8 ms·

Substack just killed the creator economy

48 points by pulisse 1y ago

politelemon 1y ago
Although the creator should disclose the link to beehive, I don't think this should be flagged as it's raising valid points and showcasing a worrying trend.
PaulHoule 1y ago
[flagged]
tootie 1y ago
I think you should also lay some blame on Apple who have this shitty policy for app store subs. Apple makes it very easy for users but users should really be aware to never use that feature since it's hostile to creators. It's not limited to Substack.
rectang 1y ago
> Most importantly, that means that if writers choose to leave Substack, they won’t be able to port their paid subscriptions over to another platform like they could previously. That seems like a big change. Having to abide by Apple’s user-friendly subscription and cancellation policies is small potatoes, compared to vendor lock-in of the subscriptions.
- politelemon 1y ago
  This is either misunderstanding it or interpreting in bad faith. The very next sentence explains why this is a bad thing. They aren't escaping vendor lock in, they're being moved to something worse.
  - rectang 1y ago
    ???? Didn’t I affirm the author’s point that the increased vendor lock-in for creators was a big deal, implicitly agreeing that it was bad? By “Apple’s user-friendly subscription and cancellation policies”, I mean e.g. the ability to unsubscribe without having to fight through the usual dark patterns. Having to offer that shouldn’t be onerous, although sadly some publishers see it that way. I can accept that I may not have communicated my point as well as I might have, but “bad faith”, wtf?
adithyassekhar 1y ago
Don't usually like Apple, but (the inevitable but), Creators should be happy they're passing the cost to customers. We know they didn't choose to write on substack out of altruism. If someone thinks you are worth enough to pay 30% more they'll pay. That's always been the case.
- VanTheBrand 1y ago
  So if they will always still pay at 30% higher then why not set the price another 30% higher after that and keep going again and again?
  - adithyassekhar 1y ago
    They can and it's not wrong. The authors gave it to substack, substack can choose their pricing. That was the deal though, not sure what's the issue here. This is just an ad for a competitor.
- tombert 1y ago
  It's still insane that Apple thinks it deserves 30% of your entire subscription cost for simply processing the transaction. I'm not saying that managing subscription billing has no value, but it's not like what Apple is doing has no comparison; PayPal offers similar subscription services and their cut is less than 10%.
  - adithyassekhar 1y ago
    That's the only insane part about this. But they can't go back because numbers must go up.
- politelemon 1y ago
  Not everything in life is binary the way you portray. They did not choose to use substack out of altruism, nor did they choose to fully exploit everyone as much as possible (they might have gone with apple pay themselves if that were the case). There can be in between zones were people are writing to reach readers and make some money from it, not as much as possible. The last paragraph is patently untrue, it's used as a clever gotcha for transactive capitalist interactions (assuming it can only be this way and no other), completely ignoring the human elements.
VirgilShelton 1y ago
Self hosting and using your payment processor of choice is always the best move. Own your own data or be prepared for the jig to be up at some point. This is what every platform that scales does.
- pixodaros 1y ago
  Writers move to sites like Substack (or 15 years ago blogspot) funded by other people's money like a software developer gets into an AI startup (or 5 years ago crypto). You can make bank in the short term even if you should know it will not last. Substack subsidizes individual creators and markets their blog as cooler than old blogs, Google subsidized web ads and upranked blogs in search results. Yes, it is no fun if you like stability, and its not a game I play.
- tombert 1y ago
  I don't use Substack [1], but isn't part of the appeal of Substack discoverability? Like that's part of the reason that a lot of these platforms get popular. Most software engineers could write something to upload, transcode, and host videos in an afternoon or two, but that only gets you 10% of YouTube's value. The thing that keeps YouTube on top is it's hyper-addictive recommendation system. I assume that Substack offers something like that? Again I don't actually use it so I'm kind of speaking out of my ass. [1] No one read my blog anyway so there's no pretense of charging for it.
  - maxace 1y ago
    "publish on ur own site, syndicate everywhere" has never been more salient
    - theshrike79 1y ago
      https://indieweb.org/POSSE#COPE https://indieweb.org/POSSE#COPE (The whole site is down now, but that's the canonical source for POSSE, or spefically COPE - Create Once Publish Everywhere)
  - rchaud 1y ago
famahar 1y ago
Is it still too hard for people to make their own website blog / newsletters? I know it takes a bit of technical knowledge, but compared to a decade ago there are so many options and tutorials. It's comical at this point the number of platforms that people adopt, love, and then turn hostile towards their users.
- chrismcb 1y ago
  Yes. I think it is too hard for the average person. It is one reason why some of these other became popular
- locusofself 1y ago
  Email deliverability is a nightmare. You need mega reputation to not end up in spam filters.
  - maxace 1y ago
    ghost + stripe + mailgun = ez mode
- sumanthvepa 1y ago
  I've been wondering exacrtly this. Surely, its not hard to get setup with your own website. It's not like substack is giving you much distribution.
- azemetre 1y ago
  I think one problem people have is payment processing. There really needs to be a federal program to allow people to easily transfer money as payment. There are too many extractive middlemen with rentier economies and ethics. There's no reason why Congress can make something like what Brazil has with Pix. Having a public option for payment processing can do a tremendous amount of good.
