Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
kevin-indig.com
Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#22 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.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#32 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.
Thanks for the article! Can you describe how you implemented Memberful + Convertkit? Or did you follow a guide you could share?
Thanks!
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#4I’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.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#5I’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.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#6I’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
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#7I’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
As a consumer, I actually think this approach is great. I think a lot of the issues platforms deal with in terms of making hard decisions around content standards comes down to the fact that they put things in front of the user, and therefore have some responsibility for what you see.
I think the only way you can really have a true "free speech" platform is to make it entirely self-serve. As soon as there is algorithmic content discovery, bad actors will attempt to game it to get their ideas in front of people.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#8I'm surprised Substack's business model is charging ~10% from one's revenue. A fixed pricing would make more sense. Why would anyone who is planning on profiting from their newsletter would go with a deal like that? Building a newsletter site these days is a pretty simple task with many no code solutions. I'm not saying what Substack provides is not worth paying for, just that it's a bad deal for people with successful newsletters that generate money, and a good deal for everyone else. But the former users are the ones Substack need in order to make money.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#9I'm surprised Substack's business model is charging ~10% from one's revenue. A fixed pricing would make more sense. Why would anyone who is planning on profiting from their newsletter would go with a deal like that? Building a newsletter site these days is a pretty simple task with many no code solutions. I'm not saying what Substack provides is not worth paying for, just that it's a bad deal for people with successf…
% fees are very attractive to people who are starting small or experimental and have no real idea as to whether the idea will take off.
It’s and automated, easy to understand freemium model.
Re: Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance
#10I'm surprised Substack's business model is charging ~10% from one's revenue. A fixed pricing would make more sense. Why would anyone who is planning on profiting from their newsletter would go with a deal like that? Building a newsletter site these days is a pretty simple task with many no code solutions. I'm not saying what Substack provides is not worth paying for, just that it's a bad deal for people with successf…
% fees are very attractive to people who are starting small or experimental and have no real idea as to whether the idea will take off. It’s and automated, easy to understand freemium model.
That's the catch. It's easy to start and experiment. But as you grow bigger you start realizing it's a bad deal so may start looking for alternatives. That's bad for Substack since why would you like your most successful users to be unhappy? A better model IMHO would be a fixed tiered price based on the number of subscribers you have, similarly to how most email providers' business model work. For most users it wouldn't be cheaper than 10%, but for the top X of users it would. Having a fixed cost you can plan in advance for is more attractive IMHO.