Could I suggest that Substack charge authors some nominal fee for this service? Charging any fee at all would weed out tons of people who will never generate any income for Substack. Charging any fee would raise the overall content quality of the network. Charging any fee would lower your support burden. If you could at least break even …
Could I suggest that Substack charge authors some nominal fee for this service? Charging any fee at all would weed out tons of people who will never generate any income for Substack. Charging any fee would raise the overall content quality of the network. Charging any fee would lower your support burden. If you could at least break even on every publisher account that would seem to help stabilize your balance sheet.
Free is great for those who aren't serious, but for those you are counting on to fund your operation it's concerning.
Medium charges a monthly fee and there is tons of chaff. I think some people would drop off after becoming inactive but if it’s a couple bucks, you might still have a lot of cobwebbed Substacks.
Good point, you're right. There are junk blogs all over the net on traditional pay per month hosting.
The goal I had in mind was that Substack should at least break even on each publisher so that the growth of the network would be sustainable. Better yet they should make a small profit on each blogger so that they can invest in improvements.
I suppose it’s hard to know the best way to stay affloat in this business. You can charge monthly, take subscription slices, host ads… it seems to me that in order to grow, they have to change their model. What would be a better way considering all they’ve done so far? What improvements would you want to see?
I'm very happy Substack is not an ad supported environment, that's a huge improvement over the norm, imho.
I don't object to free accounts philosophically, I'm just wondering if that's sustainable. You know, Substack isn't just free, it's a quality service. So the growth might be spectacular, but few of the bloggers who join will ever make any money for Substack. That's not a Substack problem, that's just the reality of trying to make a living publishing anything anywhere. It's hard, and most folks can't cut it.
I've been working online just short of 30 years and have designed my own blogging platform from scratch, and based on that I'd say that overall Substack has done a great job. As to improvements, I'd like to see Substack partner with Statcounter.com so that the accounts here would have real web stats. Why reinvent that wheel?
Could I suggest that Substack charge authors some nominal fee for this service? Charging any fee at all would weed out tons of people who will never generate any income for Substack. Charging any fee would raise the overall content quality of the network. Charging any fee would lower your support burden. If you could at least break even on every publisher account that would seem to help stabilize your balance sheet.
Free is great for those who aren't serious, but for those you are counting on to fund your operation it's concerning.
Medium charges a monthly fee and there is tons of chaff. I think some people would drop off after becoming inactive but if it’s a couple bucks, you might still have a lot of cobwebbed Substacks.
Good point, you're right. There are junk blogs all over the net on traditional pay per month hosting.
The goal I had in mind was that Substack should at least break even on each publisher so that the growth of the network would be sustainable. Better yet they should make a small profit on each blogger so that they can invest in improvements.
I suppose it’s hard to know the best way to stay affloat in this business. You can charge monthly, take subscription slices, host ads… it seems to me that in order to grow, they have to change their model. What would be a better way considering all they’ve done so far? What improvements would you want to see?
I'm very happy Substack is not an ad supported environment, that's a huge improvement over the norm, imho.
I don't object to free accounts philosophically, I'm just wondering if that's sustainable. You know, Substack isn't just free, it's a quality service. So the growth might be spectacular, but few of the bloggers who join will ever make any money for Substack. That's not a Substack problem, that's just the reality of trying to make a living publishing anything anywhere. It's hard, and most folks can't cut it.
I've been working online just short of 30 years and have designed my own blogging platform from scratch, and based on that I'd say that overall Substack has done a great job. As to improvements, I'd like to see Substack partner with Statcounter.com so that the accounts here would have real web stats. Why reinvent that wheel?
Great idea! I use Statcounter for another blog and it has real value.