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Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
- kevin_indig 6y ago2 years ago, I started a newsletter on Mailchimp called Tech Bound and built it out to +3,000 subscribers. 3 months ago, I decided to migrate to Substack. One week ago, I went from Substack to publishing on my own site. In this post, I explain why, what my current stack looks like, and a larger trend that has been in full swing for 2 years.
- freshfey 6y agoThanks for the article! Can you describe how you implemented Memberful + Convertkit? Or did you follow a guide you could share? Thanks!
- iuguy 6y ago+1 for a Memberful and Convertkit how my site works post.
- kevin_indig 6y agoThanks for reading! Memberful integrates directly with ConvertKit, so you don't have to do much besides setting up some list tags in ConvertKit (see here: https://memberful.com/help/third-party-integrations/convertkit/ https://memberful.com/help/third-party-integrations/convertk...).
- jacamera 6y agoGreat read! The problems that you point out with social networks served as the motivation for my co-founder and I to create Readup [1]. We rank articles based on complete reads which slows down the overall pace considerably and cuts out a lot of noise since users cannot post or comment on articles they haven't really read. I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on our proposed business model since it's based on compensating writers when Readup users read their articles to completion. In short, users pay $10/mo to use Readup, we keep $5 and divide the other $5 among the writers whose articles the user has read to completion during that month. You keep your own stack and there's nothing you have to do other than verify a Readup account with us so we know who you are and collect any money earned. Readup users can read your articles using our browser extensions or mobile apps (I just did! [2]). You can view the full pitch [3] on YouTube. [1] https://readup.com https://readup.com [2] https://readup.com/comments/kevin-indig/why-i-left-substack-and-the-email-renaissance https://readup.com/comments/kevin-indig/why-i-left-substack-... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFw-OiK3zjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFw-OiK3zjI
- bgroat 6y agoedit: brackets 40% to 49%) This is such a nitpick, but do the economics work at 40% (or even 49%)? It seems intuitively wrong to me that your value captured is greater than the content creators. If the economics don't work, feel free to instruct me to take a long walk on a short pier
- jacamera 6y agoThe economics very well could work at a different split! We chose a 50/50 split because we estimated that we could grow and survive on $5/mo per user. We're 100% open to shifting that split and plan on making all the economics transparent to users so they know where their money is going, both the cut that we take and how the writer take is split up. We don't want to over-promise on the revenue share at the beginning because we've got 3 key promises that we never want to compromise on but do limit us somewhat financially: - Absolutely no advertising. - Absolutely no selling/sharing of user data, even in aggregate or "anonymized". - Reach profitability ASAP so we don't have to fund raise endlessly and lose control of the company.
- kevin_indig 6y agoI side with @bgroat a bit, the unit economics seem a bit steep. I like the idea of filtering internet content in general for 100% completion. I think there is something there. I'm not sure if the incentive for creators is there, e.i. why would a creator share revenue for fully read articles? I think you found a value-add for the demand-side of the market but not the supply-side. That's something I'd iterate on :).
- jacamera 6y agoThe value-add for the supply-side is that you'd be getting paid when Readup users read your free articles on your own platform (like I just did with this article). We're sharing our revenue with you, not the other way around! Glad you like the completion filter! I've found myself reading articles just so I could leave a comment about how much I disagreed with the headline only to have my mind changed half way through. Taking the time to read really matters!
- monus 6y agoI’d be interested to see if the author will get as much exposure to new potential subscribers without a platform like Substack of Medium promoting it. IMO, it’s always been the community aspect of these platforms that keep the authors locked in rather than the technical difficulties of setting up your own website.
- alexmingoia 6y agoI’d imagine Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and HN would be a bigger top for the funnel than Medium or Substack.
- andreilys 6y agoIf you write for big medium publications you can get a lot of traction. Often they do the promotion for you (newsletters, twitter, etc.). That’s not to mention the medium algo that can pick up on your article and recommend it to others. I’ve had one post reach 100k+ reads, unlikely that would happen on my own site.
