On Being Featured
What happens when Substack features you? 🎈
Hey Everyone,
My apologies for being MIA the last few weeks.
I’ve had a slow time in my Creator Economy watching, even as the media keeps changing mostly for the worse. But personally my mental health has taken its customary November dive. I will try to explain.
This week after months of stagnation on my Newsletter revenue on Substack, and after nearly 2 years of writing here, I was featured. I should be thrilled right?
How do I get featured on Substack?
Substack itself says:
“Our team amplifies and elevates the rich kaleidoscope of writing on Substack. We look for writers who are going deep into a clear topic and exemplify best practices, like posting regularly and engaging with readers. We rotate our features regularly and aspire to give exposure to a wide variety of publications.
We welcome writers and readers to recommend another writer or writing on Substack they love via regular callouts on notes and in threads on Substack publications. Keep your eyes out for a chance to share your favorite writing with us on the @Substack account and during our Shoutout Threads at on.substack.com. “
Well I certainly have posted on a regular basis for these last two years, with multiple publications and teetering on the edge of burnout.
What Does it Do?
As On Substack is recommending you for a few days, it sends a lot of new readers (untargeted) your way.
Currently On Substack is recommending 8, not including their own publications.
This gives Substack a lot of ability to direct traffic as they please and to people who presumably have momentum and sales.
Substack’s internal employees and philosophy seems biased to “culture” as a category. I have no idea why that is. In some ways this makes sense, as typically this category has a lot of writers and with a lower price and less ability to go viral on social media, it’s these writers who likely need new readers the most from the subscription network.
Unlike categories like Politics that has a very high baseline conversion rate, or Investing, which has a high baseline price. Culture writers on paper would have the most difficulting making significant revenue via organic growth.
What Did you Get?
With the waterfall of new readers, after 500 new readers per day while featured, I got a few paid conversions. The conversion rate of these random new readers is significantly under 1%. I’m sort of used to it, my baseline conversion rate to paid is rather low, comfortably under 2%.
Still, it’s a nice boost. As in my category of A.I., there’s saturation and less organic hype around the topic as say compared to six months ago.
And I’m also grateful, just when morale was getting low, something “nice” happened. As a Creator mental health is hard to protect, when finances aren’t meeting basic needs or fulfilling your role like “bread winner”.
How Long Does it Last?
It appears to perhaps last a week? It started on Monday November 5th.
So in my earlier days it would have excited to see such an upswing of new readers:
I mean it looks impressive on paper, it should be impressive right? It might mean I’ll be marginally net positive in November in terms of paid subscribers. Growth plateaued so hard I had to go for paid Sponsorships in a big way, which sort of pisses me off after all the hard work I’ve given the first two years. Functionally, without a break or holiday.
I don’t remember the last weekend I didn’t do at least some work.
I’m not complaining, I love doing this. But I’m realizing that energy is finite and my interests are too varied and eventually I need to focus on one of two publications. Starting a ConvertKit and beehiiv to tinker has also been now part of the journey.
The reality is as a technology writer, if you don’t go viral on Twitter and aren’t valued by credentials like degrees and experience on LinkedIn, you are in the same boat as those culture writers. My success on Medium or LinkedIn Newsletters (before posts even existed) didn’t translate, I had no Email list from a decade + of writing.
The in-between was a Wordpress, that was not growing at all for two years. Granted I’m not the most entertaining or original essayist, more like a breaking news person with an interest in curation, summarization and covering emerging tech more like an enthusiast than like an Op-Ed writer. I know that caps my growth.
Ideally you want to have a business where a Newsletter is just part of the flywheel. I’m still not even sure being a pure-play writer is viable as a Newsletter operator or publisher. And it’s certainly not about quantity and all about quality, and I realize my style of writing and reporting is sort of dated and is becoming redundant as I age along with the readers who are like me.
I’m not interested in writing Op-Ed clickbait and I’m not qualified to talk about AI or future tech in a technical way, so my niche really is limited by my obsession with news reporting while I’m not a journalist or investigative journalist and don’t have the skills, network or ability to be so. So how do I talk about technology and my interests in a way that makes sense to me? And what value could it possibly offer a paid audience?
Having Readers is Nice
So due to the Feature, my publication grew 2,212 readers in five days (an average of 442 a day)! It’s nice having readers, but it still doesn’t solve the unique value proposition you need to offer them that they cannot find elsewhere.
I do offer:
Community Chat
A Reddit with a steady stream of articles
A number of complementary Newsletters related to my topics
Now I embed more videos directly into the Newsletter
I break down longer reports
I summarize breaking news as it occurs
I cover and profile startups, funding and innovative products related to AI
I talk about sociological and historical themes like the future of work and AGI
I don’t:
Have a Podcast
Write original Op-Eds or Essays (very often)
I’m not really a Technological Optimist (which would win me more fans if I pretended to be)
I don’t cover the topics repeatedly that I know would do well (e.g. OpenAI, AGI)
The moral is you need to be unique, original and offer value that your readers and niche cannot find elsewhere. When I started writing about A.I. there were easily under 10 regular AI Newsletters on Substack, now there are likely over 1,500. Many of these are Chat-GPT or AI generated, I’d say at least 15%.
It doesn’t matter how many readers you have, if you aren’t offering something unique. If you do not write with flair, originality and content that’s shareable, you will stagnate with a lower conversion rate that will make it difficult to monetize.
It’s non-negotiable to do so, if you want to survive or even thrive as a writer.
I could do all the research, put in all the work, but if I’m not talented, how far will I go?
