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I would argue that a core benefit of using Substack, beyond the easiness to write, publish, send emails, is trust for payments. I would be more reluctant at put
by factorymoo 2y ago
I would argue that a core benefit of using Substack, beyond the easiness to write, publish, send emails, is trust for payments. I would be more reluctant at putting my credit card info in a random self hosted blog vs an established company's like Substack.
- chatmasta 2y agoWhat about a blog that supports Apple Pay?
- ketzo 2y agoOkay, but how do you put that up as a writer? Is it harder than the <5 minute Substack signup process? Because if so, I think you’ve got your answer
- chatmasta 2y agoThat’s the case now. But a product could provide the hosting and setup for the writers. It might not attract the same VC-level returns as the platform play of Substack, but it could be profitable and steal writers from them (especially writers who already have their own form of distribution and discoverability).
- factorymoo 2y agoYeah good point - that would probably be ok for me actually.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoI think Stripe handles Apple Pay (edit: also Google Play, per another commenter). I'm sure there are others. I'd think that Stripe, Apple Pay, and PayPal (speaking of "dark patterns") would get you about 90% of the way there. That may still be too high a bar for non-technical people, though.
- chatmasta 2y agoIf you wrap it into a “hosted blog” service, it could make a lot of money. You won’t get commissions on the payments without being a “platform,” but that’d be your differentiator. It wouldn’t be a VC style billion dollar business but it could make multiple $100k per year revenue. And you could scale price by number of subscribers (like newsletter providers already do) rather than percentage of payments.