I understand the negative take on subs, but how much of it is tied to pricing? I have a deal running that takes the cost of a yearly subscription to just below $20.
I see a lot of pubs charging way more, but how many subs can people afford?
I think people need to be realistic about how much they can charge, and perhaps Substack needs to begin a bundling system or some other adjustments to its business model.
For me I already change around 30-40% less than the than the mean of my category. I didn't say anything about Substack subscriptions not working, just that Subscription fatigue as a whole was irking consumers at large.
I kept reading and feeling worse and worse- annoyed almost at how negative your narrative was. I can't be annoyed though, as it's reality. It's important to talk about, I wish there was a stronger call to action or thing to do aside from lament but right now- this is what we have. We have these cathartic essays where we find other people feeling the same.
Don't worry, Substack's algo will suppress any negative narrative. People don't like to look at media as relating to their writing. Unfortunately, for me this is my livelihood.
People are already recognising AI generated writing and detesting it. "That's too GPT style" is what I am hearing a lot and noone likes it. Have faith! I hear we are far away from Artificial Super Intelligence.
Yes I wish we were even given a choice. Both on LinkedIn and SEO it's outcompeting human content. I don't see the backlash or rebellion. UGC as we once knew it might be a thing of the past.
I can feel (and share) your pain in this one. Also, this line "A large percentage of my paid subscribers are now actually other writers." reminded me of Medium when I was still deep in the weeds. I do wonder where this all goes. Just like that sentence means far more than I could express with it.
Listen I love Notes but I hate that I'm here again. Been there done that and it gets pretty toxic typically (the writers writing for other writers syndrome of Medium). I'm more likely to trip on some grifter than find some intellectual haven now. There is this SPAC fraudster that now charges $99 a month to readers for AI generated content: Chamath Palihapitiya. He's a famous person, but now suddenly 4th in my category: https://substack.com/top/technology
You'd have to understand the Investor world Martin, he's the SPAC King, basically defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors on a repeated basis while using his wealth and leverage for nefarious ways. Not surprised to see him grifting like this here. The amount he's charging is just leveraging his fame for frankly, third rate AI generated content.
Glad I haven't heard of him. I'm guessing his followers came over from Twitter? I took a break from 'all this' for a couple months as I've been engaged in other stuff offline, but damn, I can't seem to find my sea legs again. The entire creator environment just seems so, in a sense, hopeless, now. I can't even express how much frustration I've had helping two companies with their Google and YouTube problems, let alone the massive shift in the internet the Google updates have quietly incurred over the past year. I published a huge piece on that point yesterday, far too long for it to be successful but, hell, I'm struggling to figure out what to do for a livelihood going forward at this point. The entire internet has been turned on its head with 'ai' and all it encompasses.
I know exactly what you mean on multiple point here. Entire Creator Economy platforms might just come and go. Google search is now nearly usable with AI spam.
Oh it's worse than that IMO re. Google. Far worse. It's long but if you skip to the middle-end I point out all the fuckery their new algo updates are doing. It's kind of crazy. I wish we had a metric to measure human aggravation because I'm sure Google's would be through the roof at this point. Then again, maybe I should just switch search engines and hope one of them makes a dent in the monopoly. https://jjpryor.substack.com/p/why-google-killed-the-blogger
I actually think people will pay for Gemini Advanced (what Bard used to be called), as sad as that is. I've looked into their Gemini Ultra and it seems to be improving the space.
I'm convinced American monopolies in Tech have created very poor outcomes for the future of the entire internet and we're trapped in their creation.
For a platform writer, Casey Newton's coverage of AI makes him an AI bro as well, which is pretty laughable. Not so many Platforms to write about I guess through the fog? His content appears to have pivoted to a large extent to AI topics in recent months.
Do you think the lack of a separate "AI" category here is a reflection of the generally skeptical (and I'm being generous) attitude I'm sensing towards AI on Substack and elsewhere? Perhaps it's precisely because so many AI-focused newsletters have sprung up that Substack is reluctant to give them their own space?
(I'm not in any way justifying this. I'd also stand to benefit from a separate AI category. Just curious about your take, as you generally seem to be quite attuned to what's happening on Substack.)