  - xeonmc 1y ago
    I wonder how accessible would it be to put article source on Patreon and make a static site that fetches and displays them via Javascript?
jonas21 1y ago
It's probably worth pointing out that the author is a founder of beehiiv, a Substack competitor.
- CamelCaseName 1y ago
  Thanks for that. I knew something felt off with how much beehiiv was being plugged. Very lame to not be transparent about that.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
xeonmc 1y ago
Do not bulid your castle in the middle of a swamp, or something like that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
TimorousBestie 1y ago
Surprised not to find any discussion of Stripe refusing to process payments for otherwise legal content on other platforms (Steam, itch.io, Patreon). It’s very likely their hyper-vigilance will extend to Substack as well.
- maxace 1y ago
  they are very annoying at first re: kyc
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throwaway290 1y ago
probably not coincidentally, Andresseen Horowitz newsletter just announced they are migrating to Substack (https://a16z.substack.com/ https://a16z.substack.com/) (Not that I read their newsletter just was too lazy to cancel)
- omnimus 1y ago
  a16z are investors in substack.
jpereira 1y ago
disclosure: building a substack competitor on atproto I'm really excited for ATProto as a way to build applications that let you have the benefits of substack (a unified network, recommendations, social features like comments, etc) without the eventual path to lock in. It's particularly exciting because the incentive is actually there to build an application this way. Whether Bluesky is growing or not, there are currently 30M accounts that you can reach (with one of the best auth systems I've interacted with), AND atproto gives you the building blocks for others to build on your work. Both these things make the bootstrapping problem for any social application way down. There's still a lot of stuff missing, payments being a big (and gnarly one), notification management being another, but both the bluesky team and the overall ecosystem has been moving at a solid pace, and things are getting more viable by the day.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Related/unrelated: anyone notice the seemingly big uptick in Substack submissions around here? Like ones reaching the front page, often submitted by newer-ish accounts. What's that about? Did (1) alot of bloggers switch to Substack recently? and (2) is there a concerted effort to take advantage of HN traffic bumps here? </subtleconspiracykeepinganeyeon>
- tombert 1y ago
  I think it's just that it's the cool place to write blog posts now. It was similar five or six years ago with Medium, or Github Pages. I don't think conspiratorial thinking is really necessary.
  - vunderba 1y ago
    Funny how quickly the worm turned on Medium due to the constant nagging and paywalling. It's looked down on in the same way as linking to a Quora article at this point.
    - tombert 1y ago
      Yeah, I don't remember the last time a Medium article trended on HN. I suspect Substack will have a similar fate eventually, for the same reasons. I was self-hosting my blog on my own server until very recently, but I moved to Cloudflare Pages and thus far I find it to be the least-awful platform I've used for it. Cloudflare might eventually turn out to be evil, but at least since I have my own domain name and it's just a static site, it's trivial to move to a different provider or even just host again myself if necessary. I really would like to figure out a good way to syndicate though; there's really no discoverability with the current iteration.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  You can monetise on Substack. Same with Youtube. Anyone can create a blog host or a video hosting site. Being able to pay creators who post on said platform is the key issue.
jackvalentine 1y ago
We’ve seen a bunch of blog platforms come and go at this point - what makes investors think Substack is worth of a 100mil series C?
chrisweekly 1y ago
Great post, thanks for the astute analysis. It's such a shame, I was starting to collect a good set of writers I'm following there - and was planning to join them. Maybe beehiiv is worth a closer look.
maxace 1y ago
clicked the minus sign on the ad "window" worked as a hyperlink instead, same as clicking on the ad itself not very "denk" imo
milliams 1y ago
"their creator economy", not "the creator economy".
czottmann 1y ago
If you're still actively using Substack as a creator, you're obviously very okay with them sending out Swastika missives, and you don't feel it's detrimental to your own brand – you'll not get any sympathy from me.
thefz 1y ago
This website format is really really really bad to read.
- rchaud 1y ago
  agreed. starting off with a giant ad for some AI-something-or-other was bad enough, but the design makes it hard to visually scan for where the article starts.
rchaud 1y ago
Apple's advertising campaign "there's an app for that" during the 2010s has liquefied an entire generation's brains into thinking they need to download an app for something that displays words and pictures. Like most people, I tried most of these apps. It wasn't long before I uninstalled them in favour of the mobile website versions. Most "content" apps provide no value to the user in app form. "Get the app for a better experience" - yeah, better for them. Installing the app is a way for them to access your contacts list, microphone and camera, and use your home screen and notification center as a billboard. With the growth of the "platform services" lock-in like app stores and wallets, the value drops to practically negative, as now you have to cover not just payment processing fees, but also the passed-down cost of the digital land baron's tariff for the privilege of transacting on their turf. No thanks.

