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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

#41

Post by tbran »

I'm planning to launch a newsletter soon for a site I own that gets a moderately decent amount of traffic. Here is a snippet of some handy things I've found:

The cost of sending email is a lot on some platforms (Mailchimp is $30/month for 2500 subscribers and $50/month for 5000 subs), but a lot cheaper with Mailgun or Amazon SES. Sendy [0] and Mailcoach [1] are both self-hosted newsletter sending apps that use Mailgun/SES if you want to DIY.

There is a handy blog post [2] from the creator of cron.weekly on his newsletter workflow.

Don't put "weekly" in the newsletter name because then you're really setting that weekly expectation. At some point, you might not want to be publishing weekly unless you've got some serious automation happening.

There are some interesting ideas on newsletter businesses on gaps.com [3]. A year ago I thought that a newsletter should link to my own content. But now? Many, many newsletters are link aggregators.

[0] https://sendy.co/

[1] https://mailcoach.app/

[2] https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-cron-weekly-newsletter/

[3] https://gaps.com/six-figure-newsletter/

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#42

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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...

Not ironic at all. All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#43

Post by jacamera »

oefrha wrote: post #39
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 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 so…

Not a great first couple of impressions!

1. Safari uses a completely non-standard extension model and right now I'm the only developer so we're Chrome and Firefox only for the time being. Definitely sucks.

2. That's great feedback on that modal. Seriously, it never even crossed my mind that we don't explain why the extension is required before displaying it. Also that the "Add to Chrome" button makes it seem like it will trigger an install instead of bouncing you over to the Chrome store where you can see screenshots and a description of how it works before choosing to install. We really need to fix that ASAP.

Re tracking: When the extension is triggered (limited permissions, it only runs when you click the icon) it runs a script on the web page that tries to identify the primary text of the article. Once identified, we mark the individual words as having been read, starting at the top left of the viewport. Since we keep track of individual words you can scroll around and read out of order and the tracking will still work properly.

This process runs on a timer that allows for a pretty fast reading speed (probably around 500-600 wpm) but doesn't allow a user to just sit on the page for a long time or scroll right to the bottom. As you point out you can cheat it by scrolling very slowly through the entire article. Still waiting on that mind-reading API!

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#44

Post by kevin_indig »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #42
toyg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Not ironic at all. All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user.

> All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user.

I think it matters for the creators, though.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#45

Post by kevin_indig »

jacamera wrote: post #35
kevin_indig wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We're sharing our revenue with you, not the other way around!

Gotcha. So, what's the value I'd get as a creator, i.e. why should I not charge through another platform?

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#46

Post by kevin_indig »

pier25 wrote: post #36
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.

What did you switch to?

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#47

Post by magnio »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #42
toyg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Not ironic at all. All that matters is the content, not the way it is delivered to the user.

Yeah tell that to the music industry.

Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance

#48

Post by Isomorpheus »

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've also had the idea of creating a site which restricts users to having read the article. So, I'm excited about your project.

Couple questions

1) You mention a paywall, but your video says that users who sign-up before paywall stay in forever. You honoring that (the video was posted 5 days ago)? I see that the median comment count on your site is about 3 so I should hope so

2) How exactly are you paying these authors? We can post articles from anyone and then trust you're able to get in contact with them and hand them their money?

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