I am hardly qualified to give anybody any advice as to what works on Substack and nor am I one of those who would have it changed to suit myself. However, I can be constructive on a few points on architectural scaling, because that is something I know about.
What I have noticed is that Substack has made various innovations with pledges, referrals to help people grow their subscriber base. So far I have done very little of what you might call marketing and have not put out my paid content yet and don’t get a lot of impressions on my free content, so this is not so much for me but for those who at least get some footfall.
I have some suggestions but how workable they are would be dependent on the ability of the existing architecture’s capacity to accommodate the necessary additions.
There is a lot of free content on Substack. There are probably a couple of dozen writers that I would like to subscribe to, just so I can access their paid content as the interest grabs me, and not because I would necessarily read everything they posted. This made me come up with something which, to give it a handle, I call ‘Streaming Substack’.
Streaming Substack
In this model the subscriber takes out a monthly ‘unit’ subscription that allows them to unlimited access n-amount of paid articles from anyone (except those authors who wish to opt out of course). I originally thought this could be 30 articles but for various reasons (including not wanting to undercut author direct subscriptions) I think it should be around 12-15 but that would be something TBD. Avid readers may want to take out multiple ‘units’ to access more articles in a month.
What is in it for authors?
It will produce an audience with ‘reading currency’ to spend, so they may well think it worth it to unlock a single post, even if they don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription. Those authors would therefore get a pro-rata proportion of that reader’s subscription for that month, depending on how many of their articles had been ‘streamed’. Think of it as being a bit like Spotify except with a more transparent pro-rata payment structure. I am not sure how clear that it but dare say with a bit of thought it becomes self-evident.
There would be overheads and technical challenges with revenue direction but it has to be worth looking at the feasibility, because other than an unsurmountable technical barrier, how could it fail to work? Some of the authors with huge paid followings might be concerned but there are many reasons to believe their paid volume would increase too - although there is no point getting ahead and trying to unpack that now.
I think the benefits to authors and growth would be enormous if it can be done properly. Plus the platform benefits because it would attract more authors and readers. They could even be sold as gift cards in supermarkets which I think you have to admit is a better present then foisting your favourite reading onto somebody else.
While I am here …
Some time ago I responded to the thread where there was some talk about expanding the capability of the Substack editor. I cannot find it and can’t remember if it was a comment to a post, note a chat or something else (if there is anything else). My suggestions was that rather than develop the platform capability and take on the onerous task of maintaining them, introduce integrations with existing applications.
Examples include (this is not a pitch but an illustration):
Word processing/writing applications: e.g. Scrivener
Proforma templates/style guides for journals, periodicals and academia
Reference, citation and bibiliography managers: e.g. Zetero
Academic citation form aligned to 1 a.
Coding software: e.g. Qualcoder
Kindle DTP/Audible
Drawing tools
Mathematical and scientific editors.
Effectively it could be almost anything (I didn’t mention Office 360 because if you try to lever a goliath you are going to get levered) but you surely get the point.
Substack has such a large author base it could certainly issue a range of developers with RFP/RFQ (Request For Proposal/ Quotation) to develop the integrations, interfaces and licensing structures (possibilities too numerous to specify). The benefit to Substack would be to leverage its customer base to outsource these integrations. It is conceivable that Substack could have its own app store selling integration ready tools - and if the pricing is right, it could well attract technical, scientific and academic writers who want to use the capability of the platform for its own sake.
There are some unknowns but the risks would be minimal in the initial phase but the easy part would be determining feasibility. It should be possible to write and issue an RFP in about 6 weeks, set up a risk register and be at the first ‘go/no-go’ stage gate in Q4, 2024.
Garth Algar (Dana Carvey), “Wayne’s World”, Paramount Pictures, 1992
So what do you think?