Substack is changing content as we know it.
All about Substack and how this "Email" company has democratised writing.
Hi I’m Aryan, you might be knowing me from twitter. I’ll be posting some fun business breakdowns, some thoughts, some lessons and things which make me curious here.
If that’s something which suits you then hop in:
Starting this newsletter with the company I’ve started admiring a lot. Not just because of the product they’ve built, but because of the mission they are on. It’s Substack.
In 2017 these 3 guys from Y Combinator disrupted the whole writing industry using simple Web 1.0 tech:
Email 📨
Now their startup Substack is democratising writing, helping millions of writers get paid for what they love to do.
Substack is a fun story to study because in the world of Web3, how is this company building so well upon Web1 tech? And in the world of video, how are they getting 500,000 paying subscribers on a text based platform?
Substack is a simple email provider which helps you setup your email newsletter and own a blog page for free. You can also get paid directly from your subscribers if you want to turn it into a paid newsletter.
The philosophy behind Substack is that people should pay for the content they consume. Everything being available on the internet for free is making people believe that everything has to be free.
Why Email?
Email is a non algorithmic protocol. You can directly connect with your audience without the interference of any platform in between. Like Insta or twitter, it isn’t controlling who to show your content, or what you want to see.
When we scroll social media normally, we are made to feel that we have full control, but in reality we’re being controlled by the algorithm. Whatever we do is at spur of the moment.
On the contrary, when you subscribe to a newsletter and pay for it, you’re being very intentional with where you want your attention to go.
People don’t realise that social media is the most expensive thing. It’s making you pay with your time, and your time is limited. Your life is limited. Taking away your time is as good as taking away your life. Algorithms are taking your life away, to increase engagement on their platforms. You’re basically a click farm for them.
You’d never want such a thing to happen to you consciously, and that is the best part about social media. It plays on our subconscious. No one would ever consciously choose to spend 2 hours watching random strangers dance on “kiss my ass goodbye”, but we are doing that.
We all have just 24 hours to accomplish the things we want to, to spend time with the people we love, to unwind in the way we want to and to consume what’s good for us.
Substack solves for that!
The Mission
Substack isn’t just another email tool. It was intended to bring out a revolution in both content creation and consumption. So, we can’t really compare it to any email provider.
Substack isn’t just solving for a writer to distribute and get paid, it’s solving for the attention crisis of consumers. To make them more intentional about what they consume.
But let’s get practical: there are so many email providers right now, why do writers choose Substack?
First advantage is that the writers don’t have to pay anything until they make money. Most other platforms have a fee and it keeps increasing with your number of emails.
Second: it cuts through the noise.
Most newsletter platforms give you so many choices to design, write, add integrations that you get confused. It’s another great example of a “disruptive” product where the product is inferior to the solutions available in the market, and it’s available almost for free and is extremely simple to use.
A writer wants to write, she doesn’t want to worry about any other thing. Her full focus has to be on making the content really good for the readers.
And for the reader: the reading experience is extremely simple and minimal.
When we strategise our products at our startups, the number one thing we do is solve for engagement. How can you build successive hooks in the product which keeps people engaged and induces a need for more?
Most attention based products have to solve for this, or they’ll die.
Every product is after your attention. Clickbaits and mindless hooking to incite emotions in human beings just to grab a few drops of their attention and playing on “disturbing” human psychology has become an integral part of the internet content.
Most writers on the internet write to incite some emotions in you because that’s what the algorithm loves. Great writing and creativity takes a toss. And truly great writers hardly get any distribution.
I think what Substack has done is true democratisation. In which your writing is pure and unadulterated. Purely meant for the reader, not for pleasing the algorithm or that editor in chief or to sell ads.
How did Substack grow so fast?
Now since it’s an email newsletter, your growth depends on how good and different your content is that makes people share and talk about it.
Email newsletter don’t grow like crazy, but people forget that’s it’s more important to serve those who really care about what you write, than write for everyone.
It becomes your exclusive community who come to take a taste of the exclusive content. So when you as an online writer introduce your Substack to the small set of people who actually care to read your content, they subscribe and even subscribe for paid.
There are tons of writers online who would love to get paid for their work, and that’s how Substack became spread like anything. Owning a newsletter is important as a writer, and while other platforms were charging too much, Substack’s solution was free. People started preferring it.
Substack also has this internal recommendations feature where when you subscribe to a writer, you will be suggested his recommendations of other Substackers. And that was a brilliant product growth strategy! And it also gives more distribution to a lot of writers.
Yoooo we’ve come to the end of this one! If you liked it do share it with your friends and family on WhatsApp and other platforms: