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Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

kevin-indig.com

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Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#31

Post by csmiller »

polote wrote: post #6
monus wrote: post #4

I’d be interested to see if the author will get as much exposure to new potential subscribers without a platform like Substack of Medium promoting it. IMO, it’s always been the community aspect of these platforms that keep the authors locked in rather than the technical difficulties of setting up your own website.

Substack doesn't offer exposition, they barely have a discover page https://substack.com/discover which always show the same newsletters And actually the effect can be negative as, Substack is known to make payment based newsletters, people could avoid those links

Yeah, whenever I see a submission with xyz.substack.com I get a little nervous about being upsold or “converted”

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#32

Post by andreilys »

alexmingoia wrote: post #5
monus wrote: post #4

I’d be interested to see if the author will get as much exposure to new potential subscribers without a platform like Substack of Medium promoting it. IMO, it’s always been the community aspect of these platforms that keep the authors locked in rather than the technical difficulties of setting up your own website.

I’d imagine Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and HN would be a bigger top for the funnel than Medium or Substack.

If you write for big medium publications you can get a lot of traction.

Often they do the promotion for you (newsletters, twitter, etc.).

That’s not to mention the medium algo that can pick up on your article and recommend it to others.

I’ve had one post reach 100k+ reads, unlikely that would happen on my own site.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#34

Post by kevin_indig »

andreilys wrote: post #32
alexmingoia wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d imagine Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and HN would be a bigger top for the funnel than Medium or Substack.

If you write for big medium publications you can get a lot of traction. Often they do the promotion for you (newsletters, twitter, etc.). That’s not to mention the medium algo that can pick up on your article and recommend it to others. I’ve had one post reach 100k+ reads, unlikely that would happen on my own site.

> If you write for big medium publications you can get a lot of traction.

If you leverage their algorithm cleverly, yes. But you still don't own your content or the platform. You're at the same mercy as on Facebook, Twitter, or Google.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#35

Post by jacamera »

kevin_indig wrote: post #26
jacamera wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great read! The problems that you point out with social networks served as the motivation for my co-founder and I to create Readup [1]. We rank articles based on complete reads which slows down the overall pace considerably and cuts out a lot of noise since users cannot post or comment on articles they haven't really read. I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on our proposed business model since it's based on…

I side with @bgroat a bit, the unit economics seem a bit steep. I like the idea of filtering internet content in general for 100% completion. I think there is something there. I'm not sure if the incentive for creators is there, e.i. why would a creator share revenue for fully read articles? I think you found a value-add for the demand-side of the market but not the supply-side. That's something I'd iterate on :).

The value-add for the supply-side is that you'd be getting paid when Readup users read your free articles on your own platform (like I just did with this article). We're sharing our revenue with you, not the other way around!

Glad you like the completion filter! I've found myself reading articles just so I could leave a comment about how much I disagreed with the headline only to have my mind changed half way through. Taking the time to read really matters!

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#36

Post by pier25 »

monus wrote: post #4

I’d be interested to see if the author will get as much exposure to new potential subscribers without a platform like Substack of Medium promoting it. IMO, it’s always been the community aspect of these platforms that keep the authors locked in rather than the technical difficulties of setting up your own website.

When I was on Medium not much traffic came from Medium itself. Probably around 10-15%.

I had a couple of decently popular articles. The most popular had about 170k reads before I deleted my Medium account.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#37

Post by JoelMcCracken »

toyg wrote: post #17
cally wrote: post #12

"I’m one of a few that saw the power of RSS, which is now coming back in the shape of podcasts" I don't think the rise of podcasts is massively due to RSS. I think it's because of the low cost / high creativity balance of the format, where the format uses RSS.

It's somewhat ironic that podcasts have effectively outlived the two technologies they were based on (rss and iPods). Accidents of history and all that...

Same reason we call our pocket computers with voice chat "phones"

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#39

Post by oefrha »

jacamera wrote: post #21
kevin_indig wrote: post #2

2 years ago, I started a newsletter on Mailchimp called Tech Bound and built it out to +3,000 subscribers. 3 months ago, I decided to migrate to Substack. One week ago, I went from Substack to publishing on my own site. In this post, I explain why, what my current stack looks like, and a larger trend that has been in full swing for 2 years.

Great read! The problems that you point out with social networks served as the motivation for my co-founder and I to create Readup [1]. We rank articles based on complete reads which slows down the overall pace considerably and cuts out a lot of noise since users cannot post or comment on articles they haven't really read. I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on our proposed business model since it's based on…

I was suspicious about your "complete reads" claim so I signed up to see how it works. Impressions:

1. Doesn't work on Safari. Definitely not a great first impression.

2. Sure, let's switch to Chrome (one of the three supported platforms: Chrome, Firefox and iOS). Now all I get is a blocking modal "To read on Readup, add the Chrome extension. Add to Chrome — It's Free". Sorry, not about to install an extension for something that hasn't explained why it needs an extension, let alone demonstrate any value to me, whether it's free or not.

Stalemate.

So let me ask: how do you tell a skim from a read? How do you distinguish a complete read from scrolling down to comment section (maybe even slowly)? Reading speeds vary greatly, and there's no mind-reading web API yet.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#40

Post by jacamera »

criddell wrote: post #27
jacamera wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great read! The problems that you point out with social networks served as the motivation for my co-founder and I to create Readup [1]. We rank articles based on complete reads which slows down the overall pace considerably and cuts out a lot of noise since users cannot post or comment on articles they haven't really read. I'd be really curious to hear your thoughts on our proposed business model since it's based on…

Have the writers whose work you are monetizing opted in to being visible through Readup? My first impression is that a 50-50 split doesn't seem very fair to the writers. You created the platform but most of the value comes from the writers.

No, writers do not opt in. The Readup extensions and mobile apps work on articles that are freely available on the internet. Writers do not have to share their premium subscription-only content with us or do anything differently. The Readup extensions and mobile apps work similarly to other "reader mode" utilities except that we track reading progress on a word-by-word level and we want to pay writers when users actually read their articles to completion. Please see my reply to @bgroat regarding the 50/50 split.
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