[HN Gopher] Top 27 highest-earning substacks generate over $22M ...
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Top 27 highest-earning substacks generate over $22M a year
Author : paulpauper
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-03-21 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pressgazette.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (pressgazette.co.uk)
| ghiculescu wrote:
| I started Substacking recently. I'm not bothering with a paywall
| - I'm doing it to get better at writing and because writing helps
| me think and reflect. If people find what I'm writing interesting
| or helpful, that's a bonus.
|
| I thought the only people who'd read my posts were people I have
| on LinkedIn so I've been really pleasantly surprised how many
| people I've never heard of have been subscribing. I'm not sure
| what Substack are doing but they seem to do something right to
| spread your writing beyond your direct network. I appreciate
| that, and I'm not surprised they've enabled some very large
| subscriber bases as a result.
|
| ps. If you want to make my day: https://ghiculescu.substack.com
| aiappreciator wrote:
| You are literally demonstrating how substack "does something
| right to spread your writing beyond your direct network"
|
| On substacks, writers own their brands. Their own brand is
| plastered everywhere on their website. Compare that to medium,
| where the medium brand takes precedence. Since writers own
| their brands, they are highly incentivised to market it
| themselves, and keep a distinct personal voice, both easily
| drawing in paying customers.
| vfclists wrote:
| [flagged]
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I think the only one biased is you. It's a factual article, and
| it describes a wide variety of authors, most of them more
| mainstream, yet you chose to quote this paragraph and only this
| paragraph. The worst insult in the paragraph you quoted is
| "fringe", which is a label most of the quoted writers would
| probably be proud to wear, being the antonym for "mainstream".
| cidergal wrote:
| "Leftist" is, by definition, against the mainstream
| media...publications like The Intercept.
|
| It is quite unfortunate that people use "leftist" as a
| propaganda tool to mean "anything that criticizes right wing
| views".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _peeved at the fact that the so called alt-right writers
| shunned by his MSM masters have an audience willing to pay_
|
| Where do you see peeving? I see a call to action. This content
| makes money. That doesn't mean you have to write _that_ , but
| there's clearly-as you observe-an audience willing to pay for a
| different perspective.
| motoxpro wrote:
| An end of the world newsletter seems pretty fringe to me. Or
| maybe I'm just out of touch with politics.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Sky News runs a YouTube Livestream with what amounts to a
| doomsday countdown, a modeled global average temperature
| shown to about 10dp so they can have the drama of watching
| the number go up about once per second. This is both fringe
| in the sense that the stream has a miniscule number of
| viewers, and mainstream in that it is run by a licensed
| broadcaster.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I'm downvoting how you're expressing this rather than what you
| believe
| tr3ntg wrote:
| It's unfortunate how harshly this comment is worded - the video
| linked provides a level-headed and informative speech given at
| a UK Parliament meeting that is a good summary of vaccination
| outcomes based on government data. I've struggled to find
| unbiased summaries such as this, so it's an appreciated link.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd apply the adjectives "level headed and
| informative" to Andrew Bridgen MP, the crank most recently
| found tweeting that COVID was invented by the US DoD in Fort
| Detrick and an unnamed facility in Canada"...
| vfclists wrote:
| Ad hominems, the mark of the dogdy debater without
| counterarguments and facts who who appeals to the
| intellectually challenged.
|
| The speech said nothing about the DoD, Fort Detrick or
| Canada. He quoted statistics from the UK Government about
| the efficacy or lack of efficacy of the vaccine.
|
| It is also a matter of public record that the US DoD and
| the NIH funded the EcoHealth Alliance who channelled funds
| to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for Gain of Function
| research on the coronavirus.
|
| A lot of the coronavirus GoF research was also done by Dr
| Ralph Baric at Chapel Hill University and guess who funded
| that as well?
|
| Irregardless of how the Covid outbreak occurred if you have
| some points to make about the content of Andrew Bridgen's
| speech lets hear them. They are about the efficacy or lack
| thereof of the vaccines and their side effects and are not
| about the origin of the Sars Cov 2 virus.
|
| For anyone reading this comment, I would advise you to
| listen to the speech rather than wasting time on snide HN
| commenters who have no meaningful facts to contribute.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Ad hominems, the mark of the dogdy debater without
| counterarguments and facts who who appeals to the
| intellectually challenged.
|
| QED.
|
| HNers are of course, free to make up their own minds
| whether someone who suggests that Fort Detrick and a
| facility in Canada created COVID and refers to it as a
| "viral bioweapon" is a "level headed" commentator on the
| issue likely to be offering accurate interpretations of
| government statistics well worth taking the time to
| listen to.