48 points by pulisse 1y ago

Although the creator should disclose the link to beehive, I don't think this should be flagged as it's raising valid points and showcasing a worrying trend.

PaulHoule 1y ago

[flagged]

tootie 1y ago

I think you should also lay some blame on Apple who have this shitty policy for app store subs. Apple makes it very easy for users but users should really be aware to never use that feature since it's hostile to creators. It's not limited to Substack.

rectang 1y ago

> Most importantly, that means that if writers choose to leave Substack, they won’t be able to port their paid subscriptions over to another platform like they could previously. That seems like a big change. Having to abide by Apple’s user-friendly subscription and cancellation policies is small potatoes, compared to vendor lock-in of the subscriptions.

politelemon 1y ago
This is either misunderstanding it or interpreting in bad faith. The very next sentence explains why this is a bad thing. They aren't escaping vendor lock in, they're being moved to something worse.
- rectang 1y ago
  ???? Didn’t I affirm the author’s point that the increased vendor lock-in for creators was a big deal, implicitly agreeing that it was bad? By “Apple’s user-friendly subscription and cancellation policies”, I mean e.g. the ability to unsubscribe without having to fight through the usual dark patterns. Having to offer that shouldn’t be onerous, although sadly some publishers see it that way. I can accept that I may not have communicated my point as well as I might have, but “bad faith”, wtf?

adithyassekhar 1y ago

Don't usually like Apple, but (the inevitable but), Creators should be happy they're passing the cost to customers. We know they didn't choose to write on substack out of altruism. If someone thinks you are worth enough to pay 30% more they'll pay. That's always been the case.

