29 Comments
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Freddie deBoer's avatar

I have been grossing about $300k a year on the platform but revenue has tumbled a bit this year.

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S Peter Davis's avatar

I'll mention this in an edit. Thanks - I considered reaching out to people but no matter how I approached it it seemed like a douchy question to get from a stranger

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Justus's avatar

Respect for the transparency.

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Kit Noussis's avatar

Respect for sharing your figure. A lot of people stop being evasive when the number gets higher.

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Alan's avatar

You really think this is the comment thread for that brag? What are you contributing with this, exactly?

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Gabriel Onyango's avatar

He's adding data to a part of the story the author speculated on. Sensitive for no reason.

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Chris Tharp's avatar

Did you read the article? deBoer is answering a question posed.

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Alan's avatar

On reread I did miss that bit. I suppose I am a little over sensitive. I'm sorry.

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Chris Tharp's avatar

No worries. It's refreshing to see someone not double down on a comment that may have been off the mark.

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Untrickled by Michelle Teheux's avatar

I appreciate the info.

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Louise Morel's avatar

Great article !! loved it !

I'm sooooo tired of Substack branding itself as the "future of media" and people getting all touchy-feely about a tech company run by a bunch of dudes who try to become billionaires.

Only thing I'd like to nuance is: Substack is not only interested in whales. They need the small writers, they really do.

Not because they love indie writers and indie thinking (lol), but simply because of how profitable it is for Substack to have a lot of small creators that earn very little but give them 10% of their meager sales. It is similar to the Amazon model when it comes to ebooks: taking a cut on many many small writers ends up being profitable, especially when upfront costs for the "host" are virtually zero, and the smaller writers/creators have none of the bargaining power that more famous people have.

Which means Substack still is an aggregator of some kind.

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NickS (WA)'s avatar

I appreciate you trying to think through these topics (and I've very interested in your book idea). I think everything you're saying is correct at a broad level of generality and, just to share my own experience, substack notes had a significant positive effect on my life last year.

Two things to know about me. First, I've never gotten into any of the various social media platforms (FB, X, Bluesky, etc . . . ) and I often feel like my sense of reading and commenting online is suspended in amber from the early-aughts blogosphere. Substack isn't the early blogosphere but it is close enough to feel like my intuitions carry over reasonably well.

Second, I used to listen to a lot of music, for various reasons I drifted away and have barely spent any time listening to music for the last decade. And then, as chance would have it, stumbling across a handful of music writers on Notes re-kindled my interest. This last year I've been doing way more listening to and writing about music and that would not have happened without Notes as a platform to interact with people.

So I would say that the praise of Substack as a platform on which to find interesting, sincere writers and have polite conversations isn't entirely warranted but it's not entirely wrong either.

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S Peter Davis's avatar

Oh for sure, I'm in a similar boat. I'm a 2000s forum admin. I never got into Twitter properly and this is the closest thing to that older experience that I've ever had in a Twitter-ish format. And I actually get some conversation here.

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𝙅𝙤 ⚢📖🏳️‍🌈's avatar

I know someone (IRL, we met before this person started their Substack nor do I subscribe to their Substack) that makes over $800K on Substack.

This person was a blogger for well over a decade before Substack, and the platform allowed them to grow their audience and monetize. It's not easy, eg. when we'd go out for group dinners, they were obsessing over social media and constantly checking it, hired social media management to keep growing, etc. etc -- and luck and mild controversy seems to play heavily into it.

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Abra McAndrew's avatar

Whoa!

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𝙅𝙤 ⚢📖🏳️‍🌈's avatar

I was mostly concerned with hiding the person's identity when I wrote the message - but what I meant to say is: yes, it's social media. But writers have always had to promote themselves in some way or other, and that it takes a lot of time and effort in addition to getting lucky.

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Kit Noussis's avatar

If they are willing to cut me a cool 200K, I'll check their notifications while they have dinner. And that's my final offer!

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Nina Medić's avatar

Wait, what blue badge?? I see purple!

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Ken Kovar's avatar

Sure but it beats driving a fricking uber 😆

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Abra McAndrew's avatar

I am LOL. “I think a lot of my feeling on this is best articulated as a response to this piece by the novelist and separated-at-birth-Bill-Burr-twin Michael Mohr, which is complicated because says a lot of things I agree with but also a few things that make me want to yell into a pillow.” Substack reached a new low for me when it sent this drivel out widely. Makes me want to set a pillow on fire and scream into the ashes.

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Ken Kovar's avatar

That’s what my dog does. Cool 😎

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Kitty's Corner's avatar

Oh! I like your perspectives on Substack because I feel like so many people here are just obsessive? Saccharine? Substack can do no wrong because it lets writers earn money, "build community" (ie echo chambers of likeminded individuals), etc. I just find it super alienating.

I actually prefer Twitter, where I read probably way more than I do now and felt like I was learning (even though I disagreed with all of it). And even though I have been off the platform since the George Floyd protests, I used to miss it a lot. But like you, I was never good at social media. I suck at Substack and have no idea if I even want to stay here, start a new newsletter or whatever.

But a lot of Notes reminds me of Twitter in terms of people using hashtags, posting memes, and generally having lukewarm liberal takes that gain lots of traction.

I thought this was really great and helped me reorient some of my thinking about how best to use the platform.

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Eric Fish, DVM's avatar

This was a great read, most of us want to earn a living from writing, and that’s hard under any known business model. Indeed it always has been: Kurt Vonnegut and Cormac McCarthy toiled working weird odd jobs in the early years, William Carlos Williams paid the bills as a physician, not with poetry, and countless famous authors primarily supported themselves as college lecturers. You’re right that the best hope most of us have is to use Substack as a springboard to get other opportunities like speaking, teaching, or for the very lucky, a book deal

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Russell Nohelty's avatar

Im a star,mama!!!

Also, mine makes $20k/yr. As long as you have 1001 paid members, even if they have only ever given you $1, it counts. Also, if the same person pays for multiple publications that you write for, they count.

So, if you have 1001 publications and the same person pays for them all, they count as 1001 paid members and you would get an orange checkmark.

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Untrickled by Michelle Teheux's avatar

I am not solid orange (just orange) but aspire to reaching that. It’s a stretch but not impossible. And if I do, I WILL be making a living here, because honestly $50K is a good amount for a writer. It’s more than I made as the editor of a daily newspaper, and I’d be thrilled to reach that number. Yes, I can absolutely make it on that. I can make it with a lot less than that. It would mean I could give up the freelance SEO and write more books.

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S Peter Davis's avatar

I'm wishing you all the best!

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Adhithya K R's avatar

"Imagine if OnlyFans strapped a microblog style social media community to itself and auto-registered everyone who had an OnlyFans creator account, so you basically had a super-horny version of Twitter populated almost exclusively by other pornographers. You would probably get a lot of interesting discussion but not much revenue growth."

The world's greatest... 🤭... circlejerk.

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Kit Noussis's avatar

Good lord. I've been thoroughly disillusioned. When I was a teen, I decided to get off social media because I felt it was toxic. Now that I've got a thicker hide, I came back. Now I feel like I'm competing with the people who have been learning the game and gathering clout for years T.T

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Francis Dylan Waguespack's avatar

…blue?

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