5 ms·

The time it takes to run a paid newsletter

92 points by exolymph 6y ago

louisswiss 6y ago
Interesting article, however I'm surprised the author only went into the time it takes them to create content. I run a bootstrapped product called [SparkLoop](https://sparkloop.app https://sparkloop.app) which makes it easy for creators to add a referral program to their newsletter, and by far the biggest (and most annoying) time investment we hear newsletter creators complaining about is marketing, not content creation. For most newsletter creators, marketing takes as much (if not more) time as content creation does!
- Swizec 6y ago
  Can confirm. Have an okay sized mailing list and writing is the fun part. Getting new readers is a slog that I hate doing.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    Not only that, marketing is hard - even for marketers. Even so, if you commit (read: regular schedule) some time to it you'll likely be less overwhelmed / intimidated / discouraged. Set a couple reasonable goals. Work towards those, and only those. There's no magic potion. No magic bullet. No magic nuttin'. That's marketing :)
- iuguy 6y ago
  Bookmarked for later. Will take a look if I move from Substack to Ghost.
jamestimmins 6y ago
This is fascinating because while tools like Substack lower the technical barrier to entry for starting a newsletter, they don't make it easier to create good content. That part is still a grind. On a few occasions I've thought about creating a newsletter on a whim, only to think better of it when I consider how long it would take to create great content.
- pryelluw 6y ago
  The grind will always be there, but can be offloaded to ghost writers. The focus then lies on building the theme of each issue. Which itself is another grind. People dont realize that running a newsltetter is akin to publishing a magazine. They tend to see it more as publishing a blog, but are super wrong. Blogs are suspended in time. Newsletters expire (most do).
- dhimes 6y ago
  The Marshall Memo [1] is one I happily subscribed to for a while. Kim Marshall went through the journals and gave a summary of the research and news most important to educators, weekly. [1] https://marshallmemo.com/ https://marshallmemo.com/
- mrjivraj 6y ago
  You're certainly right. It takes quite a commitment to write a good newsletter. I started writing one last year myself. I have always been passionate about investing. And having grown up working in the tech and venture world, I've always had this theory that approaching stocks like Venture Capital can outperform the market, so I decided to write about it. It's been an interesting journey. Time goes into 4 areas: 1) Research (figuring out what to write about...in my case, investment ideas and philosophy) 2) Writing (developing your writing style, actually putting your thoughts down on paper, and simplifying the topic as much as possible) 3) Outreach (actually finding the people who will find your writing interesting) 4) Discussion (email, dms, zoom calls with readers can be insightful, fun and motivating, but take time as well) That's in addition to a full time job (if you do it on the side). Best of Luck if you decide to start one :) Here's a link to mine: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/ https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/
- ghaff 6y ago
  >how long it would take to create great content And do it on a schedule. In a prior job, for a time, I was responsible for a weekly newsletter we created for a client. Even if you have some flexibility (which we really didn't in this case), sending a newsletter every Tuesday morning (or whatever) through travel, other projects, life, and so forth really got pretty old. I do a lot of writing but it's mostly in the when I have time and inspiration vein.
PatrolX 6y ago
You're better off with "self-hosted" Ghost. https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ I don't understand the obsession with substack. Get on Ghost, run it on your own domain, own the entire asset, and stop paying the substack tax.
- mrjivraj 6y ago
  +1 But it's just so much easier to just get started and try to develop the writing habit. That's the primary objective of someone starting out, I think.