VanTheBrand 1y ago
So if they will always still pay at 30% higher then why not set the price another 30% higher after that and keep going again and again?
- adithyassekhar 1y ago
  They can and it's not wrong. The authors gave it to substack, substack can choose their pricing. That was the deal though, not sure what's the issue here. This is just an ad for a competitor.
tombert 1y ago
It's still insane that Apple thinks it deserves 30% of your entire subscription cost for simply processing the transaction. I'm not saying that managing subscription billing has no value, but it's not like what Apple is doing has no comparison; PayPal offers similar subscription services and their cut is less than 10%.
- adithyassekhar 1y ago
  That's the only insane part about this. But they can't go back because numbers must go up.
politelemon 1y ago
Not everything in life is binary the way you portray. They did not choose to use substack out of altruism, nor did they choose to fully exploit everyone as much as possible (they might have gone with apple pay themselves if that were the case). There can be in between zones were people are writing to reach readers and make some money from it, not as much as possible. The last paragraph is patently untrue, it's used as a clever gotcha for transactive capitalist interactions (assuming it can only be this way and no other), completely ignoring the human elements.

VirgilShelton 1y ago

Self hosting and using your payment processor of choice is always the best move. Own your own data or be prepared for the jig to be up at some point. This is what every platform that scales does.

pixodaros 1y ago
Writers move to sites like Substack (or 15 years ago blogspot) funded by other people's money like a software developer gets into an AI startup (or 5 years ago crypto). You can make bank in the short term even if you should know it will not last. Substack subsidizes individual creators and markets their blog as cooler than old blogs, Google subsidized web ads and upranked blogs in search results. Yes, it is no fun if you like stability, and its not a game I play.
tombert 1y ago
I don't use Substack [1], but isn't part of the appeal of Substack discoverability? Like that's part of the reason that a lot of these platforms get popular. Most software engineers could write something to upload, transcode, and host videos in an afternoon or two, but that only gets you 10% of YouTube's value. The thing that keeps YouTube on top is it's hyper-addictive recommendation system. I assume that Substack offers something like that? Again I don't actually use it so I'm kind of speaking out of my ass. [1] No one read my blog anyway so there's no pretense of charging for it.
- maxace 1y ago
  "publish on ur own site, syndicate everywhere" has never been more salient
  - theshrike79 1y ago
    https://indieweb.org/POSSE#COPE https://indieweb.org/POSSE#COPE (The whole site is down now, but that's the canonical source for POSSE, or spefically COPE - Create Once Publish Everywhere)
- rchaud 1y ago

famahar 1y ago

Is it still too hard for people to make their own website blog / newsletters? I know it takes a bit of technical knowledge, but compared to a decade ago there are so many options and tutorials. It's comical at this point the number of platforms that people adopt, love, and then turn hostile towards their users.

chrismcb 1y ago
Yes. I think it is too hard for the average person. It is one reason why some of these other became popular
locusofself 1y ago
Email deliverability is a nightmare. You need mega reputation to not end up in spam filters.
- maxace 1y ago
  ghost + stripe + mailgun = ez mode
sumanthvepa 1y ago
I've been wondering exacrtly this. Surely, its not hard to get setup with your own website. It's not like substack is giving you much distribution.
azemetre 1y ago
I think one problem people have is payment processing. There really needs to be a federal program to allow people to easily transfer money as payment. There are too many extractive middlemen with rentier economies and ethics. There's no reason why Congress can make something like what Brazil has with Pix. Having a public option for payment processing can do a tremendous amount of good.
- xeonmc 1y ago
  I wonder how accessible would it be to put article source on Patreon and make a static site that fetches and displays them via Javascript?

jonas21 1y ago

It's probably worth pointing out that the author is a founder of beehiiv, a Substack competitor.