|
| And indeed on the subject of your original claim about
| whether politicians feared the implications of hearing a
| fearless utterer of such irrefutable truths or just
| didn't want to dignify someone who has rapidly descended
| into the political equivalent of Alex Jones with an
| audience.
| mellosouls wrote:
| As a reader of several Substack writers, I find the individualist
| approach frustrating, and - I feel - ultimately counter-
| democratic in a way.
|
| By the latter I mean that with legacy media - despite the
| political slant (either way) of the publication as a whole, you
| generally have access to a multitude of voices.
|
| With the Substack model that isn't the case - unless you limit
| yourself to the free options, or are wealthy enough to subscribe
| to as many writers as you like.
|
| I suppose there are Substack amalgamations out there, grouping
| writers on a common outlet, but those who have managed to gather
| enough of a living striking out on their own are probably not
| going to worry too much about whether they are also available as
| part of a more economically accessible and diverse collection of
| voices using a different subscription model that collates
| multiple writers for a single cost.
|
| Ultimately that means that access to a truly wide range of
| authoritative voices is potentially limited to the wealthy.
| paxys wrote:
| I don't see that as a fundamental product limitation of
| Substack. Having the concept of a "publication" is probably
| something they will get to at some point. Medium followed the
| same path, and they now have multi-author publications as well.
| I'm guessing it's more a matter of engineering and product
| prioritization than some explicit decision towards maintaining
| individuality.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _With the Substack model that isn 't the case - unless you
| limit yourself to the free options, or are wealthy enough to
| subscribe to as many writers as you like._
|
| Don't most authors have at least some free content? The only
| substack where I've regularly encountered locked content on is
| Emily Oster (who writes about parenting issues). I read on
| substack a dozen or two times weekly, and I've never found the
| paywalls to be an issue. Would it be nice to have subscriptions
| to five or 10 newsletters? Sure. But it would hardly change my
| life, since most news is available from many outlets, even if
| you're looking for a particular perspective.
| aiappreciator wrote:
| "access to a multitude of voices" You mean a multitude of
| groupthinked, editor supervised voices?
|
| More people != better opinions unless there is a constant
| debate. And the modern subscription driven model for large
| newspapers means appealing to the base, and neutrality is bad
| for revenue.
|
| Substackers also have to appeal to their base. But individual
| idiosyncrasies and strong opinions are much better preserved
| when its just one person, instead of a n editor enforcing a
| hivemind.
| mrangle wrote:
| You must have a huge "democratic" beef with books. Those being
| the dominant largely solitary-voiced format that people pay
| for. Before now, I've read anything that correlated them to
| being counter to democracy.
| codyb wrote:
| There's libraries, at least in the USA, in a lot of places.
| nradov wrote:
| After 30+ years of web publishing we still have no viable
| system for content micropayments. There's just no way I will
| sign up for any more monthly subscriptions; those build up and
| eat you alive. But I would be happy to pay a small amount to
| read an individual article if it was a frictionless one-click
| process. There have been many attempts to crack that problem
| but so far all have failed.
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/
| ghaff wrote:
| And there's an argument (almost certainly correct) from 25
| years ago that the problem with microtransactions was that
| there's a mental transaction cost associated with every 5
| cent payment. https://archive.is/fzL0I
|
| Small $$ subscriptions are a different variant of the same
| problem.
|
| To be fair, many of us used to have a bunch of magazine
| subscriptions--some of which were only $1-2 per month but I'm
| not sure the same mindset still applies.
|
| We do see things like Apple News+ that aggregate non-free
| content and perhaps that's something of a solution. We'll
| see. I do pay for the New York Times and The Economist but I
| mostly won't subscribe to individual sites online.
| njarboe wrote:
| Maybe this is true but it would be nice to have a technical
| solution in place that would facilitate a 5 cent payment so
| people could experiment with it. The US treasury of FED
| should do it at this point as it seems no one else will.
| ghaff wrote:
| Many startup failures in the dot-com era. Not sure why
| this should be a US Treasury service given there's a
| well-developed financial system in the US that
| facilitates lots of other payment options. (And have you
| ever looked at the hilariously barely late 90s website of
| TreasuryDirect?)
|
| I'm also not sure I want the US government deciding which
| publications are proper participants in an official
| micropayments scheme.
| ctrlp wrote:
| Access to authentic diverse viewpoints is a luxury good you
| must pay for. Everyone who would be accurately informed must
| fund their own private intelligence service. The legacy media
| of a "multitude of voices" under one imprint is pretty rare and
| will still be editorialized within a local Overton window for
| any given publication. The plebs can only afford one or two
| subscriptions to their politically-approved list of "news"
| sources and must be satisfied with being told what to think
| from a limited menu. If you can't afford it, you're not meant
| to have it.