- foxdev 6y ago
  You need a mailing address in the footer of emails in the US and any country with a CAN-SPAM-like law. Substack lets you use their PO box. It's even auto-filled. That adds cost for a self-hosted option unless you want your home address dangling out there or already have a business address.
  - anonAndOn 6y ago
    Small USPS PO boxes are ~$10/mo. Is the convenience of Substack's PO box worth $10/mo?
    - foxdev 6y ago
      You can ask that question up and down the yak shaving continuum and get an infinite number of answers. Is it worth it to me? No. How many people would answer yes? That's the 50 billion dollar question.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The reality for people who own homes is that it's more or less trivial to track down an address in general unless someone has a common name and there aren't obvious clues to their general location online.
    - foxdev 6y ago
Firebrand 6y ago
What’s frustrating about discovering Substack content is I would have no idea Simon Owens wrote about why Patreon’s business model is under threat if I didn’t see this post on HN. I’m unable to come for the topic, and then stay for the author. If I search “Patreon” on Substack I get a bunch of people who moved there from Patreon: https://imgur.com/a/L0qYrUQ https://imgur.com/a/L0qYrUQ What gives? How do I search by topic?
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  From the Substack-related interviews/content I've consumed, it seems like the company is more concerned with tools/support [0] [1] for its creators, before it worries about consumer growth. The idea is that once you have an excess of supply (writers), who are all bringing in their own readers, it's easier to connect the dots for readers to other publications. Whereas if your reader demand outweighs supply, people will not see any value from sticking around. As a writer on the platform[2] itself, I think the general tools/support for the non-Top 20 creators leaves a ton to be desired, so would love to see them step it up in a number of ways if they're really trying to get behind the average writer. [0] https://on.substack.com/p/announcing-the-next-substack-fellowship https://on.substack.com/p/announcing-the-next-substack-fello... [1]https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers [2]https://pausebutton.substack.com/ https://pausebutton.substack.com/
hammock 6y ago
What are examples of the biggest Substack newsletters? I don't think I've ever encountered one, although I keep hearing more and more about Substack.
- calvano915 6y ago
  I don't know about biggest but Matt Taibbi has been exclusively there for a while.
- mrjivraj 6y ago
  you can see the top ones here https://substack.com/discover https://substack.com/discover
- mukundmohan 6y ago
  There are over 20 newsletters making over 100K according to https://digiday.com/media/how-substack-has-spawned-a-new-class-of-newsletter-entrepreneurs/ https://digiday.com/media/how-substack-has-spawned-a-new-cla... The article also has a list of about 5-10 of them including a) Hell World, b) the Dispatch, c) Superorganizers (Part of Everything bundle), etc.
iuguy 6y ago
I've been running Tales From The Dork Web (https://thedorkweb.substack.com/ https://thedorkweb.substack.com/) since January on Substack. In some respects TFTDW is a bit like Tedium. So far it's been a pretty good experience, but I keep expecting the day to come when it turns into Medium.
MaximumMadness 6y ago
I've been writing about the world of gaming via Substack for the last year or so (https://pausebutton.substack.com/ https://pausebutton.substack.com/) for somewhat sizable audience, and this is a particularly accurate breakdown. Links/Round-ups = retention. They make sure your brand stays top of mind for folks, but very rarely are they the thing that makes new subscribers come in. The tradeoff is that this is way more time-efficient that writing your own long-form. New Long-form Content = Growth. The long-form stuff takes us 10x the time to write, but is consistently responsible for the increase in audience size. If you're going full-time, this is the place to invest. Particularly because Substack is so bad at reader Discovery, you need to invest in getting people onto your publication in your own way (original content), because Substack only really helps the biggest creators drive traffic. It's why the I think the idea of bundling is going to be so big with newsletters, akin to how traditional newspapers started through a bunch of independent writers coming together. Eventually producing new long-form stuff wont be able to drive sustained growth and there's a cap on how much content a single person can put out.