CamelCaseName 1y ago
Thanks for that. I knew something felt off with how much beehiiv was being plugged. Very lame to not be transparent about that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

xeonmc 1y ago

Do not bulid your castle in the middle of a swamp, or something like that.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

TimorousBestie 1y ago

Surprised not to find any discussion of Stripe refusing to process payments for otherwise legal content on other platforms (Steam, itch.io, Patreon). It’s very likely their hyper-vigilance will extend to Substack as well.

maxace 1y ago
they are very annoying at first re: kyc

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

throwaway290 1y ago

probably not coincidentally, Andresseen Horowitz newsletter just announced they are migrating to Substack (https://a16z.substack.com/ https://a16z.substack.com/) (Not that I read their newsletter just was too lazy to cancel)

omnimus 1y ago
a16z are investors in substack.

jpereira 1y ago

disclosure: building a substack competitor on atproto I'm really excited for ATProto as a way to build applications that let you have the benefits of substack (a unified network, recommendations, social features like comments, etc) without the eventual path to lock in. It's particularly exciting because the incentive is actually there to build an application this way. Whether Bluesky is growing or not, there are currently 30M accounts that you can reach (with one of the best auth systems I've interacted with), AND atproto gives you the building blocks for others to build on your work. Both these things make the bootstrapping problem for any social application way down. There's still a lot of stuff missing, payments being a big (and gnarly one), notification management being another, but both the bluesky team and the overall ecosystem has been moving at a solid pace, and things are getting more viable by the day.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Related/unrelated: anyone notice the seemingly big uptick in Substack submissions around here? Like ones reaching the front page, often submitted by newer-ish accounts. What's that about? Did (1) alot of bloggers switch to Substack recently? and (2) is there a concerted effort to take advantage of HN traffic bumps here? </subtleconspiracykeepinganeyeon>

tombert 1y ago
I think it's just that it's the cool place to write blog posts now. It was similar five or six years ago with Medium, or Github Pages. I don't think conspiratorial thinking is really necessary.
- vunderba 1y ago
  Funny how quickly the worm turned on Medium due to the constant nagging and paywalling. It's looked down on in the same way as linking to a Quora article at this point.
  - tombert 1y ago
    Yeah, I don't remember the last time a Medium article trended on HN. I suspect Substack will have a similar fate eventually, for the same reasons. I was self-hosting my blog on my own server until very recently, but I moved to Cloudflare Pages and thus far I find it to be the least-awful platform I've used for it. Cloudflare might eventually turn out to be evil, but at least since I have my own domain name and it's just a static site, it's trivial to move to a different provider or even just host again myself if necessary. I really would like to figure out a good way to syndicate though; there's really no discoverability with the current iteration.
theshrike79 1y ago
You can monetise on Substack. Same with Youtube. Anyone can create a blog host or a video hosting site. Being able to pay creators who post on said platform is the key issue.

jackvalentine 1y ago

We’ve seen a bunch of blog platforms come and go at this point - what makes investors think Substack is worth of a 100mil series C?

chrisweekly 1y ago

Great post, thanks for the astute analysis. It's such a shame, I was starting to collect a good set of writers I'm following there - and was planning to join them. Maybe beehiiv is worth a closer look.

maxace 1y ago

clicked the minus sign on the ad "window" worked as a hyperlink instead, same as clicking on the ad itself not very "denk" imo

milliams 1y ago

"their creator economy", not "the creator economy".

czottmann 1y ago

If you're still actively using Substack as a creator, you're obviously very okay with them sending out Swastika missives, and you don't feel it's detrimental to your own brand – you'll not get any sympathy from me.

thefz 1y ago

This website format is really really really bad to read.

rchaud 1y ago
agreed. starting off with a giant ad for some AI-something-or-other was bad enough, but the design makes it hard to visually scan for where the article starts.

rchaud 1y ago

Apple's advertising campaign "there's an app for that" during the 2010s has liquefied an entire generation's brains into thinking they need to download an app for something that displays words and pictures. Like most people, I tried most of these apps. It wasn't long before I uninstalled them in favour of the mobile website versions. Most "content" apps provide no value to the user in app form. "Get the app for a better experience" - yeah, better for them. Installing the app is a way for them to access your contacts list, microphone and camera, and use your home screen and notification center as a billboard. With the growth of the "platform services" lock-in like app stores and wallets, the value drops to practically negative, as now you have to cover not just payment processing fees, but also the passed-down cost of the digital land baron's tariff for the privilege of transacting on their turf. No thanks.