What if there was an separate AI category? It would immediately make the top 20 in that list a bit more relevant likely leading to 20-50% more income in the following year for those writers. For the Top 3, it might even be life-changing.
As it is crypto, investing and other male youth topics is in a general state of decline on Substack. What happens to AI writers when the and if the AI bubble falters or pops? I do know the answer. Likely what will remain are PhDs selling AI courses and Product Managers doing the same with high-end "consulting". I think AI News might take the biggest hit.
Already the beehiiv rundown clones are consolidating, pivoting, exiting with being acquisitions and so forth. The biggest ones are using AI to pump out lead generation. The Morning Brew wannabe for AI have already likely peaked as its a narrow window of fascinating that is closing already.
AI Newsletters basically led to beehiiv getting a Series A to compete directly with Substack. Substack might feel that it's not their home territory and that if anything they will de-prioritize it. This means people like me have to run around like a chicken without a head hoping to get some small Native Sponsors just to eat. - while my peers on beehiiv are making 100s of k in revenue from Ad sales.
The proliferation of AI News focused newsletters is what's making me reconsider my current Sunday roundup altogether. A lot of it feels like adding to the sea of noise, even if I do try to niche down and differentiate.
I think we'll see an increasing push for people to find differentiators beyond "Writing about AI" to stay relevant and build a following.
I'm consistently impressed by how prolific you are at maintaining a superhuman amount of newsletters while diving deep into many topics. If that doesn't bring you the lifestyle that you want, it's a sad state of affairs.
It's all about timing and the value added and your budget. Do we have to niche down or serve professionals with courses, prompting tips and exposure to AI tools and at what point do those things get old and saturated?
AI News is definately not very unique for me, so I'm predictably not getting very far. There seems to be a lack of speculation and deep dives and human generated essays on the impact of AI on real society. There are those rundowns, those engineer driven shout-outs but not much on the other side of the spectrum.
Agree on the lack of deep dives and essays, though your guest posts certainly serve to fill that gap well, as do many of Alberto's articles.
A lot of it is due to a lack of deep understanding people like me have compared to e.g. Alberto. That's the reason I come at it from a newcomer perspective writing for newcomers. That and a certain level of Imposter Syndrome.
Taking into account what you said about the amount of effort you're putting in vs. reward, have you considered reducing the number of publications you maintain and niching down / specializing? If so, what would be the most interesting angles for you?
I'll also note Daniel, that Substack historically is literally an offshoot of Twitter, so they failed fundamentally to grow with LinkedIn. Even now as academics from LinkedIn join Substack, they are failing to grow the audience and nurture it substantially.
Substack is known for outrage and cultural gardens, but they seem to let categories mature organically to the detriment of their male or younger male readers. By relying too much on early writers from Twitter (Twitter that had a horrible CTR rate and quality of Sub rate even at its prime), they locked in the ecosystem that might lead to a death spiral.
I can only speculate Daniel, but Substack seems ideologically motivated and at the service of a different audience of readers and writers. Mostly I'm not sure they have found niches within tech and tech writers to be profitable enough perhaps to warrant their own category?
A few product, startup and AI writers can scale, but it is a very small minority. What does that mean? It means Substack is mostly for entertainment and not education.
AI has significant traction, not to make an AI category is counter-productive for Substack. Why would Substack hold a banner for categories such as "Food and Drink", "Health Politics", "Music" and "Parenting", but not entrepreneurship, product, software engineering and machine learning? Perhaps they think they are a cultural app destination and not a career advancement one.
Substack lumps together at least ten viable categories into Technology and it makes it more difficult to grow if you are writing about those topics. The ratio of writers to readers in the ecosystem in those topics is just brutal to the point of irrelevance.
Subsack doesn't share real data on why that that is or how they come to these conclusions. Do employees at the company have a bias against business and tech? You could certainly make a case that ideologically they are. This is fundamentally perhaps because conversion rates in politics and culture are so much higher in their six years of experience.
But it becomes a self-fulling prophecy and too much content with outdated discovery for the majority of new readers when they discover the app.
Currently Damien and Alberto will be able to do alright, but for the rest of us we'll churn eventually. Substack has made monetization for Tech topics and AI harder than it should be.