aaron695 6y ago
If Substack is getting meta it's not a good sign. The top stories on Steemit were constantly meta. That said, I met a digital nomad who wrote for Steemit, he figured out the cheapest place to work was in a sauna/spa. Steemit sure created interesting people and I'm sure he just pivoted. Assuming Steemit has collapsed, maybe it's still going strong.
archibaldJ 6y ago
Glad to see more writers & content creators starting small businesses like this! I’ve been working on a set of podcast and vlog pre&post-production toolkits as well as an invite-only virtual event/work space creation & live-streaming platform (http://lo.fish http://lo.fish) for independent creatives/writers/publishers/etc to organize online events & interviews ads-free, in a highly-customizable 2d setting and with a more friendly price point vs services like Zoom. We are going public beta next week! For any hn reader who would like to grab an early-access sign-up code just drop me an email at a@castella.art =)
DigitalSea 6y ago
Substack is amazing, it's like Tumblr meets Medium for newsletters. The UI is quite bare, the publishing tools are quite primitive, but it works so well. The ease of use inspired me to start my own newsletter where I talk about ideas and trends, I called it The Ideas Digest (https://theideasdigest.substack.com/ https://theideasdigest.substack.com/). Admittedly, I've been going for barely a week now, but I've got a months worth of content already in the pipeline that I am working on and I am hopeful in the future that I can grow it into something I can make a little side income from. Not having to manage my own infrastructure is highly motivating, to be honest. The thing is, I am a developer and more than capable of getting something like Wordpress setup and self-hosting my own Substack type newsletter, but it just seemed like a waste of time, especially for an idea I wasn't even sure I could pull off or people would be interested in. But, I am surprising myself and although I didn't have a preexisting mailing list, I've got a few subscribers now with almost zero marketing. I see the value in no-code solutions like Substack that cater to specific niches like newsletters. The struggle for me is long-form content writing usually comes natural to me, but given Substack is newsletter-focused, I feel like I need to not go too overboard with the word count. I know long-form content gets social shares and whatnot, but I feel like Substack is more of a private network type of thing where people are emailed content. I would be interested in knowing if any research has found what the ideal content length should be for Substack specifically.
pembrook 6y ago
I understand why journalists are starting newsletters en masse, but I think most people in tech are going about newsletters the wrong way. Instead of trying to start a media business (which is by nature, a low margin slog, save for a few B2B markets), why not use the newsletter as lead gen for a much more lucrative business like Saas or Courses or high end consulting? In which case substack is not a great platform for you, given they provide zero SEO value for your domain. Like with Medium, when you write on substack and share your content, you’re growing substack’s backlinks and authority. Not your own. The newsletter being the product itself is only going to work for a very tiny group of writers in the end. If you’re not writing about a niche business topic, or don’t already have a massive audience, forget about it. Remember, Bloomberg created the media company as a distribution channel for selling their terminal (one of the most profitable SaaS businesses on earth). Not the other way around.
amelius 6y ago
> The time it takes to run a paid newsletter Isn't that about 40-60hrs/wk, like everything we do for a living? † † Except for Elon Musk.

