cjbest

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by cjbest 8y ago
Thank you for subscribing! The main protection is that it's really hard to get people to pay you money if you don't have evidence of substance. It's harder to make paybait than clickbait. That said, it is definitely an issue
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by cjbest 8y ago
Bingo. That said we have (basic) RSS support as well for those that prefer it, and it's on our list of things to improve.
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by cjbest 8y ago
Maybe read the first chapter and then decide? ;) https://taibbi.substack.com/p/chapters-one-and-two-the-busin...
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by cjbest 8y ago
The idea that getting substantial recurring revenue helps put the author in a position to deliver, and avoid the "popular thing gets canceled" effect. The relationship is between the reader and the writer, and the writer puts thei
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by cjbest 8y ago
Nope, just an awesome writer using our tools.
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by cjbest 8y ago
Chris from Substack here not Matt. The great thing about the Substack model is that it is a big financial opportunity. We help writers get paid, and we take a cut of that so that we're aligned. What that means is that if we are success
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by cjbest 8y ago
We are, and it is an interesting problem! I don't want to get too deep into the details here other than to say at a product level we're focused on being respectful with the access we get to people's inboxes. We hate junk mail
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by cjbest 8y ago
Exactly. This is an emergent consequence of 1) prioritizing "engagement" and 2) the mechanics of "retweet with comment" This can happen on social media even if almost everybody would prefer that it didn't. The way t
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by cjbest 8y ago
We're working on this! Right now most people discover through the author's networks, and from people sharing free content. We made a super basic discovery feature (that's just chronological free posts) here: https:/&#x2
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by cjbest 8y ago
One thing I'd add to this: the algorithm actually selects for stuff you agree with or hate. So sometimes instead of an echo chamber you get a war chamber, which I'm not sure is better. We think that people should choose what th
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by cjbest 8y ago
We'll definitely look for ways to make the product better for readers and writers. You can already add pictures. We are testing comments for paid subscribers on a couple of publications (you heard it here first!) And that other stuff i
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by cjbest 8y ago
On Substack, readers pay writers directly. The writers are independent. We take a cut of the subscription revenue, which is the same in this case as for others. We think this aligns our interest with the writers interest, the same way that
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by cjbest 8y ago
I can give the Substack take on this. 1. We think it's very scalable. The value of attention has flipped - you used to get bored and need to fill your time, now your time is the last scarce resource, so it makes sense to pay to use it
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by cjbest 8y ago
Re discovery: Yes! We want the writers to succeed, and while it's ultimately up to them to write something good enough that people want to subscribe, getting discovered is something we can help with. Having a place to feature them will
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by cjbest 8y ago
Matt is a publisher on the Substack platform. We take a 10% cut of his subscription revenue. Because he is an established author, and we're really excited about this new format of serialized fiction, we have also been putting extra pro
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by cjbest 8y ago
We subscribe to the pg take on naming. We went through a couple of options we like, and Substack was the one we could get the .com for. It's a Stack for Subscription publishing. We didn't realize about the node developer with the
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by cjbest 8y ago
We think Patreon is awesome. It's a great general purpose tool for supporting creators, and the fact that it is so successful shows that people are willing to pay for stuff they value. Substack is focused on letting writers start their
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by cjbest 8y ago
This is definitely part of our motivation for making Substack. When readers pay writers directly, the writers are accountable to those readers, and not e.g. advertisers.
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by cjbest 8y ago
The new hot thing is to do a newsletter. It's the minimal version of a blog, and it's easier to get people to come back and read when new posts show up in their inbox. (I am one of the founders of Substack, that lets you do a news
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by cjbest 9y ago
Thanks, love this. We think Ben Thompson is right about a lot of stuff, and he is definitely a big inspiration.
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by cjbest 9y ago
Ooh hockey! Curation with commentary can be very valuable. That's a lot of what Bill Bishop does with Sinocism ( https://nb.sinocism.com/ ) If you can do a roundup that lets people stay up to date in a way they find valu
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by cjbest 9y ago
Thanks, that makes sense. Definitely once we get to a certain size.
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by cjbest 9y ago
Ahh that’s a really good point. You may be the first to disconnect Stripe. I will make sure this works. Email me your account details if you’d like. Chris at Substack dot com
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by cjbest 9y ago
Thanks, that’s good feedback. And glad you’re signing up! We’ll continue to make it better as quickly as we can.
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by cjbest 9y ago
I agree with you. I just think it’s the right challenge for us to solve for: how do we continue to deliver that much value (or as much as possible) vs. being the lowest cost option for email + payments + website.
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by cjbest 9y ago
Oh that’s a great idea. I will put it on our roadmap. Currently you would need to link to the main page which has a subscribe form, but doing and embedded form would be much better.
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by cjbest 9y ago
Oh we would love that!
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by cjbest 9y ago
Yes. This is our dns provider not bending the rules to work nicely with Heroku, which doesn’t play well with apex domains (but is handling our SSL.) Would love a tip if anyone knows an easy way to fix this properly.
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by cjbest 9y ago
That’s a great idea. Could help existing readers find things similar to stuff they already like. Thanks!
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by cjbest 9y ago
All really good points. Thanks for the feedback.

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