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I don't really understand the problem here. "following" doesn't give the same content as a paid subscription, it doesn't make sense that anybody is cancelling
by notatoad 3y ago
I don't really understand the problem here. "following" doesn't give the same content as a paid subscription, it doesn't make sense that anybody is cancelling their paid subscriptions to follow instead. a follow on substack only gets you the same content as a free subscription with no access to paid articles, so what does it matter if somebody subscribes instead of follows?
is the complaint here really just that these people want a vanity metric that makes their "subscriber count" higher so nobody can tell that most of those subscribers aren't paying subscribers?
- soneca 3y agoFollowers on Substack only is much less valuable than a subscriber for which you have the email address. This is a first step for Substack to control who see your posts, when, and insert ads amid your content. You also can’t export followers like you can with subscribers. I also suspect that a free subscriber is more likely to become a paid subscriber than a follower. So they diminish your earn potential, decrease the audience of your longer form writing (usually the reason someone creates a newsletter to begin with) and lock you in, making you lose control on how you communicate with your readers.
- notatoad 3y agoah, authors get the email address of subscribers but not followers. that's the peice i was missing, thanks.
- Seattle3503 3y agoThat's what I was trying to figure out. Is it because the real value add of subscription was adding the writer ones feed? Rather than getting access to paywalled content.