm using this and churning out valuable content every week / day / whatever. Someone hears about my thing and thinks "that sounds nifty. Not sure it's worth $x a month though" I'd want some way for folks to be able to "try before you buy" let them get some specified number of newsletters before the system says "hey, you've been reading this newsletter for Y weeks now but we're at the end of your trial. <compelling message from author> To keep receiving this letter please <initiate payment process>."
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Thanks, that’s a good idea. The way we try to handle that now is by having an option for writers to write free posts - which are visible to anybody, and get emailed to non-paying subscribers. That way you can get a sense of the writing before committing (and regular readers are the ones who subscribe anyway...) You’re right that that doesn’t let you “preview” the paid content though. We’ll think about that.
    • masukomi 9y ago
      yeah, free posts is ok, but with many newsletter topics they can quickly become dated and irrelevant and authors are unlikely to go back and regularly update them if they're also regularly writing a newsletter. overall i really like the idea and i agree with one of the other commenters who says you don't really need many more features.
• danr4 9y ago
  I really like the simplicity of this. I think it doesn't really need more "killer" features. What's the vision in the long run aside from growth?
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Thanks! We’ve had (paying, highly engaged) users report that they like there is nothing to think about. One thing in future that’s really exciting to us is the idea of building community, and using the paid barrier as a way to solve a whole bunch of the problems that normally come with that. Some writers have slacks, and people who follow a niche writer often delight to meet each other. Need to find a way to keep it just as simple though.
• vram22 9y ago
  Always a good idea to mention why the name of the product.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    We are a Stack for Subscription publishing.
    • vram22 9y ago
      Got it now, thanks.
• rokhayakebe 9y ago
  I love this. Anyway one can embed the subscription form in their website? Branding reasons.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Oh that’s a great idea. I will put it on our roadmap. Currently you would need to link to the main page which has a subscribe form, but doing and embedded form would be much better.
• csallen 9y ago
  You should come on Indie Hackers and do an interview in a few months. I'm constantly telling friends to start newsletters. Would love to see how this works out and learn the details behind the scenes wrt to marketing and growth.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Oh we would love that!
• dglass 9y ago
  Looks great! I just signed up and connected my stripe account. After reading the welcome email I tried disconnecting my stripe account from the dashboard so I could start out with a free newsletter. I couldn't figure out how to do it so I ended up revoking access in my stripe dashboard. Now it just says Stripe account: <loading..> on my substack dashboard. I'd like to start writing but I want to be sure that I can connect my stripe account again in the future. Any ideas?
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Ahh that’s a really good point. You may be the first to disconnect Stripe. I will make sure this works. Email me your account details if you’d like. Chris at Substack dot com
• vram22 9y ago
  Consider connecting Substack to other payment providers too, if not now, after you get to some sales and profitability, since Stripe is only available in some countries as of now. This is a common and perennial issue with many startups, whether US-based or other. I'm aware that it can be a lot of work, due to different and complex government regulations and legal paperwork needed for different countries, but it can lead to growth of the startup too.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Thanks, that makes sense. Definitely once we get to a certain size.
  • waytogo 9y ago
    Second this. While I love Stripe's API, Braintree/Paypal driven checkouts have higher conversions just because of Paypal.
• hockeybias 9y ago
  Chris and Hamish, Do you have anyone using Substack for a 'news aggregation' sort of newsletter? I am curious. I have written software that makes it simple for me to curate ice hockey news and place links and article summaries on http://HockeyBias.com http://HockeyBias.com every morning. I have been thinking of providing the data in an email newsletter as well. Thank you.
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Ooh hockey! Curation with commentary can be very valuable. That's a lot of what Bill Bishop does with Sinocism (https://nb.sinocism.com/ https://nb.sinocism.com/) If you can do a roundup that lets people stay up to date in a way they find valuable, it could definitely be a good idea. I'd encourage you to try it as a free newsletter on Substack and see if you can get people reading it regulary!
    • hockeybias 9y ago
      Thank you!