- kevin_indig 6y ago> If you write for big medium publications you can get a lot of traction. If you leverage their algorithm cleverly, yes. But you still don't own your content or the platform. You're at the same mercy as on Facebook, Twitter, or Google.
- polote 6y agoSubstack doesn't offer exposition, they barely have a discover page https://substack.com/discover https://substack.com/discover which always show the same newsletters And actually the effect can be negative as, Substack is known to make payment based newsletters, people could avoid those links
- skohan 6y agoAs a consumer, I actually think this approach is great. I think a lot of the issues platforms deal with in terms of making hard decisions around content standards comes down to the fact that they put things in front of the user, and therefore have some responsibility for what you see. I think the only way you can really have a true "free speech" platform is to make it entirely self-serve. As soon as there is algorithmic content discovery, bad actors will attempt to game it to get their ideas in front of people.
- tinyhouse 6y agoI'm surprised Substack's business model is charging ~10% from one's revenue. A fixed pricing would make more sense. Why would anyone who is planning on profiting from their newsletter would go with a deal like that? Building a newsletter site these days is a pretty simple task with many no code solutions. I'm not saying what Substack provides is not worth paying for, just that it's a bad deal for people with successful newsletters that generate money, and a good deal for everyone else. But the former users are the ones Substack need in order to make money.
- Angostura 6y ago% fees are very attractive to people who are starting small or experimental and have no real idea as to whether the idea will take off. It’s and automated, easy to understand freemium model.
- tinyhouse 6y agoThat's the catch. It's easy to start and experiment. But as you grow bigger you start realizing it's a bad deal so may start looking for alternatives. That's bad for Substack since why would you like your most successful users to be unhappy? A better model IMHO would be a fixed tiered price based on the number of subscribers you have, similarly to how most email providers' business model work. For most users it wouldn't be cheaper than 10%, but for the top X of users it would. Having a fixed cost you can plan in advance for is more attractive IMHO.
- swyx 6y agoyou say this but there are dozens of people running million+ dollar substacks with no plans to leave. this market is huge, writers really don't like to futz around with tech as much as we do
- Dowwie 6y agoThey're charging "ad valorem" -- relative to the value received. The value that a Substack user with 4000 subscribers receives isn't the same as what someone with 50 subscribers receives. This is a very common fee structure that exists across industries.
- cally 6y ago"I’m one of a few that saw the power of RSS, which is now coming back in the shape of podcasts" I don't think the rise of podcasts is massively due to RSS. I think it's because of the low cost / high creativity balance of the format, where the format uses RSS.
- kevin_indig 6y agoRSS is not the only reason but enabled, for example, Apple to create a platform for podcasts.
- toyg 6y agoIt's somewhat ironic that podcasts have effectively outlived the two technologies they were based on (rss and iPods). Accidents of history and all that...
- JoelMcCracken 6y agoSame reason we call our pocket computers with voice chat "phones"
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoNot ironic at all. All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user.
- kevin_indig 6y ago> All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user. I think it matters for the creators, though.
- magnio 6y agoYeah tell that to the music industry.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoMusic oligopoly, you mean?
- gramakri 6y agoWhy is it that one cannot export content from substack?
- kevin_indig 6y agoI dunno. There's no feature.
