4 ms·

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host,

by Kye 6y ago

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

rchaud 6y ago
It's Medium.com all over again. Sharecropping on someone else's platform. It gets you exposure at first, and some level of trust; back in 2012/13 when Medium was new, the content was pretty high quality. Now, it's a wasteland of "here's my two cents on something that has been covered in far more detail elsewhere" type blogspam. The same with happen with Substack. They need to grow, just like every other VC-funded startup. An inevitable decline in quality will result.
- davis 6y ago
  It really is the irony of entire Substack platform: the inspiration of it is Stratechery yet one of Ben Thompson's most consistent themes (aggregation theory) makes it clear how precarious of a situation it can be when you rely on another company for your audience reach and when it comes to establishing a brand. Granted, I do think Substack is more of a platform than an aggregator compared to Facebook. But people that want to hop on Substack just need to know that you are (as of now) going to be sharing your brand with Substack and also that you will be at the whim of their feature development and what their roadmap looks like. They raised their Series A a year ago but their progress with site features has been... well, underwhelming.
  - RNCTX 6y ago
    > but their progress with site features has been... well, underwhelming. As is Patreon, as well. Their website is slow and a pain to use. They just stopped publishing direct, hard links to S3 in subscription RSS feeds late last year or early this year (I forget which). They don't support generating per-user or per-timeframe affiliate/coupon URLs, despite suggesting that to their users as a paid content option. Ghost made a big deal in comments on this site awhile back about "how much work" was put into integrating with Patreon in regard to generating password-less links, but really... Patreon generates password-less links already, as do a hundred email marketing apps, not rocket science. It'd take someone about 5 seconds to find a Django tutorial explaining how to generate one-time links on youtube, I would wager. All of these platforms suffer more from their founders trying to be what they're not to some degree, in my opinion. A marketing platform run by people who aren't experienced in marketing isn't going to do well. Why do we expect that a publishing platform run by a journalist or an artist is going to do well?
cjbest 6y ago
Substack founder here. You might be surprised at the relative importance of the mailing list. You also have your own Stripe account on Substack. That said, it’s a fair point, and I understand wanting to wait until we support it.
- edouard-harris 6y ago
  Interesting. My own speculation had been that giving Substack creators their own domains wouldn't necessarily be in the creators' interest as a group, because of things like e.g. Apple's policy with respect to blocking third-party cookies. Keeping everything on substack.com means there's less friction when a user signs up for their second (or N + 1th) newsletter, which surely implies more revenue for creators in the aggregate.
elicash 6y ago
Self-hosting ghost.org may be a better solution, given their recent email and membership features. Could also use the substation theme: https://substation.rdnthemes.com https://substation.rdnthemes.com
iuguy 6y ago
I set up Tales From The Dork Web[1] on Substack because I wanted somewhere to write non-commercially, and Medium was a cess-pit. I fully expect one day for Substack to end up like Medium, but having spoken to quite a few of the people there on all kinds of matters, they're fighting against it really hard. When the inevitable does happen, I'll take Tales From The Dork Web elsewhere. Until then, It's the first non self-hosted platform I've used for writing that I'm actually ok with, and I'm pretty functionally paranoid. [1] - https://thedorkweb.substack.com/ https://thedorkweb.substack.com/

by Kye 6y ago

rchaud 6y ago

It's Medium.com all over again. Sharecropping on someone else's platform. It gets you exposure at first, and some level of trust; back in 2012/13 when Medium was new, the content was pretty high quality. Now, it's a wasteland of "here's my two cents on something that has been covered in far more detail elsewhere" type blogspam. The same with happen with Substack. They need to grow, just like every other VC-funded startup. An inevitable decline in quality will result.

davis 6y ago
It really is the irony of entire Substack platform: the inspiration of it is Stratechery yet one of Ben Thompson's most consistent themes (aggregation theory) makes it clear how precarious of a situation it can be when you rely on another company for your audience reach and when it comes to establishing a brand. Granted, I do think Substack is more of a platform than an aggregator compared to Facebook. But people that want to hop on Substack just need to know that you are (as of now) going to be sharing your brand with Substack and also that you will be at the whim of their feature development and what their roadmap looks like. They raised their Series A a year ago but their progress with site features has been... well, underwhelming.
- RNCTX 6y ago
  > but their progress with site features has been... well, underwhelming. As is Patreon, as well. Their website is slow and a pain to use. They just stopped publishing direct, hard links to S3 in subscription RSS feeds late last year or early this year (I forget which). They don't support generating per-user or per-timeframe affiliate/coupon URLs, despite suggesting that to their users as a paid content option. Ghost made a big deal in comments on this site awhile back about "how much work" was put into integrating with Patreon in regard to generating password-less links, but really... Patreon generates password-less links already, as do a hundred email marketing apps, not rocket science. It'd take someone about 5 seconds to find a Django tutorial explaining how to generate one-time links on youtube, I would wager. All of these platforms suffer more from their founders trying to be what they're not to some degree, in my opinion. A marketing platform run by people who aren't experienced in marketing isn't going to do well. Why do we expect that a publishing platform run by a journalist or an artist is going to do well?

cjbest 6y ago

Substack founder here. You might be surprised at the relative importance of the mailing list. You also have your own Stripe account on Substack. That said, it’s a fair point, and I understand wanting to wait until we support it.

edouard-harris 6y ago
Interesting. My own speculation had been that giving Substack creators their own domains wouldn't necessarily be in the creators' interest as a group, because of things like e.g. Apple's policy with respect to blocking third-party cookies. Keeping everything on substack.com means there's less friction when a user signs up for their second (or N + 1th) newsletter, which surely implies more revenue for creators in the aggregate.

elicash 6y ago

Self-hosting ghost.org may be a better solution, given their recent email and membership features. Could also use the substation theme: https://substation.rdnthemes.com https://substation.rdnthemes.com

iuguy 6y ago

I set up Tales From The Dork Web[1] on Substack because I wanted somewhere to write non-commercially, and Medium was a cess-pit. I fully expect one day for Substack to end up like Medium, but having spoken to quite a few of the people there on all kinds of matters, they're fighting against it really hard. When the inevitable does happen, I'll take Tales From The Dork Web elsewhere. Until then, It's the first non self-hosted platform I've used for writing that I'm actually ok with, and I'm pretty functionally paranoid. [1] - https://thedorkweb.substack.com/ https://thedorkweb.substack.com/