• trevmckendrick 9y ago
  This is the future: https://stratechery.com/2017/the-faceless-publisher/ https://stratechery.com/2017/the-faceless-publisher/
  • cjbest 9y ago
    Thanks, love this. We think Ben Thompson is right about a lot of stuff, and he is definitely a big inspiration.
• shripadk 9y ago
  > in which case we take a fee: 10% for people who start during the beta. Why take a cut from the publisher? Why not instead open up access to the publishers via a marketplace on your site so people/companies can sponsor the mailing lists? You can take a cut from the sponsor for having given the opportunity to introduce them to publisher(s) that cater to their market. It's a win-win-win for the potential sponsors(advertisers), the publishers as well as Substack. As a sponsor, I would have immediate market access through these publishers who cater to my niche. As a publisher, I would have outsourced the task of attracting sponsors and managing sponsor timelines to Substack so I can focus more on creating content and expanding my mailing list. As Substack, you wouldn't have to annoy your publishers by taking a cut and instead carry over your fee to be paid by sponsors/advertisers. A bonus would be allowing your publishers to carry over their existing sponsors to use your system which would possibly attract a huge populace of publishers who are currently manually micro-managing their existing sponsors and timelines instead of focusing on creating content.
  • internet_jockey 9y ago
    Hey, this is Hamish from Substack. Thanks for this! We think this is a great idea and it's certainly something we're considering for the future. But in the meantime, the point of a 10% cut is that it specifically does not annoy publishers. In fact, it aligns our incentives with theirs – we only make money when they make money. When we established Substack, we wanted to get away from an ad model in which publishers had reason to favor ad-centric content strategies over reader-centric ones. We're attempting to create an environment where writers no longer have to worry about doing things that please advertisers. They should be focused only on doing things that please their readers. To us, that's a better way forward for the media. Taking a 10% cut is a substantial ask, but it is one that writers have so far been receptive to.
    • shripadk 9y ago
      Ah sorry! Yes you are right! Now that I re-read your text, I realized I misunderstood your business model. Maybe my suggestion sits well with those who are running free newsletters on Substack (who will have some form of regular income through sponsors). I notice that you are taking a fee from those who are running paid newsletters. That makes complete sense.
• douglascorrea 9y ago
  Hey Cris, I really like your product/idea. I was thought about it year ago when I found https://www.getrevue.co https://www.getrevue.co. Which is a plataform for create a newsletter from curating content from Web. So, if you implement it on Substack, I'm sure it will be huge plus for the product, since multiple influencers could generate more income with their "weekly bookmarks" or something like that.
  • anant90 9y ago
    Revue is awesome! Thanks for making it.
• somberi 9y ago
  Would have liked to see a "gallery" of writing that I can subscribe to. Sort of like how ecommerce platforms have a list of stores that were built on this platform. On a side note, I like how you have written the body of this post. Not to mention a very useful product.
  • internet_jockey 9y ago
    Thank you very much. Yes, good suggestion. We are thinking about how to do something like this. Any ideas?
• phoenix24 9y ago
  congratulations on the launch. I love the fact the product is so minimal at the moment, that it opens doors for real user feedback; I've been wanting to make something similar for a long time now, but was always stuck in the feature loop. would be great, if others could comment on the MVP or Launch Early nature of Substack.
  • internet_jockey 9y ago
    Yes, thank you, we love this feedback. We are trying to keep the product as simple as possible.
• fiatjaf 9y ago
  Honest question: do people actually pay for reading a newsletter?
  • internet_jockey 9y ago
    Fair question. The short answer is "hell yes." We already have writers on Substack making a lot of money with their newsletters. For instance, our first publisher, Bill Bishop, told the WSJ that he's making more money from his newsletter than he ever made from a corporate salary (he's a former exec and serial entrepreneur). Ben Thompson of Stratechery has many thousands of subscribers paying at least $100 a year. We can't share the private data of other publishers, but we have enough info to confidently state, that, yes, many people are happy to pay for newsletters.