At a point of consumer saturation with paid subscriptions and reader saturation with Newsletters, growth doesn’t last forever. This is what forced me to diversify into Sponsorships, think of how else I could serve B2B customers and integrate Ads in a way that would be minimally intrusive yet profitable.
Cost and Benefit of Ads
While the injection of cash that Sponsorships allows has been nice, it’s damaged my business model. It’s slowed down paid subscriptions, and very problematic, it’s increased churn significantly.
As my customer retention has slipped below 70% for the year, it’s literally broken my business model. This means the little money I was able to make via Ads, actually ended up costing me money.
Furthermore as growth has plateaued, now I need to keep doing those Sponsorships just to make ends meet. So you can diversify your business model as a Newsletter, but it might impact growth.
Having Sponsorships multiple times a week also means I have to write more, and hence lower quality articles and hence more churn. It’s not something I’d recommend to others necessarily, since it creates these existential problems and feedback loops.
And it’s certainly nothing that a Substack feature can fix.
There is one possible way perhaps out of the mess, it’s too do a higher percentage of paid locked content, and hope it increases conversions. Doing the majority of content as locked is certainly not the goal I had in mind. But as a business, it seems almost inevitable now.
My free content will need a Sponsor, to be free. I could not afford to go back to my home country. After two years, my bootstrapping hasn’t “paid off”. I’m net negative. This wouldn’t be a big deal if my wife worked, but with her parents having major health issues, she’s not able to.
So I’m stuck in the paid subscriptions trap, it didn’t grow fast enough to support me, but with Ads I can scrape by, but my growth has stalled and it’s and revenue has gone down in the last 90 days.
And how hard I hustle now has no incremental value. My endurance and ability is waning under the grind. But I have no other viable way of generating revenue, I’m not a skilled worker. Especially as a remote worker in a foreign country, my options are limited. I “have” to make this work.
The Email on Being Featured
I have some exciting news to share today: your publication on Substack has been handpicked to feature on Discover in our Substack app, as well as Discover on the web.
A few quick notes:
Find above our “Featured Publication” graphic for you to use if you wish (some writers like to add them to their about pages, share on social media, or post in our home feed).
Our featured publications are refreshed every few days. If you do not want your publication to be featured, just let us know and we can remove you at any point.
Most writers on Substack don’t get the chance to be featured like this, but you can pay forward the opportunity by refreshing your recommendations. That way, readers who discover your work in the coming days will also learn about some of the other great writers on Substack—specifically, fellow writers that you admire.
Very best wishes,
Let’s take a look at my Stats and see where they came from:
Spike in Views on Day 1 of Being Featured
To complicate the stats of this week, I did have an article that performed better than usual, so I got more traffic from Google and unusual sources than usual.
This is traffic since November 20th, till today the end of November 25th:
New sign-ups from Substack = 2,920
71.27% are coming from Substack’s App.
So doing Notes is still somewhat important.
If you want to tap into Substack’s existing ecosystem of writers and readers.
Substack.com also had a 52.7% conversion rate of views to sign-ups that is rather high being Featured.
Conversion was even higher of views to sign-ups on the App at 63.5%.
Conversion from Being Featured was Almost Nil
I’ve always suspected that your average Substack writer or reader wasn’t very related to my target audience. And being Featured as really demonstrated this with some data:
I got a grand total of 4 new paid subs (and a flurry of free-trials), from the five days being featured this week.
I got more paid subs just from writing about Sam Altman than I did being featured by Substack. He’s a famous CEO of a famous AI startup called OpenAI who made ChatGPT.
What’s Left for me to Do?
I need to explore paid acquisitions (stuff like Rewind or Twitter Ads or beehiiv Boosts).
That is, I need to re-invest the meagre revenue I generated on Substack back into my Substack to grow faster. Churn and customer retention is low now if I don’t doe this, my publication will likely die out.
So the boost-strapping isn’t even over after 2 years. Savings depleted but even the money I make, well some of it needs to go back into the business.
I need to explore more serious “business collabs” to make recurring revenue, like “exclusive-partnerships” with startups and AI products in my space. This is probably the most viable course of action given what I write about.
I need to Improve Quality
LinkedIn Newsletter
Focus on fewer Substack Newsletters
Decide whether to continue the ConvertKit Newsletter (that hasn’t really grown fast enough)
Improve the quality of my articles (so not 6 a week on a single publication!)
I need to improve business sense and strategy, since monetization is not a choice in my case, it’s a necessity to feed my family.
I need to Network more with Newsletter insiders, agencies and perhaps find a mentor.
Consider how difficult all of this is would you, it’s not as if I haven’t found any success on Substack. It’s not Substack’s fault per se either, it’s clearly my lack of talent and lack of original content.
But is it enough to live? Well yes and no. As a minimalist I can “live” on almost anything. But it’s about only one half of a “living wage”, and after housing inflation, it’s a non-starter if I ever want to go back to Canada, I’d instantly have to find a real job.
I love that I was featured, and I often wondered why it never happend to me before. But given my mental health, financial squeeze, depleted savings and low morale, I just wish circumstances were different that I could enjoy it more.
I’ll try to be more regular on this Newsletter with some actual tips and news about the big picture. Just lately, I’ve been in survival mode with revenues declining freaking out.
“Look I know media isn’t an easy business and I’m neither a talented writer or talented creator. I had moments where I thought I would make it. But also moments where I nearly reached my limit. It’s not just a grind, it’s that you need to choose your battles because your opportunities and windows for growth may be temporary and fleeting. Nobody is going to tell you that.”
Failure is always a last resort. And God knows, I’ve failed before.