In case your plan is to run a publication as a interest, Substack is ideal—it’s free, straightforward to arrange, and makes sending out emails and constructing a subscriber base pretty easy. The issue comes if you wish to make a residing publishing your publication, at which level Substack can rapidly develop into costly. That’s as a result of, as an alternative of charging a month-to-month payment, Substack takes a 10 percent cut of your newsletter’s revenue.
Let’s put aside, for now, how Substack’s fame would possibly reflect poorly in your publication’s model. The economics of utilizing Substack are merely onerous to justify as your publication grows. Say you handle to get 500 folks to pay $10 a month on your publication—that’s an actual accomplishment. It additionally means your publication is pulling in $5,000 a month, of which Substack will take $500. Yearly you’ll be paying Substack $6,000, and it solely will get dearer as your success builds.
You would possibly assume that is honest, you may not. Both method, sticking with Substack when different choices could also be less expensive is leaving cash on the desk. With that in thoughts, listed below are some extra reasonably priced alternate options which are price trying out. I break down what these publication platforms price, and I provide a couple of hyperlinks to publishers who migrated to those companies from Substack and mentioned their experiences.
And it might be remiss of me to not point out that WIRED has a collection of fantastic newsletters that you do not wish to miss! Have a look here.
Ghost
Courtesy of Ghost
Ghost is open source and run by a nonprofit. You may, in concept, set up Ghost by yourself server, although most individuals choose to pay Ghost as an alternative, together with several former Substack publishers. Ghost affords an official guide for migrating and even a free concierge service that can deal with the migration for you.