- jetgirl 6y agoGood for you. I quit using tinyletter after two years, switched to substack and quit that last week. https://jetgirl.art/2020/06/27/going-back-to-blogging/ https://jetgirl.art/2020/06/27/going-back-to-blogging/
- tbran 6y agoI'm planning to launch a newsletter soon for a site I own that gets a moderately decent amount of traffic. Here is a snippet of some handy things I've found: The cost of sending email is a lot on some platforms (Mailchimp is $30/month for 2500 subscribers and $50/month for 5000 subs), but a lot cheaper with Mailgun or Amazon SES. Sendy [0] and Mailcoach [1] are both self-hosted newsletter sending apps that use Mailgun/SES if you want to DIY. There is a handy blog post [2] from the creator of cron.weekly on his newsletter workflow. Don't put "weekly" in the newsletter name because then you're really setting that weekly expectation. At some point, you might not want to be publishing weekly unless you've got some serious automation happening. There are some interesting ideas on newsletter businesses on gaps.com [3]. A year ago I thought that a newsletter should link to my own content. But now? Many, many newsletters are link aggregators. [0] https://sendy.co/ https://sendy.co/ [1] https://mailcoach.app/ https://mailcoach.app/ [2] https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-cron-weekly-newsletter/ https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-cron-weekly-newsletter/ [3] https://gaps.com/six-figure-newsletter/ https://gaps.com/six-figure-newsletter/
- drchopchop 6y agoNote: do not attempt to use something a low-level as SES to send newsletters unless you understand all the plumbing that has to be built around it (unsubscribe/opt-out, bounce handling, click tracking, IP pools, DKIM/SPF, etc). This especially applies if your list is low-quality or old.
- whycombagator 6y agoFor SES there is also this repo from freecodecamp[0]. And also Moon Mail[1][2]. I am sure there are more too. For a paid, non SES, option I personally like SendGrid[3] more than Mailgun. [0] https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good [1] https://moonmail.io/ https://moonmail.io/ [2] https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail https://github.com/MoonMail/MoonMail [3] https://sendgrid.com/ https://sendgrid.com/
- MR4D 6y agoThat last link is a helluva read! Thanks for sharing that and the others too.
- dgudkov 6y agoIs there a self-hosted alternative to Substack?
- kevin_indig 6y agoNot that I know beyond the stack I mentioned in my article. Ghost is another one that comes to mind.
- elicash 6y agoGhost.org has membership features and email integration. Could use the substation theme: https://substation.rdnthemes.com https://substation.rdnthemes.com
- aheckler 6y agoYou could use WordPress and some plugins (e.g. WooCommerce + Memberships + Subscriptions) to do it. Disclosure: I work for Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com and WooCommerce.
- Sachaniman 6y agoThe biggest thing for me is canonical URLs. If I'm trying to BUILD an audience, I'm going to write content for free. If I already have a website I post content on, you bet I'm going to keep posting my free content there. Why am I competing with Substack on SEO for my own free content? That's just stupid. Eventually, if I actually get an audience that's willing to pay, I would use Substack to offer that walled garden. Just like Youtube creators offer their free content on Youtube, and paid content through other means like Patreon. Even Medium supports canonical URLs. I'm not sure why Substack isn't satisfied with being the distributor of my content, but also wants to be the home for it.
- kevin_indig 6y agoThat was one of the reasons I decided to go with my own platform. But Substack is not like Medium because it provides less discovery and more of a platform for writers. Medium, on the other hand, is more like an aggregator.
- Sachaniman 6y agoI was glad to see the canonical URL issue mentioned in your post, since that was the main thing bugging me about Substack. Thanks for writing this! When I sent Substack Support an email about the issues of content ownership and canonical URLs in late May this year, I got this response: >On Substack writers own all of their content, but we don't support synchronizing with external website or have external websites as the canonical url. Substack is meant to be the home for individual writers. Sorry about that I love many things about Substack. Chiefly, the user experience of setting up the newsletters, and the iframe embed (though it can be improved) are great. But I hope Substack reconsiders what their idea of being a "home for individual writers" means. Substack shouldn't have to be the source of my content, but rather be the plumbing for it. It seems not supporting custom canonical URLs was a conscious decision to force me to make Substack the source of my content, which is disappointing. I'll have to look into ConvertKit in the meantime.
- musicale 6y ago> you can monitor ad or organic performance with tracking pixels! Use of tracking pixels is not a pro. It is a dark pattern that needs to go away.