What it does right and what it doesn’t.

Substack is the best new thing in the market. Every journalist, writer and entrepreneur is writing on Substack. And then leaving Substack after a while. Because the core idea of Substack is simple and not attractive for a long period.

The promise is simple – easy to write newsletters that stay on the web. And get paid easily by your fans.

What is being promoted is the technology stack. It’s free. Of course, they make money when you make money – 10 % of the money you make.

But when you land on Substack, it isn’t clear if they want to admit they are selling a technology stack. Instead, they want to tell you that it’s a vibrant community. And see how these people are making money. They even show you a calculator – it’s enticing to see how you can end up making a good amount of money. And all of this seems possible because it’s Substack.

Now let’s compare another technology stack, Ghost, where you can write on the web and send newsletters. Get paid easily, and the prices are lower than Substack. So, why you should start writing on Substack. The reason is simple – Substack promotes itself as a place to write your heart out and get paid to do so. It’s the culture that is being promoted. But in reality – it’s a lie.

The Good About Substack

Substack runs this fellowship where you can apply. If you get selected, you will be supported with monetary sums to try out Substack. If you write something that needs to be defended, they offer the support of lawyers, as of now only in the USA. These seem like small thing, but that’s a nice start to something they promote themselves – a community where you have a good chance of success.

The fonts are good, the newsletter is simple. And Substack actually tries over and above to make it possible for everyone to join Substack. Case in point being – Stripe won’t let Indian writers join USA medium where transactions are to be done. The Medium simply put a disclaimer – no one from India will join Medium Partner Program. But Substack somehow made it happen that you can join Stripe with the consequence that they can’t take their 10 %. The Medium could have done something, but they choose otherwise. This shows the willingness of Substack.

The best thing about Substack by far is the ability to take your readers and customers with you. With Substack, this feature is built-in – because the only way to follow a Substack publication is to subscribe by email. Compare this with Medium, they introduced the liberty to take your email subscription with you. But till now, you were encouraged to ask people to follow you. And you can’t take your followers with you. Substack is willing to let go of their biggest earners. And that’s what they need to investigate and tune – how to keep their cash earners on the platform. A simple tweak would be to take a small percentage of revenue than 10 per cent. But they can’t do it now – because they have taken Venture funding, and they need to get those big numbers in revenue. And that’s a part of their problem.

The Bad About Substack

Substack keeps telling you that you can make it on Substack. It’s easy, fun and amazing – put all your energy on Substack. But as a person with no following, popularity or primary audience – you can put the same energy on another platform, and it’s the same as Substack. The main thing which makes you successful is the distribution of your content. The leaderboard on Substack shows popular content – but only a handful have created a true Substack following. The rest were either popular elsewhere, and others were given money by Substack to experiment. As a normal Substack writer, you don’t have a chance unless you improve SEO or do pay things to get traffic. And guess what, you are doing all this work to promote Substack.

The founders of Substack don’t care more about new voices or take a chance; they want to make Substack successful. Nothing wrong with that – but they won’t admit it. When Substack was launching, Hamish, the cofounder of Substack, asked people to email him for ideas. And he would launch Substack with these selected people.

I was one of the earliest people to email him. And he expressed interest and told me he put me on the list of founding publishers. But I never heard back. And Substack was launched with people who already had a following.

Sure, these people with a following on other platforms would succeed on Substack. They give money to journalists to try Substack – sure they can take chances because they are prolific. What about new voices and new talents – for that, you need to grind, promote Substack and hope that you get enough eyeballs to get some subscribers.

I tried writing on Substack, but I never got views from Substack distribution of any kind. So, I quit. If I had to rely on organic search, it’s better to keep focusing on my website.

When I write on Quora, there is a chance I get distributed to Quora’s audience. And I have got a good amount of views on Quora. There is no blogging or payment structure on Quora. But at least they got the distribution going on. Many famous people on Quora are famous because of their writing on Quora.

I wish this was the case for Substack too.

Hope For Substack

What Substack couldn’t become = Every. Every is a bundle of publications – sure, most of them are popular from other areas. Still, they are opening up an application for new lead writers and freelance writers to become a part of the Every.

And that’s what is needed, a chance for unknown writers to become famous so that they can keep the cycle going on.

The future is many publications working as a collective, embracing new writers and unheard voices – being open and taking a chance.

Substack has all the power to do this. They can make an app like Quora or Medium where a reading experience is promoted. And in that, based on some algorithm, promote writing from within Substack. Encourage publications to bundle and have openings for writers to join in.

Not everyone can start a successful publication, but many can join as writers to support a successful publication. Fingers crossed, for future lies with choices made at every step.