6 ms·

What I learned from a year on Substack

105 points by wyclif 5y ago

DantesKite 5y ago
The insight that Discord was helpful for converting subscribers was cool. I feel like these technologies while old, are still nascent in terms of what they’re capable of doing. Like everyone is learning how to become literate with these new tools.
jaredwiener 5y ago
Picking up on a conversation from a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866626 If any newsroom brass is reading this (or reporters thinking of going independent, especially local) -- I'd love to talk. We're building a platform to help monetize journalism outside of the usual predatory social media/aggregator set up, and with more support than Substack. jared (at) nillium (dot) com
- darthvoldemort 5y ago
  I'm skeptical about the idea that Substack has poor support. I just listened to Chuck Palahniuk on Joe Rogan. He still writes on pads of paper, but he said Substack hand-held him and he loved it, and called Substack a "concierge service" and he said he enjoys Substack because it let's him concentrate on writing and not worrying about the tedious parts like formatting, etc.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    All platforms give special treatment to people who are already famous and likely to draw a big audience just by coming. An extremely famous writer isn’t a good litmus test.
    - richardatlarge 5y ago
      That’s right, if you leave a major publication your success is off the back of there’s. What examples are there of success from scratch?
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        Newsletters aren’t my thing so I don’t know in that space. Early adopters of new mediums in general are a big source. There are quite a few people who made their names in the early days of live-streaming or on YouTube. Or in indie games.
- unclebucknasty 5y ago
  >monetize journalism outside of the usual predatory social media/aggregator set up I've had some ideas around this for a while now, but have been busy with another project. It recently resurfaced when listening to an Ezra Klein podcast wherein he talked about how journalists are now boxed in by their social media audiences, among other laments. If I was less exhausted this early morning, I'd try to dig up the episode. Anyway, good luck with it. Something that disrupts the current model is sorely needed.
Swizec 5y ago
> The business only works when I’m working. This is the toughest part of the content treadmill. I’ve been blogging for 10+ years, newslettering for ~7, and infoproducting for ~6. It’s a tougher gig than many realize. For the past year or so I’ve been trying to figure out how to get off the treadmill but keep newslettering. Experiments with evergreen sequences are proving very fruitful. People love reading old stuff if it’s good. The part I haven’t figured out yet is how to monetize. That seems easier when you’re running the treadmill because you can always sell new stuff to old fans.
- devnull3 5y ago
  I have no experience in blogging/newsletter let alone monetizing. If you see the overall trend of content across the board: movies, music, tik-tok videos, learning material/courses, they are increasingly getting commoditized from consumer point of view. The kind of content "its-so-awesome-it-sells-itself" is very rare. Newletters are essentially curated content for specific audience. Even if there is a content profitable for a while then it will be made into a commodity soon because it will attract so many folks. Also, the issue with content from individuals compared to content from companies: Scale. The dynamic of working alone vs making money is hard to pull off if not impossible.
  - richardatlarge 5y ago
    Scale affects many things, including resources for investigations or having a whistleblower show up in your inbox. For so many blogs/newsletters it reads like it’s all from the sidelines, all secondary
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  In the publishing space I only do evergreen content
- ultimoo 5y ago
  Any tips or advice for someone who is newly venturing into writing a fairly niche tech substack newsletter?
sgpl 5y ago
> “The only way a Substack grows is through tweets. I am like 85% serious when I say this.” This rings true for me as a consumer of tech and tech-adjacent news. Most writers that I've started to follow via their newsletters, I've come across on twitter via their tweets that have gone viral or have been liked/retweeted by people in my network. Another journalist that I subscribe to via their Substack in Eric Newcomer who also recently published a "Looking Back ..." post [0]. Interesting just to diff it from this post. From my understanding, Eric started writing his newsletter last year without importing a pre-existing list (at least that's the impression I got). His numbers (11,867 free subscribers and 1374 paid subscribers) definitely seems to suggest that Substack's guidance that about 10% of subscribers convert to paid is in the ballpark. [0] https://www.newcomer.co/p/looking-back-on-newcomers-first-year https://www.newcomer.co/p/looking-back-on-newcomers-first-ye... 11867 1374
- notatoad 5y ago
  in the insterest of "diffing" substack retrospectives, here's Charlie Warzel's announcement today that he's leaving substack for the Atlantic: https://warzel.substack.com/p/galaxy-brain-is-moving https://warzel.substack.com/p/galaxy-brain-is-moving the interesting thing to me is the discussion around "feeding the discourse", and how the best thing you can do to increase your subscriber count is to jump into fights on twitter. it seems like the idea that you grow your substack through tweets is a nice way of saying you grow your substack through arguments.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    It doesn’t have to be arguments, lots of people take part in the discourse of the day without arguing. Usually with lengthy threads or other things like the ubiquitous content marketing strategy of asking open ended questions “what kind of vegetable would you be?” and so on. Once you see the pattern it makes a lot of the viral stuff on Twitter a bit eye rolling. The unsolved problem across all genres of content is still discovery though which is why the single most important activity after you have good content is marketing it. That can be both very time consuming and expensive relative to income to shift the needle on and leads to chasing algorithms around and the strong power law distribution in the results because of all of this gets much easier the bigger your audience is thanks to network effects. The growth of the creator side of the gig economy is largely about that on a personal level.
ryanSrich 5y ago
If you’ve spent any amount of time on Twitter you’ll understand just how dystopian it is to realize it’s the only funnel for writing content online. The fact that you need to not only use Twitter, but use it in a way that works for the algorithms is nothing short of a hell world a scenario. For those that have ever posited Facebook is worse than Twitter I’ve no idea what world you live in.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Distribution is king and you're always pandering to someone's algorithm until your own channel is robust enough to flywheel. For tech it's twitter, for lifestyle it's instagram, for search it's google, for conspiracies it's facebook, for gen z it's tiktok, for gen x it's media. Whatever way you slice it, Other People's Audience is the fastest way to grow.
  - ryanSrich 5y ago
    > until your own channel is robust enough to flywheel. This no longer exists. You need Twitter in perpetuity. If for some reason you’re banned from Twitter (often there’s no reason at all) there goes an entire career and audience you’ve built for years. If Facebook bans you because you think vaccines have microchips you don’t lose your income. If Twitter bans you because you said something mean you’re dead.
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      > This no longer exists. You need Twitter in perpetuity. If for some reason you’re banned from Twitter (often there’s no reason at all) there goes an entire career and audience you’ve built for years. Tell it to Josh Rogan.
      - coldtea 5y ago
        "- Jumping over 30 cars with a motorcycle is no way to have a career" "- Tell it to Evel Knievel" As if Josh (Joe?) Rogan is representative.
stickfigure 5y ago
Hmmm. The "Here are some of the stories I’m proud of" all seem to be fishing for outrage. I'm not surprised that his/her readership comes from twitter.
- phnofive 5y ago
  I hesitated on sharing the same sentiment on first pass, but this really is a skewed example even accounting for survivorship bias; he was an established journalist whose major stories were written by compiling leaks and tips from disgruntled employees. This is reinforced by his statement that his readers didn't like the interviews. 'Why' is an exercise left to the reader, but I inferred that the gossip and scoops are more salacious than the PR-vetted messaging.
bambax 5y ago
> The other is hiring someone to help me put the newsletter together each day and free up more hours for reporting, thinking, and writing. So, in effect, starting a media company?

