thanks, fixed!
1,130 karma · joined September 5, 2019
email: uri at ↑[our domain name]
This will offer some genuine benefits to readers (one monthly payment, maybe a discount) and to writers (lower transaction fees, since Stripe has a fixed cost that eats into small payments), but it will also sever the thing that currently makes it possible for authors to leave Substack and take 100% of their paid subscribers with them: every single reader has a unique subscription object in each individual publisher's Stripe account, which can then be ported to any other platform using Stripe. So when writers leave Substack they won't be able to take with them any subscribers who arrived through a bundle.
I think writers won't realise the danger here, and that Substack will therefore be able to lock in writers, against their original promise.
I would be delighted if this didn't happen, and happy to retract this if Chris could just promise that Substack will never do this kind of bundling, even if it's opt-in for publishers.
The benefits I'm talking about are not the advances or guarantees, there's basically a ton of secret programmes at Substack where they give favored publishers special in-kind benefits to effectively pay back some of the 10% fee. Hamish knows what I'm talking about, but can't mention it publicly because their business model is reliant on a pretense that every publisher is paying 10% and not a hodgpodge of subsidies and kickbacks. Does that make sense?
I would say it was partially sorted -- I eventually dm'ed their PR person (once they hired one) and somehow she pretty quickly figured out how to pay back part of the money, but refused to send any documentation of what she was paying back or answer questions about various discrepancies, which made it a big hassle on the bookkeeping side. And I never got an explanation or apology from the Substack guys, or any thanks from them for giving them a chance to make it right for more than a year. Truly one of the weirdest life experiences to me -- aside from the moral aspect, I would have thought screwing over one of your biggest customers for no obvious reason is bad for business. But it seems to be working out for them so far, so, what do I know!
> “The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it” -Jeff Bezos
Because I don't actually think it's crazy, I think data is often mismeasured and that when they go against against common perceptions that's sometimes a sign that the data is wrong. But obviously anecdotes are also often wrong/misleading/unrepresentative!
p.s. actually I wonder if this is like the "herniated discs cause back pain" thing -- everyone has herniated discs, but we only found that out for people who have back pain. Maybe ~all data is mismeasured, but we only find out when the data clashes with anecdotes, and therefore investigate it....
> That sounds bad, until you take a closer look at where the reports are coming from. Or more specifically, the one store where nearly half of all reports originated
So often it seems that reported trends are just something like this. But the existence of the trend becomes a highly sticky meme, and it's hard to then dislodge it.
for 5k-10k people, on monthly plan:
Mailchimp: $80
MailerLite: $50
EmailOctopus: $24
I realise it's much more complicated than this, that within a given ESP there are multiple bundles of senders and that better customers get moved to a better bundle etc, but my guess is that for any given level within Substack you're being bundled with an unusually-bad group of peers and therefore getting lower open rates -- I would love to know if this is an accurate understanding, or if there's any accurate way to test this from outside Substack.
> The last time I talked to John, I knew the secret service had been investigating him for months and that he had already left for Syria. Our last chat is surreal to read in hindsight; I come off as extremely nonchalant at his mention of Syria. I remember trying hard to stay cool and play it off, fearful of John’s wrath should he come back—after all, he knew where my family lived and my little sister was still at home.
Read her site, you'll either immediately say "that's for me" or "absolutely not," and either way you'll be right. Does both phone and email coaching ("Interlocutor as a Service"), which is strange but super interesting and (for me at least) surprisingly effective
This easily absorbs the therapy hour. Client leaves, not exactly dissatisfied but not exactly satisfied, either.
... the therapist (being a therapist and not some kind of “accountability coach”) is not expected to hold the client to these in any important way. Instead, the client can crop up afresh each time with feelings new or old, accomplishments and failures of any kind, and be accepted all the same.
This is therapy's perpetual present."
I get that that would miss some of the benefits you mention (shared comment logins for example) but I'm wondering if people think it would capture 80% of the same benefits or, like, <50%. And I don't think for the discoverability to work there's any innate reason it has to be restricted to a single blogging platform.