Substack is a Marketplace of Ideas
People actually expect real-world value from what you offer.
Hey Everyone,
Substack isn’t just a Subscription Network.
It’s a marketplace of ideas. A marketplace for inspiration and even entertainment. Your readers barter value for what you offer them.
It’s also not a meritocracy. This is fairly evident when we consider price ranges per category in this marketplace.
While Americans find politics entertaining, sharply increasing paid conversion rates (on average) for Substack’s political Newsletters, there’s another category that deserves some attention. Incidentally this is where Substack is hiring in business development (Finance & culture).
No it’s not the throngs and hoards for culture Newsletter who must somehow earn a side gig on $5.
It’s the investing category of “Finance” Newsletters. By far if you wanted to earn a buck on Substack, you’d better have some investing advice to offer up! Hands down the niche to pick if you want to turn Newsletter writing into a thriving business.
So I wanted to illustrate this with a number that makes some sense. If we head over to the leaderboards we can see how much some of the top paid Newsletters change, and Investing Newsletters are incredible for this. Their ROI, return on investment is substantial.
That investing Newsletters can charge very often 6x what a Culture Newsletter can charge for a paid monthly subscription is also an example of how our society views the contributions of men and women differently. I’d argue, the majority of Investing Newsletters are written by men, and the majority of Culture Newsletters are written by women. I won’t speculate on why this is, but illustrates the kind of economies we’re building into the Creator Economy, the kinds of bias we have to deal with.
Substack of course is agnostic on price, it lets the market decide.
Even on how subscriptions are based on U.S. American dollars via Stripe, making access to these Newsletters highly skewed to the U.S. Middle class. Now I am not here to talk about inclusion, but I thought I’d point these things out. (And it does concern me on ethical grounds).
What should you charge for your Newsletter depends on its Niche ‘Category’
What I’m more interested in this post, is the average price Creators can charge for their category of work. This helps manage realistic expectations too about the ROI of having a Newsletter on Substack.
Finance
So what would constitute a baseline for an average price per category, is it the average of the top 10, top 20, top 25 or something else? Let’s look at Finance, which Substack really means Investing Newsletters.
In the top 5:
We have a high of $59 a month , or $590 a year. To reach a liveable wage of $70,000 it would take just 118 monthly subs.
And a low of $23 a month, or $230 a year. To reach a liveable wage of $70,000, it would take 304 monthly subs.
These strike me as highly attainable figures. What is $500 for information that could make you thousands of dollars? Right?
Clearly Investing Newsletters have a significant advantage to lead to a full-time income on Substack.
Now with calculator in hand, I’m going to tabulate the mean of the top 25 as an exercise:
In the Top 50 in Finance
The average monthly subscription would cost you $76.53.
To have a living wage of $70,000, you’d need just 91 paid subscribers.
That’s crazy!
It also shows you how Substack isn’t just a subscription Network or a community tool for Creators, it’s really in reality, a marketplace.
The sooner you understand this, the faster you can build a media or solo-entrepreneur business around it. Your Substack income should just be one of the income streams of your business and supplement and act as a lead-generator for the rest of your digital products.
The top 50 Paid leaders in Finance, have an average monthly subscription of $76.5.
If we assume the majority of culture writers on Substack are women and charge the basic fee of $5 a month, this means top Finance writers in this marketplace (of supply & demand), charge in the area of 15.4 times more.
I’m not an expert in pay equity between men and women in the Creator economy, but it catches my attention. The marketplace definately does seem skewed to favor male creators, as a kind of default setting.
The bias in the marketplace gets grandfathered to the Creator Economy, in ways we have to be honest about.
Top Categories in the Substack Marketplace by Average price
I have not seen data on this to date, though I have compiled it here before. For simplicity’s sake I’ll be tabulating only the top 25 for other categories.
Due to the sensitivity of this data, it’s probably best I make this for paid readers. I’m a huge advocate of inclusion, accessibility and data transparency. I wouldn’t be crunching the numbers if I wasn’t.
Inclusion
Accessibility
Data Transparency
Platforms need to be creator-first
There are stark conclusions to draw from these numbers, my best conclusion is that a subscription network is just another marketplace with its own supply-demand rules and consumption economic patterns.
As someone that follows the stock markets as a “global consensus mechanism” of macro patterns, on some level I have to tolerate this as a “as is” mechanic of the ways things work for the time being. It’s obviously not going to be optimal for all participants or Newsletter niches.
But if you need to make this your full-time gig, these are important patterns to understand. The market-place default rules. How the game is slanted to certain topics, categories and Creators over others. We are not talking about a level playing field, meritocracy or a game where everybody wins.
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