105 points by wyclif 5y ago

The insight that Discord was helpful for converting subscribers was cool. I feel like these technologies while old, are still nascent in terms of what they’re capable of doing. Like everyone is learning how to become literate with these new tools.

jaredwiener 5y ago

Picking up on a conversation from a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866626 If any newsroom brass is reading this (or reporters thinking of going independent, especially local) -- I'd love to talk. We're building a platform to help monetize journalism outside of the usual predatory social media/aggregator set up, and with more support than Substack. jared (at) nillium (dot) com

darthvoldemort 5y ago
I'm skeptical about the idea that Substack has poor support. I just listened to Chuck Palahniuk on Joe Rogan. He still writes on pads of paper, but he said Substack hand-held him and he loved it, and called Substack a "concierge service" and he said he enjoys Substack because it let's him concentrate on writing and not worrying about the tedious parts like formatting, etc.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  All platforms give special treatment to people who are already famous and likely to draw a big audience just by coming. An extremely famous writer isn’t a good litmus test.
  - richardatlarge 5y ago
    That’s right, if you leave a major publication your success is off the back of there’s. What examples are there of success from scratch?
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      Newsletters aren’t my thing so I don’t know in that space. Early adopters of new mediums in general are a big source. There are quite a few people who made their names in the early days of live-streaming or on YouTube. Or in indie games.
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>monetize journalism outside of the usual predatory social media/aggregator set up I've had some ideas around this for a while now, but have been busy with another project. It recently resurfaced when listening to an Ezra Klein podcast wherein he talked about how journalists are now boxed in by their social media audiences, among other laments. If I was less exhausted this early morning, I'd try to dig up the episode. Anyway, good luck with it. Something that disrupts the current model is sorely needed.

