If not Substack then what?
Hey Indians,
I am planning to start my paid newsletter.
I tried connecting my Substack account with my Stripe account and unfortunately it not working.
What other platforms should I consider?
Thanks in advance.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Ok... This might sound Stupid! But Why Substack?
What was the main reason behind you choosing Substack or any similar service?
I was about to write a detailed post on this in a few days. I joined Indiehackers a few weeks back and saw more or less everyone using substack or some similar service and trying to sell "Paid Newsletters"
But Why?
-The Landing/Optin Page which they give Sucks big time! I mean the optin rate on that will be so bad
-Why do a Paid Newsletter when you can do a free newsletter, get subscribers and sell them your own stuff or some affiliate product (You can make much much more money than using substack)
I think, whatever Substack is giving you can do this entire Setup using any Email Autoresponder + Landing Page Builder
& if you want to do Paid Newsletters, then collect Money from Paypal - or numerous other services that suit your audience.
Im seriously not sure why people on Indiehacker are using Substack. There are very very low chances that you can grow your list organically since most of the guys here have very specific niches and Traffic on most of their websites will be minimum.
If you are serious about growing your free or Paid newsletter, then you will have to push some paid traffic and Substack Landing Pages will just drain your money since the optin rate on those will very very bad.
Just my 2cents...
Please feel free to correct if you think i have made any wrong analysis of Substack. I just signed up right now to see what it actually does and then wrote this post. I might have missed a few things.
P.S. - I have 10yr+ Experience in Online Sales & Marketing, Own Couple of SAAS Products, and a Substantial Percentage of my profits come from Email Marketing.
I would simply say, Substack has the best experience for paid newsletters out there.
I had tried other alternate options and tried hosting my own blog on WordPress but the experience is not seamless like Substack.
For free, WordPress is fine and I am doing that from the last 3 years now but I now want to take this to a paid thing.
All in all, I would say the experience which forces people to use Substack
I completely agree about the experience. But when I look at it from a Marketing Side, most of the people who are using Substack are leaving money on the table.
Let's take the example of Free + Paid Newsletter ( $5 ) People can subscribe to your free newsletter and then they can upgrade themselves to a Paid Newsletter.
You make a substack optin page which is converting at the best @ 30% [This is an insanely high conversion rate which im assuming for substack. it should be far lower than this]
100 People on your Substack Landing Page - 30 People Optin to Free Newsletter
from 30 People @ 30% Subscriber to your Paid Newsletter = 9 Paid Subscribers
9 Paid Subscribers = $45 Profit
If you are using a Good Landing page for this, you will convert approx. @ 60%
100 People on Landing Page = 60 Free Subscribers
30% Free SUbscribers Convert into Paid SUbscribers = 18 Subscribers
18 Paid Subscribers = $90
Please note that I have assumed the best-case scenario for Substack.
Even when substack is performing the best for you, you will end up losing 50% of your Potential Profits
And this is assuming if you just have 10-20 Paid Subscribers. Imagine the number of subscribers & money people which people with big paid audience would have lost.
Anyone making $1000 on Substack is actually in the best case scenario losing out on $1000 of additional income every month for more or less the same effort.
When you are using a proper landing page, there are so many more things that you can do to monetize your efforts, like having a custom offer or an upgrade on thank you page and so much more.
Substack is a Leaky Bucket, losing you money at each and every step
P.S. I don't have a competing product & I don't have a dog in this race. It's just when I see from a Marketing Standpoint its so bad...