I spend a lot of time discussing the future of publishing and ruminating about Substack. Recently I’ve been thinking about how they fit together. This post analyzes how Substack fits with the seismic changes coming to publishing in the next few years.
Thanks for this - I have only just started setting up my Substack, having left Twitter/X and also planning to leave Facebook soon. This was packed with useful things to think about, so I appreciate all your clearly laid out summaries!
Russell - I was really interested to read that you download your Substack list to your email list monthly. I’d love to know more about how you see the relationship between these two lists. I’ve got a much bigger email list then Substack list currently but my email list relates to my previous work and a different audience. There is some connection - my email list is parents and my Substack is young writers - but not directly. I’m assuming your two audiences are the same so they might gel together better?
I am not sure. I wrote an article about Substack sections which you should probably read as that answers some of these questions better than I can here.
However, I have both fiction and nonfiction, and a lot of it for both groups, and I offers a several months comp that allowed the transition to happen smoothly, so that both groups could find something they loved.
If you aren’t going to service both groups, then I probably wouldn’t add all your emails:
Russell, this is quite the dossier! I will need to reference it later on, especially as my growth takes me through a bunch of different phases here on Substack.
I've used Stripe through a site I built, and I generally like the service and company. I think integrating Stripe here makes sense, and although it's cool for folks to be able to choose, it's probably ideal for most newer folks to have a super easy plug-and-play solution, and you could do a whole lot worse than Stripe.
We use stripe for almost all our integrations at this point. I have one for Wannabe Press and another for Writer MBA, but yeah. It’s great and really easy to set up. I vastly prefer it to PayPal, but in most cases we have both
I guess I was an early adopter of PayPal. I was a power seller on eBay back in the late 90s and early 2000s, and for online commerce back then, PayPal was everything.
Nowadays, not so much. I did use PayPal briefly as a landlord (wasn't fun, but helped me out in 2019 and 2020 a ton).
I agree with pretty much everything here, except the API part. Sure, can be expensive to build, but I think in this day and age, not exposing APIs is a bit of a questionable decision.
I'd say APIs enrich any platform—allowing users to add value on top of an existing feature set, in ways that a core team would never be able to. Plus, given that Substack caters to a wide and multiple cohorts of writers, they'd never be able to satisfy all types of writers. Only way is to allow users to build their own specific features on top.
I don’t disagree with that, but it is an expensive proposition to maintain on top of building it. There are only so many resources. I hope they do invest in it one day bc I would like to use sparkloop.
One thing that's holding me back from starting my own substack is investment in my long estalished (stagnant?) system of opt ins and email automations which funnels lovely people (organic traffic) towards my free newsletter on active campaign (ac).
I see the value of adding substack to my grasslands ecosystem, not least to reach a new audience. I am just not sure how to evolve gracefully and I would be so grateful, Russell, if you can offer any wise insights.
Substack's lack of integrations is head scratching. Moving subscribers manually in either direction seems clunky and fraught with risk of losing goodwill.
Questions circling in my head include:
1. Do I keep delivering my free newsletter on ac to capture the existing flow of new subscribers from my website's organic traffic, and from there invite them to substack?
2. Do I make the end of my ac automations a manual transfer to substack and move my free newsletter here?
3. Do I run both newsletter subscriptions in parallel or try to mash them together with zaps?
4. Or do I burn down the house (stop paying for ac), transfer my whole list to substack and start a new biz model without freebies/ automations, just inviting web visitors to substack
Thanks for this - I have only just started setting up my Substack, having left Twitter/X and also planning to leave Facebook soon. This was packed with useful things to think about, so I appreciate all your clearly laid out summaries!
You're welcome!
Russell - I was really interested to read that you download your Substack list to your email list monthly. I’d love to know more about how you see the relationship between these two lists. I’ve got a much bigger email list then Substack list currently but my email list relates to my previous work and a different audience. There is some connection - my email list is parents and my Substack is young writers - but not directly. I’m assuming your two audiences are the same so they might gel together better?
I am not sure. I wrote an article about Substack sections which you should probably read as that answers some of these questions better than I can here.
However, I have both fiction and nonfiction, and a lot of it for both groups, and I offers a several months comp that allowed the transition to happen smoothly, so that both groups could find something they loved.
If you aren’t going to service both groups, then I probably wouldn’t add all your emails:
Great post! Thanks for the info. Super helpful for a new user like me!
You’re welcome!
As somebody who is completely new to substack, this was all extremely useful information! Thank you so much for putting all this together!!
You’re welcome! I have several more coming :)
Definitely looking forward to that and gonna save this one to look back on!
Excellent article. I agree on all accounts. I’m glad to be here now, launching the web fiction part of my business.
Yay!!!!
Since reading this I've been investigating sparkloop and beehiiv. I'm wondering if it makes sense to have two newsletters on two separate platforms.
But this is a great reminder not focus solely on a single platform/entrypoint.
I have a trial beehiiv account. I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
Russell, this is quite the dossier! I will need to reference it later on, especially as my growth takes me through a bunch of different phases here on Substack.
I've used Stripe through a site I built, and I generally like the service and company. I think integrating Stripe here makes sense, and although it's cool for folks to be able to choose, it's probably ideal for most newer folks to have a super easy plug-and-play solution, and you could do a whole lot worse than Stripe.
We use stripe for almost all our integrations at this point. I have one for Wannabe Press and another for Writer MBA, but yeah. It’s great and really easy to set up. I vastly prefer it to PayPal, but in most cases we have both
I guess I was an early adopter of PayPal. I was a power seller on eBay back in the late 90s and early 2000s, and for online commerce back then, PayPal was everything.
Nowadays, not so much. I did use PayPal briefly as a landlord (wasn't fun, but helped me out in 2019 and 2020 a ton).
When we first started writer mba they held up thousands of dollars for months and threatened to keep it so I am a bit soured on them since then.
That....
*checks notes
...yep, that'll do it.
I agree with pretty much everything here, except the API part. Sure, can be expensive to build, but I think in this day and age, not exposing APIs is a bit of a questionable decision.
I'd say APIs enrich any platform—allowing users to add value on top of an existing feature set, in ways that a core team would never be able to. Plus, given that Substack caters to a wide and multiple cohorts of writers, they'd never be able to satisfy all types of writers. Only way is to allow users to build their own specific features on top.
I don’t disagree with that, but it is an expensive proposition to maintain on top of building it. There are only so many resources. I hope they do invest in it one day bc I would like to use sparkloop.
Great as always, Russell!
One thing that's holding me back from starting my own substack is investment in my long estalished (stagnant?) system of opt ins and email automations which funnels lovely people (organic traffic) towards my free newsletter on active campaign (ac).
I see the value of adding substack to my grasslands ecosystem, not least to reach a new audience. I am just not sure how to evolve gracefully and I would be so grateful, Russell, if you can offer any wise insights.
Substack's lack of integrations is head scratching. Moving subscribers manually in either direction seems clunky and fraught with risk of losing goodwill.
Questions circling in my head include:
1. Do I keep delivering my free newsletter on ac to capture the existing flow of new subscribers from my website's organic traffic, and from there invite them to substack?
2. Do I make the end of my ac automations a manual transfer to substack and move my free newsletter here?
3. Do I run both newsletter subscriptions in parallel or try to mash them together with zaps?
4. Or do I burn down the house (stop paying for ac), transfer my whole list to substack and start a new biz model without freebies/ automations, just inviting web visitors to substack
😬
Any thoughts?
I would consider looking at beehiiv bc they kind of do everything
Interesting. Thanks
So much to learn from your article
Thanks for sharing!