A lot of this is also part of a pivot away from News and into Op-Eds, essays and generally exaggerated headlines. The lack of a large enough Tech category audience means there's always more competition for less spoils.
Now the Tech category is dominated by people who have relatively high subscription prices. But as we know in Newsletter economics, if you are charging less than $10 you are most of the time dead in the water to build a sustainable business. The exception to this rule really is politics because Americans are in a state of conflict with their government.
Thanks for a thorough and well-considered response.
I find this approach to also be at odds with Substack's stated ambition of being the ultimate destination for readers, etc. Having one "Tech" umbrella for so many diverse categories isn't only hurting the writers, it makes it far more difficult for the readers to find their true interests.
I can't imagine it being technologically challenging to create multiple subcategories and niche down to subcultures and sub-interest groups accordingly.
If it's driven by ideology as you speculate, I still find it curious that Substack would allow that to be the guiding star at the cost of growing the platform and, by extension, their own bottom line.
I do hope your predictions don't come true. I found my own growth on Substack to be well above what I expected without heavy-handed promotion efforts or any money spent on marketing, etc. So in a sense, Substack has been a great platform for my initial years.
But if we're truly moving away from subscription-based models, it'd be an unfortunate development considering that Substack has built the entire philosophy around this very idea.
Yes that's the key point, it's the opposite of being reader centric.
I can only guess that male readers aren't their desired target audience. What other explanation could there be?
It's still exciting to write on Substack no matter the challenges and audience saturation, especially because there are fewer and fewer platforms and places to do so.
Substack's pure-play approach to paid subscriptions also means if I do a Native Sponsor, my audience churn is hurt making it economically not a great or viable option for me - I'm forced to play by the platform's rules. Even if not explicitly stated.
I understand the negative take on subs, but how much of it is tied to pricing? I have a deal running that takes the cost of a yearly subscription to just below $20.
https://morgthorak.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=0a44d500
I see a lot of pubs charging way more, but how many subs can people afford?
I think people need to be realistic about how much they can charge, and perhaps Substack needs to begin a bundling system or some other adjustments to its business model.
For me I already change around 30-40% less than the than the mean of my category. I didn't say anything about Substack subscriptions not working, just that Subscription fatigue as a whole was irking consumers at large.
I kept reading and feeling worse and worse- annoyed almost at how negative your narrative was. I can't be annoyed though, as it's reality. It's important to talk about, I wish there was a stronger call to action or thing to do aside from lament but right now- this is what we have. We have these cathartic essays where we find other people feeling the same.
Don't worry, Substack's algo will suppress any negative narrative. People don't like to look at media as relating to their writing. Unfortunately, for me this is my livelihood.
Yikes. Gloomy picture. I do think because of AI, quality writing and clearly with human input will stand the test of time.
I'm glad you have this optimism Abha. It's not clear to me even if Medium or Substack will stand the test of the next few months and years.
People are already recognising AI generated writing and detesting it. "That's too GPT style" is what I am hearing a lot and noone likes it. Have faith! I hear we are far away from Artificial Super Intelligence.
Yes I wish we were even given a choice. Both on LinkedIn and SEO it's outcompeting human content. I don't see the backlash or rebellion. UGC as we once knew it might be a thing of the past.
I can feel (and share) your pain in this one. Also, this line "A large percentage of my paid subscribers are now actually other writers." reminded me of Medium when I was still deep in the weeds. I do wonder where this all goes. Just like that sentence means far more than I could express with it.
Listen I love Notes but I hate that I'm here again. Been there done that and it gets pretty toxic typically (the writers writing for other writers syndrome of Medium). I'm more likely to trip on some grifter than find some intellectual haven now. There is this SPAC fraudster that now charges $99 a month to readers for AI generated content: Chamath Palihapitiya. He's a famous person, but now suddenly 4th in my category: https://substack.com/top/technology
It's all so disturbing.
Why is he a fraudster? I’m confused by that comment. Seems to come out of nowhere.