92 points by exolymph 6y ago

Interesting article, however I'm surprised the author only went into the time it takes them to create content. I run a bootstrapped product called [SparkLoop](https://sparkloop.app https://sparkloop.app) which makes it easy for creators to add a referral program to their newsletter, and by far the biggest (and most annoying) time investment we hear newsletter creators complaining about is marketing, not content creation. For most newsletter creators, marketing takes as much (if not more) time as content creation does!

Swizec 6y ago
Can confirm. Have an okay sized mailing list and writing is the fun part. Getting new readers is a slog that I hate doing.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Not only that, marketing is hard - even for marketers. Even so, if you commit (read: regular schedule) some time to it you'll likely be less overwhelmed / intimidated / discouraged. Set a couple reasonable goals. Work towards those, and only those. There's no magic potion. No magic bullet. No magic nuttin'. That's marketing :)
iuguy 6y ago
Bookmarked for later. Will take a look if I move from Substack to Ghost.

jamestimmins 6y ago

This is fascinating because while tools like Substack lower the technical barrier to entry for starting a newsletter, they don't make it easier to create good content. That part is still a grind. On a few occasions I've thought about creating a newsletter on a whim, only to think better of it when I consider how long it would take to create great content.

pryelluw 6y ago
The grind will always be there, but can be offloaded to ghost writers. The focus then lies on building the theme of each issue. Which itself is another grind. People dont realize that running a newsltetter is akin to publishing a magazine. They tend to see it more as publishing a blog, but are super wrong. Blogs are suspended in time. Newsletters expire (most do).
dhimes 6y ago
The Marshall Memo [1] is one I happily subscribed to for a while. Kim Marshall went through the journals and gave a summary of the research and news most important to educators, weekly. [1] https://marshallmemo.com/ https://marshallmemo.com/
mrjivraj 6y ago
You're certainly right. It takes quite a commitment to write a good newsletter. I started writing one last year myself. I have always been passionate about investing. And having grown up working in the tech and venture world, I've always had this theory that approaching stocks like Venture Capital can outperform the market, so I decided to write about it. It's been an interesting journey. Time goes into 4 areas: 1) Research (figuring out what to write about...in my case, investment ideas and philosophy) 2) Writing (developing your writing style, actually putting your thoughts down on paper, and simplifying the topic as much as possible) 3) Outreach (actually finding the people who will find your writing interesting) 4) Discussion (email, dms, zoom calls with readers can be insightful, fun and motivating, but take time as well) That's in addition to a full time job (if you do it on the side). Best of Luck if you decide to start one :) Here's a link to mine: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/ https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/
ghaff 6y ago
>how long it would take to create great content And do it on a schedule. In a prior job, for a time, I was responsible for a weekly newsletter we created for a client. Even if you have some flexibility (which we really didn't in this case), sending a newsletter every Tuesday morning (or whatever) through travel, other projects, life, and so forth really got pretty old. I do a lot of writing but it's mostly in the when I have time and inspiration vein.

PatrolX 6y ago

You're better off with "self-hosted" Ghost. https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ I don't understand the obsession with substack. Get on Ghost, run it on your own domain, own the entire asset, and stop paying the substack tax.

mrjivraj 6y ago
+1 But it's just so much easier to just get started and try to develop the writing habit. That's the primary objective of someone starting out, I think.
foxdev 6y ago
You need a mailing address in the footer of emails in the US and any country with a CAN-SPAM-like law. Substack lets you use their PO box. It's even auto-filled. That adds cost for a self-hosted option unless you want your home address dangling out there or already have a business address.
- anonAndOn 6y ago
  Small USPS PO boxes are ~$10/mo. Is the convenience of Substack's PO box worth $10/mo?
  - foxdev 6y ago
    You can ask that question up and down the yak shaving continuum and get an infinite number of answers. Is it worth it to me? No. How many people would answer yes? That's the 50 billion dollar question.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The reality for people who own homes is that it's more or less trivial to track down an address in general unless someone has a common name and there aren't obvious clues to their general location online.
  - foxdev 6y ago

Firebrand 6y ago

What’s frustrating about discovering Substack content is I would have no idea Simon Owens wrote about why Patreon’s business model is under threat if I didn’t see this post on HN. I’m unable to come for the topic, and then stay for the author. If I search “Patreon” on Substack I get a bunch of people who moved there from Patreon: https://imgur.com/a/L0qYrUQ https://imgur.com/a/L0qYrUQ What gives? How do I search by topic?

MaximumMadness 6y ago
From the Substack-related interviews/content I've consumed, it seems like the company is more concerned with tools/support [0] [1] for its creators, before it worries about consumer growth. The idea is that once you have an excess of supply (writers), who are all bringing in their own readers, it's easier to connect the dots for readers to other publications. Whereas if your reader demand outweighs supply, people will not see any value from sticking around. As a writer on the platform[2] itself, I think the general tools/support for the non-Top 20 creators leaves a ton to be desired, so would love to see them step it up in a number of ways if they're really trying to get behind the average writer. [0] https://on.substack.com/p/announcing-the-next-substack-fellowship https://on.substack.com/p/announcing-the-next-substack-fello... [1]https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers [2]https://pausebutton.substack.com/ https://pausebutton.substack.com/

hammock 6y ago

What are examples of the biggest Substack newsletters? I don't think I've ever encountered one, although I keep hearing more and more about Substack.

calvano915 6y ago
I don't know about biggest but Matt Taibbi has been exclusively there for a while.
mrjivraj 6y ago
you can see the top ones here https://substack.com/discover https://substack.com/discover
mukundmohan 6y ago
There are over 20 newsletters making over 100K according to https://digiday.com/media/how-substack-has-spawned-a-new-class-of-newsletter-entrepreneurs/ https://digiday.com/media/how-substack-has-spawned-a-new-cla... The article also has a list of about 5-10 of them including a) Hell World, b) the Dispatch, c) Superorganizers (Part of Everything bundle), etc.

iuguy 6y ago

I've been running Tales From The Dork Web (https://thedorkweb.substack.com/ https://thedorkweb.substack.com/) since January on Substack. In some respects TFTDW is a bit like Tedium. So far it's been a pretty good experience, but I keep expecting the day to come when it turns into Medium.

