Content providers show mixed feelings and different opinions about this widespread, well-regarded subscription platform. Any balanced insight from HNers? Thanks.
It's at high risk to run in the medium-reputation-problem: If you have e.g. the choice between your stuff being linked as "foobar.platform.com" and "foobar.com", the former is great if the platform confers a positive image over any other random URL. That's often the case early-on for new platforms, when they pull in cool early adopters and thus are associated with high-quality content. E.g. the trope-namer medium.com early on had a reputation for nice clean pages and good content. The problem is, that often changes over time, and now a medium.com link encountered in the wild suggests "stupid subscription nagging" and "low-quality self-promotion think-pieces", it's not the neighborhood you want your content to be seen in if it is any good.
For now substack isn't there yet (although you start to hear the first sentiments in that direction), and their focus on subscription helps avoid it to a degree too, I also see more often people point to "their substack" from elsewhere. But if they go the path of putting the platform more in the foreground, i.e. not "foobars newsletter, which happens to be on substack, but you don't really need to know or notice that", but more "go to substack to find cool content!", that risk increases. Again the medium-comparison: medium was and is big on finding other stuff on medium. Which means even if you read a good article, right next to it medium will push you to read more fluff, because their algorithms have no clue how to promote relevant high-quality content.
At this point, just seeing medium.com has a good chance of turning me away from a given article.
Medium tends to routinely be broken for me, be it because of my efforts to bypass the paywalls and run adblockers or just because of how the site is built. I find the article itself often isn't worth the effort.
For readers - yes, there is something on Substack you will absolutely love. We don't do a fantastic job of surfacing all the content yet, but we're working on it.
For writers - depends on what you want. If you want to self-host or customize every bit of design - we probably aren't for you. If you want it to be super easy to publish a free or paid newsletter - Substack is great.
If you are wondering if the field is saturated yet - I don't think so. I see new successes on Substack popping up every week.
Substack is "Medium + OnlyFans". It attracts content creators because there's not yet alternatives that offer such turnkey monetization (e.g. Patreon is all a bit more DIY). It works for readers because Substack pulled in some real heavy hitters as early adopters (maybe through enhanced financial incentives?), and so the Substack brand has been linked to those prestigious content creators.
Once they start promoting and monetizing the PLATFORM itself too much (aka "doing a fantastic job of surfacing all the content"), then the brand will lose its prestigious shine. It will become associated with "Twitter randos", rather than "former columnists at Rolling Stone and The Atlantic", etc. It will become more like Medium.
That in and of itself isn't the death knell. But that nail in the coffin will come as soon as competing turnkey-monetization alternatives emerge with fresher brand reputation. And I'm sure those competitors will emerge once Substack opens up the door by dialing down its prestige to promote itself more broadly.
Honestly, I don't know why people invest so much in online content. The early "hot new brand" stage has the shelf life of milk. Some of these brands stick around forever (Slate, Salon, etc), but it seems like they're slashed to skeleton staff after the first 5 or so years when the hotness cools. I guess the long tail of that white dwarf remnant stage trickles in enough revenue to justify keeping them around after people have moved onto the next thing?
There seems to be no way to feed them already formatted text; either do your layout in their "in browser" editor or feed them an RSS feed and accept their translation. Also there's some size limit operating? I kept getting "too large" popup things playing with it, with 8k to 20k of input HTML or markdown.
If what you want to publish is text in their allowed lengths, and allowed formats, in the way they're set up to do, maybe it's worth it.
Your question appears to imply that writers are unhappy, without mentioning specifics.
I'm just a reader who finds that many of the most interesting written opinion pieces on the Internet are on Substack these days. So, for readers it is definitely worth it!
I use substack for sharing links in form of newsletter. I like the platform, it is simple, does one thing well, has a full content RSS feed, editor could use markdown support. Buttondown is better, but I'm currently not planning on paying anything for a while so not switching.
As a reader, I like how I can find relevant blogs to read without subscribing and no doubt it is better than medium in every aspect.
Both… I think subscribers are generally happy for what they get, and there a number of interesting providers. I also can read about a few providers not being happy. Are you on there in some capacity?
detaro|4 years ago
For now substack isn't there yet (although you start to hear the first sentiments in that direction), and their focus on subscription helps avoid it to a degree too, I also see more often people point to "their substack" from elsewhere. But if they go the path of putting the platform more in the foreground, i.e. not "foobars newsletter, which happens to be on substack, but you don't really need to know or notice that", but more "go to substack to find cool content!", that risk increases. Again the medium-comparison: medium was and is big on finding other stuff on medium. Which means even if you read a good article, right next to it medium will push you to read more fluff, because their algorithms have no clue how to promote relevant high-quality content.
akpa1|4 years ago
Medium tends to routinely be broken for me, be it because of my efforts to bypass the paywalls and run adblockers or just because of how the site is built. I find the article itself often isn't worth the effort.
neural_thing|4 years ago
For readers - yes, there is something on Substack you will absolutely love. We don't do a fantastic job of surfacing all the content yet, but we're working on it.
For writers - depends on what you want. If you want to self-host or customize every bit of design - we probably aren't for you. If you want it to be super easy to publish a free or paid newsletter - Substack is great.
If you are wondering if the field is saturated yet - I don't think so. I see new successes on Substack popping up every week.
StevePerkins|4 years ago
Once they start promoting and monetizing the PLATFORM itself too much (aka "doing a fantastic job of surfacing all the content"), then the brand will lose its prestigious shine. It will become associated with "Twitter randos", rather than "former columnists at Rolling Stone and The Atlantic", etc. It will become more like Medium.
That in and of itself isn't the death knell. But that nail in the coffin will come as soon as competing turnkey-monetization alternatives emerge with fresher brand reputation. And I'm sure those competitors will emerge once Substack opens up the door by dialing down its prestige to promote itself more broadly.
Honestly, I don't know why people invest so much in online content. The early "hot new brand" stage has the shelf life of milk. Some of these brands stick around forever (Slate, Salon, etc), but it seems like they're slashed to skeleton staff after the first 5 or so years when the hotness cools. I guess the long tail of that white dwarf remnant stage trickles in enough revenue to justify keeping them around after people have moved onto the next thing?
neural_thing|4 years ago
If we are missing a feature you want, come help us build it!
https://substack.com/jobs
h2odragon|4 years ago
If what you want to publish is text in their allowed lengths, and allowed formats, in the way they're set up to do, maybe it's worth it.
larqts|4 years ago
I'm just a reader who finds that many of the most interesting written opinion pieces on the Internet are on Substack these days. So, for readers it is definitely worth it!
obarthelemy|4 years ago
edit: ...in 2022.
sombremesa|4 years ago
nik5|4 years ago
As a reader, I like how I can find relevant blogs to read without subscribing and no doubt it is better than medium in every aspect.
PaulHoule|4 years ago
DrNuke|4 years ago
hestefisk|4 years ago
siruva07|4 years ago
samglover97|4 years ago