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Comment by stereoradonc | Hacker News Reader

Substack is a pyramid scheme in terms of "payments" - I am sure they will start up a "search" for the newsletters and then paid advertisements.

To all the HN regulars here - own your medium instead. Own your content. There's no need to stick to yet another VC funded "writing experience". Many potential readers will eventually hit a subscription fatigue. There are several proven strategies to monetise your content (and Substack isn't one of them).

Data export, mailing lists, billing information all belong to a third party who charges you commission to "facilitate". I am sure that commission will increase down the line, and the net effect will be less and less.

Think before you leap into this.

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I 100% agree with this take.

I've got an email newsletter that 874 people pay me $5/m to read (The Sizzle - https://thesizzle.com.au). I set it up outside of Substack a few years ago, then migrated when Substack launched with the hope their platform would bring in new readers and make my life easier.

This turned out to be a massive waste of over a year, as not only did the newsletter stop growing, it lost subscribers. There was no platform effect by being on Substack, so I left it, setup my homebrew solution (where all the bits, like billing, email sending, customer info are interchangeable) and growth has resumed and I'm doing better than ever - all without giving Substack a 10% cut and further locking myself into their ecosystem.

Here's a blog post explaining in more detail why I chose to remove myself from Substack if anyone is interested: https://blog.decryption.net.au/t/why-i-use-a-mishmash-of-ser...

>What I put out there every day is worth the measly $5 a month I charge for it. What worked well for me in the past was giving out a no strings attached free trial of The Sizzle for two weeks then asking people to pay if they want it to continue. Substack’s business model however is freemium content. You give away the bulk of your content to build an audience then upsell that audience with paid subscriber only content. [...] I could add a 14-day free trial to the paid subscription, but Substack doesn’t do free trials without also adding a credit card and automatically charging that card when the trial is over. Most people hate this (me included) as they’re scared they’ll forget to cancel before the trial ends and get charged for something they don’t want, so they just don’t take the risk.

Your model sounds better for professional writers, or already established writers. But the benefit of Substack for emerging writers is that it gives them a platform to establish a brand presence with the hope that it will develop into a large enough audience to get enthusiastic readers who will convert into paid subscribers. There is also no easy way for new writers to try to start a writing career while also trying to figure out different technologies to send out a newsletter. Substack makes it completely easy, and it's fair that they charge some percentage once a writer starts earning money while using their platform.

I think you're wrong (I'm ignoring the inflammatory rhetoric and taking the core of your argument in good faith).

The good thing about substack compared to most centralized apps is that writers maintain control over their audience address list. This aligns incentives since leaving is possible. It makes them more of an actual software platform for their writers which is a good thing imo. As long as this remains true, the risk is low.

It’s probably the best outcome you can realistically get on the non-urbit web outside of niche providers like ghost which have their own trade-offs.

I suspect the hardest thing for substack will be the moderation position they find themselves in. If they do anything to try to help increase readership (even if they don't) they will eventually find themselves in the same difficult situations as every other platform, this is just an unavoidable fact of being a centralized service with this power and capability (and choosing who you will not allow as customers is a form of substack's speech). Having this responsibility is not easy and with continued success and scale becomes messy.

This (imo) just isn't something that can be solved by a centralized system effectively, even though it sounds like they'll do the best the can: https://on.substack.com/p/substacks-view-of-content-moderati...

Can you elaborate on that? How is it a pyramid scheme? Do new subscribers have to recruit their friends in order to make money?

If it involves money and it's something you don't like, you call it a pyramid scheme. Twitter discourse 101!

This take doesn’t make sense. Creators still own their mailing list and could move away from the platform if it isn’t suitable for them.

This is a good post and its hilarious to watch people explain to you that they downvoted you because you're rude. I've been here over 13 years and can confirm this is most definitely in the spirit of Hacker News.

My question is who is starting the Signal equivalent of Substack? You know, for when these guys stop loss-leading, fuck everyone over and start monetizing.

Is that what Ghost.org is?

How about ConvertKit? It focuses on handling the nuts and bolts of email subscriptions, instead of the faux-social platform / walled-garden audience that Substack is trying to build.

I don't know how the fees stack up (no pun intended), but I assume Substack charges some amount more than if you used Stripe or some other payment processor to manage subscription/donations. In exchange, you get (1) some amount of discoverability and (2) marginally lower friction for users to signup (people aren't as worried that you're going to defraud them if they enter their CC details, and if they already have an account they just click subscribe). I think they also help defend authors WRT free speech and other legal issues, but I don't know the status of this.

It seems like this would be a cost-benefit analysis for each writer. For technical writers who can spin up their own blog and add Stripe subscription billing, it might not make sense. But for writers who are technically not savvy, or who write things that could benefit from journalistic legal protections, it might make more sense. I don't get the sense that the amount they charge is so high that it wouldn't be a reasonable option for anyone.

they provide:

hosting platform, promotion, backend, frontend, spam control, whitelisted mail server with high inbox rate

not a bad deal for having to pay 10%

> There are several proven strategies to monetise your content (and Substack isn't one of them).

Surely Substack is no less proven than any other content monetization strategy for individual authors. Most people simply can't make a living from writing, regardless of their monetization strategy. And at a minimum, Substack at least has proof points [1] that their platform has been working for someone.

[1] https://reader.substack.com/discover

The problem here is that for typical writers "implement Substack equivalent" is not viable solution.

Also, "pyramid scheme" has specific meaning and is not matching Substack at all.

Is there a question here?

Just seemed like good advice to me. Did you interpret it as a question? What caused you to interpret it that way?

The top comment in an "Ask Us Anything" post would usually be a question. (I personally don't have any problem with the top comment being something else, but that's the answer to your question.)

this makes no sense, ppl are paying to suport creators, like patreon

It absolutely makes sense to have those peoples money go to the creator instead of some to substack, some to the creator. Its a glorifed blog hosting service.

substack only takes a small amount

And they’re wildly unprofitable. Wonder how that will resolve?

I do not know enough about substack to comment here but to claim medium is some vestige of virtue in the space is laughable

if you want to "own your content" self host, do not use any of these platforms.

I think you'll find you misread the post you're replying to and you're in agreement on owning your content.

You are correct, I read that as "Medium" the blogging platform that is a competitor to substack...

Really illustrates the brilliance of choosing the name. Obfuscating normal conversation.

So uhh... Care to elaborate rather than just flaming in the founders thread?

What is the question you're asking here?

I downvoted you for being rude.

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