Why I left Substack and the Email Renaissance (opens in new tab)

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 something that hasn't explained why it needs an extension, let alone demonstrate any value to me, whether it's free or not.

Stalemate.

So let me ask: how do you tell a skim from a read? How do you distinguish a complete read from scrolling down to comment section (maybe even slowly)? Reading speeds vary greatly, and there's no mind-reading web API yet.

This is such a nitpick, but do the economics work at 40% (or even 49%)?

It seems intuitively wrong to me that your value captured is greater than the content creators.

If the economics don't work, feel free to instruct me to take a long walk on a short pier

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 :).

My first impression is that a 50-50 split doesn't seem very fair to the writers. You created the platform but most of the value comes from the writers.

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?

When I sent Substack Support an email about the issues of content ownership and canonical URLs in late May this year, I got this response:

>On Substack writers own all of their content, but we don't support synchronizing with external website or have external websites as the canonical url. Substack is meant to be the home for individual writers. Sorry about that

I love many things about Substack. Chiefly, the user experience of setting up the newsletters, and the iframe embed (though it can be improved) are great.

But I hope Substack reconsiders what their idea of being a "home for individual writers" means. Substack shouldn't have to be the source of my content, but rather be the plumbing for it. It seems not supporting custom canonical URLs was a conscious decision to force me to make Substack the source of my content, which is disappointing.

I'll have to look into ConvertKit in the meantime.

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.

Often they do the promotion for you (newsletters, twitter, etc.).

That’s not to mention the medium algo that can pick up on your article and recommend it to others.

I’ve had one post reach 100k+ reads, unlikely that would happen on my own site.

Maybe a better example I can think of is a referral site. Maybe a site like Kayak can charge Marriott 10% each time they refer someone who books a room. If that room wouldn't be booked otherwise it's probably a good deal for Marriott. Substack does help with discoverability, and that's probably where their main value is (similar to FB, Instagram, etc), but the problem is that unlike the Marriott example, the fee is not a one time payment.

If I launch a paid newsletter with one reader, I'm getting a lot of value from the platform. Once I gain a second reader the platform isn't doing twice as much for me. It's gone up a smaller, incremental amount.