MaximumMadness 6y ago

I've been writing about the world of gaming via Substack for the last year or so (https://pausebutton.substack.com/ https://pausebutton.substack.com/) for somewhat sizable audience, and this is a particularly accurate breakdown. Links/Round-ups = retention. They make sure your brand stays top of mind for folks, but very rarely are they the thing that makes new subscribers come in. The tradeoff is that this is way more time-efficient that writing your own long-form. New Long-form Content = Growth. The long-form stuff takes us 10x the time to write, but is consistently responsible for the increase in audience size. If you're going full-time, this is the place to invest. Particularly because Substack is so bad at reader Discovery, you need to invest in getting people onto your publication in your own way (original content), because Substack only really helps the biggest creators drive traffic. It's why the I think the idea of bundling is going to be so big with newsletters, akin to how traditional newspapers started through a bunch of independent writers coming together. Eventually producing new long-form stuff wont be able to drive sustained growth and there's a cap on how much content a single person can put out.

aaron695 6y ago

If Substack is getting meta it's not a good sign. The top stories on Steemit were constantly meta. That said, I met a digital nomad who wrote for Steemit, he figured out the cheapest place to work was in a sauna/spa. Steemit sure created interesting people and I'm sure he just pivoted. Assuming Steemit has collapsed, maybe it's still going strong.

archibaldJ 6y ago

Glad to see more writers & content creators starting small businesses like this! I’ve been working on a set of podcast and vlog pre&post-production toolkits as well as an invite-only virtual event/work space creation & live-streaming platform (http://lo.fish http://lo.fish) for independent creatives/writers/publishers/etc to organize online events & interviews ads-free, in a highly-customizable 2d setting and with a more friendly price point vs services like Zoom. We are going public beta next week! For any hn reader who would like to grab an early-access sign-up code just drop me an email at a@castella.art =)

DigitalSea 6y ago

Substack is amazing, it's like Tumblr meets Medium for newsletters. The UI is quite bare, the publishing tools are quite primitive, but it works so well. The ease of use inspired me to start my own newsletter where I talk about ideas and trends, I called it The Ideas Digest (https://theideasdigest.substack.com/ https://theideasdigest.substack.com/). Admittedly, I've been going for barely a week now, but I've got a months worth of content already in the pipeline that I am working on and I am hopeful in the future that I can grow it into something I can make a little side income from. Not having to manage my own infrastructure is highly motivating, to be honest. The thing is, I am a developer and more than capable of getting something like Wordpress setup and self-hosting my own Substack type newsletter, but it just seemed like a waste of time, especially for an idea I wasn't even sure I could pull off or people would be interested in. But, I am surprising myself and although I didn't have a preexisting mailing list, I've got a few subscribers now with almost zero marketing. I see the value in no-code solutions like Substack that cater to specific niches like newsletters. The struggle for me is long-form content writing usually comes natural to me, but given Substack is newsletter-focused, I feel like I need to not go too overboard with the word count. I know long-form content gets social shares and whatnot, but I feel like Substack is more of a private network type of thing where people are emailed content. I would be interested in knowing if any research has found what the ideal content length should be for Substack specifically.

pembrook 6y ago

I understand why journalists are starting newsletters en masse, but I think most people in tech are going about newsletters the wrong way. Instead of trying to start a media business (which is by nature, a low margin slog, save for a few B2B markets), why not use the newsletter as lead gen for a much more lucrative business like Saas or Courses or high end consulting? In which case substack is not a great platform for you, given they provide zero SEO value for your domain. Like with Medium, when you write on substack and share your content, you’re growing substack’s backlinks and authority. Not your own. The newsletter being the product itself is only going to work for a very tiny group of writers in the end. If you’re not writing about a niche business topic, or don’t already have a massive audience, forget about it. Remember, Bloomberg created the media company as a distribution channel for selling their terminal (one of the most profitable SaaS businesses on earth). Not the other way around.

amelius 6y ago

> The time it takes to run a paid newsletter Isn't that about 40-60hrs/wk, like everything we do for a living? † † Except for Elon Musk.