You'd have to understand the Investor world Martin, he's the SPAC King, basically defrauded hundreds of thousands of investors on a repeated basis while using his wealth and leverage for nefarious ways. Not surprised to see him grifting like this here. The amount he's charging is just leveraging his fame for frankly, third rate AI generated content.
Definitely not a comment out of nowhere.
Ok, fair enough. Not a world I’m in or want to really.
Thanks for coming back. 👍🏻
Glad I haven't heard of him. I'm guessing his followers came over from Twitter? I took a break from 'all this' for a couple months as I've been engaged in other stuff offline, but damn, I can't seem to find my sea legs again. The entire creator environment just seems so, in a sense, hopeless, now. I can't even express how much frustration I've had helping two companies with their Google and YouTube problems, let alone the massive shift in the internet the Google updates have quietly incurred over the past year. I published a huge piece on that point yesterday, far too long for it to be successful but, hell, I'm struggling to figure out what to do for a livelihood going forward at this point. The entire internet has been turned on its head with 'ai' and all it encompasses.
I know exactly what you mean on multiple point here. Entire Creator Economy platforms might just come and go. Google search is now nearly usable with AI spam.
Oh it's worse than that IMO re. Google. Far worse. It's long but if you skip to the middle-end I point out all the fuckery their new algo updates are doing. It's kind of crazy. I wish we had a metric to measure human aggravation because I'm sure Google's would be through the roof at this point. Then again, maybe I should just switch search engines and hope one of them makes a dent in the monopoly. https://jjpryor.substack.com/p/why-google-killed-the-blogger
I actually think people will pay for Gemini Advanced (what Bard used to be called), as sad as that is. I've looked into their Gemini Ultra and it seems to be improving the space.
I'm convinced American monopolies in Tech have created very poor outcomes for the future of the entire internet and we're trapped in their creation.
For a platform writer, Casey Newton's coverage of AI makes him an AI bro as well, which is pretty laughable. Not so many Platforms to write about I guess through the fog? His content appears to have pivoted to a large extent to AI topics in recent months.
Do you think the lack of a separate "AI" category here is a reflection of the generally skeptical (and I'm being generous) attitude I'm sensing towards AI on Substack and elsewhere? Perhaps it's precisely because so many AI-focused newsletters have sprung up that Substack is reluctant to give them their own space?
(I'm not in any way justifying this. I'd also stand to benefit from a separate AI category. Just curious about your take, as you generally seem to be quite attuned to what's happening on Substack.)
What if there was an separate AI category? It would immediately make the top 20 in that list a bit more relevant likely leading to 20-50% more income in the following year for those writers. For the Top 3, it might even be life-changing.
As it is crypto, investing and other male youth topics is in a general state of decline on Substack. What happens to AI writers when the and if the AI bubble falters or pops? I do know the answer. Likely what will remain are PhDs selling AI courses and Product Managers doing the same with high-end "consulting". I think AI News might take the biggest hit.
Already the beehiiv rundown clones are consolidating, pivoting, exiting with being acquisitions and so forth. The biggest ones are using AI to pump out lead generation. The Morning Brew wannabe for AI have already likely peaked as its a narrow window of fascinating that is closing already.
AI Newsletters basically led to beehiiv getting a Series A to compete directly with Substack. Substack might feel that it's not their home territory and that if anything they will de-prioritize it. This means people like me have to run around like a chicken without a head hoping to get some small Native Sponsors just to eat. - while my peers on beehiiv are making 100s of k in revenue from Ad sales.
I hear you on a lot of this.
The proliferation of AI News focused newsletters is what's making me reconsider my current Sunday roundup altogether. A lot of it feels like adding to the sea of noise, even if I do try to niche down and differentiate.
I think we'll see an increasing push for people to find differentiators beyond "Writing about AI" to stay relevant and build a following.
I'm consistently impressed by how prolific you are at maintaining a superhuman amount of newsletters while diving deep into many topics. If that doesn't bring you the lifestyle that you want, it's a sad state of affairs.
It's all about timing and the value added and your budget. Do we have to niche down or serve professionals with courses, prompting tips and exposure to AI tools and at what point do those things get old and saturated?
AI News is definately not very unique for me, so I'm predictably not getting very far. There seems to be a lack of speculation and deep dives and human generated essays on the impact of AI on real society. There are those rundowns, those engineer driven shout-outs but not much on the other side of the spectrum.
