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I think the appeal of Substack can be seen by comparison to their closest big competitor, Medium: 1. Substack pages load quickly and cleanly. You don't have to
by civilized 5y ago
I think the appeal of Substack can be seen by comparison to their closest big competitor, Medium:
1. Substack pages load quickly and cleanly. You don't have to watch your browser have a seizure as it brings in a long tail of weird ad/tracking crap.
2. The page is very low-distraction. The writing is given pride of place.
3. I hit paywalls and login walls on Medium much more often than on Substack.
4. I know many interesting writers on Substack. I don't know any interesting writers on Medium.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoI agree. Medium made the editor clean for writers but made the interface messy, cludgy and just a pain for readers. Substack kept it clean for both.
- sheepybloke 5y agoThe paywall one is huge for me. I know Medium is a business, but the paywall hits you so fast. For a lot of the articles I'm reading, I'm not very invested in reading them (think "this looks interesting, I'll take 5 to look it over"), so blocking me with a paywall isn't going to get me to pay, it just keeps me from interacting with your site and content. The first two points are also important! I love reading articles on substack. It's fast, it's clean, I know I'll be able to get to the article, read it, and maybe sub if I want to read more of the author's work. It's a great experience. Medium is the opposite. It feels slower, and if the article happens to not be interesting, I feel annoyed because I used up one of my free articles. It's bad enough that I now actively avoid Medium if I can.
- civilized 5y agoThe UI/UX stuff is in the mix for me, but I think the writer group is bottom line the biggest thing. To be honest, I still haven't paid for anybody's Substack, but if I were to pay for something, I can name a couple people I'd pay for on Substack. I have no idea who is on Medium that might be worth paying for.