Swizec 5y ago

> The business only works when I’m working. This is the toughest part of the content treadmill. I’ve been blogging for 10+ years, newslettering for ~7, and infoproducting for ~6. It’s a tougher gig than many realize. For the past year or so I’ve been trying to figure out how to get off the treadmill but keep newslettering. Experiments with evergreen sequences are proving very fruitful. People love reading old stuff if it’s good. The part I haven’t figured out yet is how to monetize. That seems easier when you’re running the treadmill because you can always sell new stuff to old fans.

devnull3 5y ago
I have no experience in blogging/newsletter let alone monetizing. If you see the overall trend of content across the board: movies, music, tik-tok videos, learning material/courses, they are increasingly getting commoditized from consumer point of view. The kind of content "its-so-awesome-it-sells-itself" is very rare. Newletters are essentially curated content for specific audience. Even if there is a content profitable for a while then it will be made into a commodity soon because it will attract so many folks. Also, the issue with content from individuals compared to content from companies: Scale. The dynamic of working alone vs making money is hard to pull off if not impossible.
- richardatlarge 5y ago
  Scale affects many things, including resources for investigations or having a whistleblower show up in your inbox. For so many blogs/newsletters it reads like it’s all from the sidelines, all secondary
weird-eye-issue 5y ago
In the publishing space I only do evergreen content
ultimoo 5y ago
Any tips or advice for someone who is newly venturing into writing a fairly niche tech substack newsletter?

sgpl 5y ago

> “The only way a Substack grows is through tweets. I am like 85% serious when I say this.” This rings true for me as a consumer of tech and tech-adjacent news. Most writers that I've started to follow via their newsletters, I've come across on twitter via their tweets that have gone viral or have been liked/retweeted by people in my network. Another journalist that I subscribe to via their Substack in Eric Newcomer who also recently published a "Looking Back ..." post [0]. Interesting just to diff it from this post. From my understanding, Eric started writing his newsletter last year without importing a pre-existing list (at least that's the impression I got). His numbers (11,867 free subscribers and 1374 paid subscribers) definitely seems to suggest that Substack's guidance that about 10% of subscribers convert to paid is in the ballpark. [0] https://www.newcomer.co/p/looking-back-on-newcomers-first-year https://www.newcomer.co/p/looking-back-on-newcomers-first-ye... 11867 1374

notatoad 5y ago
in the insterest of "diffing" substack retrospectives, here's Charlie Warzel's announcement today that he's leaving substack for the Atlantic: https://warzel.substack.com/p/galaxy-brain-is-moving https://warzel.substack.com/p/galaxy-brain-is-moving the interesting thing to me is the discussion around "feeding the discourse", and how the best thing you can do to increase your subscriber count is to jump into fights on twitter. it seems like the idea that you grow your substack through tweets is a nice way of saying you grow your substack through arguments.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  It doesn’t have to be arguments, lots of people take part in the discourse of the day without arguing. Usually with lengthy threads or other things like the ubiquitous content marketing strategy of asking open ended questions “what kind of vegetable would you be?” and so on. Once you see the pattern it makes a lot of the viral stuff on Twitter a bit eye rolling. The unsolved problem across all genres of content is still discovery though which is why the single most important activity after you have good content is marketing it. That can be both very time consuming and expensive relative to income to shift the needle on and leads to chasing algorithms around and the strong power law distribution in the results because of all of this gets much easier the bigger your audience is thanks to network effects. The growth of the creator side of the gig economy is largely about that on a personal level.

ryanSrich 5y ago

If you’ve spent any amount of time on Twitter you’ll understand just how dystopian it is to realize it’s the only funnel for writing content online. The fact that you need to not only use Twitter, but use it in a way that works for the algorithms is nothing short of a hell world a scenario. For those that have ever posited Facebook is worse than Twitter I’ve no idea what world you live in.

Swizec 5y ago
Distribution is king and you're always pandering to someone's algorithm until your own channel is robust enough to flywheel. For tech it's twitter, for lifestyle it's instagram, for search it's google, for conspiracies it's facebook, for gen z it's tiktok, for gen x it's media. Whatever way you slice it, Other People's Audience is the fastest way to grow.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  > until your own channel is robust enough to flywheel. This no longer exists. You need Twitter in perpetuity. If for some reason you’re banned from Twitter (often there’s no reason at all) there goes an entire career and audience you’ve built for years. If Facebook bans you because you think vaccines have microchips you don’t lose your income. If Twitter bans you because you said something mean you’re dead.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > This no longer exists. You need Twitter in perpetuity. If for some reason you’re banned from Twitter (often there’s no reason at all) there goes an entire career and audience you’ve built for years. Tell it to Josh Rogan.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      "- Jumping over 30 cars with a motorcycle is no way to have a career" "- Tell it to Evel Knievel" As if Josh (Joe?) Rogan is representative.

stickfigure 5y ago

Hmmm. The "Here are some of the stories I’m proud of" all seem to be fishing for outrage. I'm not surprised that his/her readership comes from twitter.

phnofive 5y ago
I hesitated on sharing the same sentiment on first pass, but this really is a skewed example even accounting for survivorship bias; he was an established journalist whose major stories were written by compiling leaks and tips from disgruntled employees. This is reinforced by his statement that his readers didn't like the interviews. 'Why' is an exercise left to the reader, but I inferred that the gossip and scoops are more salacious than the PR-vetted messaging.

bambax 5y ago

> The other is hiring someone to help me put the newsletter together each day and free up more hours for reporting, thinking, and writing. So, in effect, starting a media company?