Agree on the lack of deep dives and essays, though your guest posts certainly serve to fill that gap well, as do many of Alberto's articles.
A lot of it is due to a lack of deep understanding people like me have compared to e.g. Alberto. That's the reason I come at it from a newcomer perspective writing for newcomers. That and a certain level of Imposter Syndrome.
Taking into account what you said about the amount of effort you're putting in vs. reward, have you considered reducing the number of publications you maintain and niching down / specializing? If so, what would be the most interesting angles for you?
I'll also note Daniel, that Substack historically is literally an offshoot of Twitter, so they failed fundamentally to grow with LinkedIn. Even now as academics from LinkedIn join Substack, they are failing to grow the audience and nurture it substantially.
Substack is known for outrage and cultural gardens, but they seem to let categories mature organically to the detriment of their male or younger male readers. By relying too much on early writers from Twitter (Twitter that had a horrible CTR rate and quality of Sub rate even at its prime), they locked in the ecosystem that might lead to a death spiral.
I can only speculate Daniel, but Substack seems ideologically motivated and at the service of a different audience of readers and writers. Mostly I'm not sure they have found niches within tech and tech writers to be profitable enough perhaps to warrant their own category?
A few product, startup and AI writers can scale, but it is a very small minority. What does that mean? It means Substack is mostly for entertainment and not education.
AI has significant traction, not to make an AI category is counter-productive for Substack. Why would Substack hold a banner for categories such as "Food and Drink", "Health Politics", "Music" and "Parenting", but not entrepreneurship, product, software engineering and machine learning? Perhaps they think they are a cultural app destination and not a career advancement one.
Substack lumps together at least ten viable categories into Technology and it makes it more difficult to grow if you are writing about those topics. The ratio of writers to readers in the ecosystem in those topics is just brutal to the point of irrelevance.
Subsack doesn't share real data on why that that is or how they come to these conclusions. Do employees at the company have a bias against business and tech? You could certainly make a case that ideologically they are. This is fundamentally perhaps because conversion rates in politics and culture are so much higher in their six years of experience.
But it becomes a self-fulling prophecy and too much content with outdated discovery for the majority of new readers when they discover the app.
Currently Damien and Alberto will be able to do alright, but for the rest of us we'll churn eventually. Substack has made monetization for Tech topics and AI harder than it should be.
A lot of this is also part of a pivot away from News and into Op-Eds, essays and generally exaggerated headlines. The lack of a large enough Tech category audience means there's always more competition for less spoils.
Now the Tech category is dominated by people who have relatively high subscription prices. But as we know in Newsletter economics, if you are charging less than $10 you are most of the time dead in the water to build a sustainable business. The exception to this rule really is politics because Americans are in a state of conflict with their government.
Thanks for a thorough and well-considered response.
I find this approach to also be at odds with Substack's stated ambition of being the ultimate destination for readers, etc. Having one "Tech" umbrella for so many diverse categories isn't only hurting the writers, it makes it far more difficult for the readers to find their true interests.
I can't imagine it being technologically challenging to create multiple subcategories and niche down to subcultures and sub-interest groups accordingly.
If it's driven by ideology as you speculate, I still find it curious that Substack would allow that to be the guiding star at the cost of growing the platform and, by extension, their own bottom line.
I do hope your predictions don't come true. I found my own growth on Substack to be well above what I expected without heavy-handed promotion efforts or any money spent on marketing, etc. So in a sense, Substack has been a great platform for my initial years.
But if we're truly moving away from subscription-based models, it'd be an unfortunate development considering that Substack has built the entire philosophy around this very idea.
Yes that's the key point, it's the opposite of being reader centric.
I can only guess that male readers aren't their desired target audience. What other explanation could there be?
It's still exciting to write on Substack no matter the challenges and audience saturation, especially because there are fewer and fewer platforms and places to do so.
Substack's pure-play approach to paid subscriptions also means if I do a Native Sponsor, my audience churn is hurt making it economically not a great or viable option for me - I'm forced to play by the platform's rules. Even if not explicitly stated.