|
| You need to budget at least $200 USD per month for substack
| subscriptions. After that, you will need to budget about 10-20h
| per month to parsing their output and deciding which of the
| approved media outlets they would be allowed to write for if
| they weren't making more money with their own audiences. This
| will help you think critically about what they're trying to
| have you believe. For those who would not be welcome at even
| the most heterodox mainstream publications, you will need to
| spend a bit of time deciding how it is they can afford to be
| writing for a living. You will need to track down their incomes
| until you are satisfied that their shadowy patrons are either
| dark money influence campaigns and/or CIA-NGO grants. Use this
| information to triangulate the various positions you are
| presented with. The truth is somewhere in the nexus of lies.
| aiappreciator wrote:
| There's no need to play the edgelord here. Your average
| person does not have $200USD/month lying around for news.
| Even cable packages aren't that expensive.
|
| But they don't need that much either, just budgeting $15 a
| month is more than sufficient to have a favorite paid
| substack, and several other free substacks. Most people don't
| have the time to analyze that much information.
|
| Its sufficient to know that viewpoints other than MSM-
| peddled-narratives exist, that gives people a healthy
| skepticism, without needing to spend days each month just
| analyzing the news.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think this is a worthwhile point. My belief about Substack is
| that many of its initial appeals to writers were to people who
| were not happy at traditional publications. People who had
| brand names, and wanted better money, prestige, or editorial
| control than they were getting. So, it's definitely designed to
| provide isolated perspectives: isolated not only in the sense
| of being a magazine with a single voice, but also in the sense
| that it will tend to attract people a little further to the
| margins of the cultural discourse, who attract attention and
| bump up against editors.
|
| However, I don't believe this is a big problem, since there are
| many other places to get opinion and analysis other than
| Substack.
|
| In fact -- and I have no basis for it other than intuition --
| it doesn't feel like Substack's model could ever make it _that_
| big. By nature, a magazine with one writer isn 't going to
| provide enough content to be anybody's only source, and, as you
| say, there aren't that many people who are going to subscribe
| to dozens of Substack writers. Having tens of thousands of
| subscribers really doesn't make too much of a dent in the media
| landscape over all, it's just that it's very well monetized, so
| it's great for this handful of writers (and Substack
| Incorporated of course).
| a-robinson wrote:
| Misleading title -- it isn't claiming that there are any
| newsletters generating $22M a year individually. It's just saying
| that the top 27 (why 27?) newsletters in aggregate make at least
| that much.
| dang wrote:
| Our software screwed that one up. Sorry - fixed - thanks!
| paulpauper wrote:
| My belief has been if you are decently talented at writing and
| can set aside a few hours to write at least 2 articles/week, you
| should be writing on Substack. The upside is huge--thousands of
| dollars or even a six-figure income--with almost no downside
| besides time spent writing and maybe some promotion, but with any
| talent the content should go viral (on both the Substack
| app/network but also Twitter) without too much work. Unlike
| Medium, Substack seems to care much more about its writers and
| less inclined to censor. Writers have much more control.
|
| Many journalists are making way more with Substack than with
| their prior publications/employers, but with full autonomy and
| control of the platform, so they have both more income and also
| the platform, which is also worth a lot and can be monetized in
| other ways, like affiliate links. It shows how much money they
| were leaving on the table.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's like saying if you are a decent singer you can make
| money. Once you have so many people producing content, you'll
| get the same power law like every other form of media.
| dataangel wrote:
| > but with any talent the content should go viral (on both the
| Substack app/network but also Twitter)
|
| A lack of ethics also helps. Fringe views are more likely to
| gather attention. If you optimize for attention (revenue) then
| you basically end up getting paid to spread lies. Way more
| clicks for well written conspiracy bait than debunking
| conspiracies.
| ctrlp wrote:
| This is a pretty strange way to think about viewpoints.
| Fringe as opposed to what? The "common" view of things in the
| modern media environment is highly manufactured. To have a
| knee-jerk filter that privileges the mainstream consensus in
| this information environment is a surefire way to guarantee
| you have "approved" viewpoints that offend no one and rock no
| boats. After all the revelations of intelligence service
| infiltration of content moderation boards at the major media
| companies, one might expect this attitude to be largely
| discredited by now.
| the_shivers wrote:
| This is also true of mainstream media publications.
| asdff wrote:
| I have often thought about how easy it must be to be one of
| these crazy conservative talking heads. All you have to do
| is be loud, angry, and say the obvious bigoted talking
| points they have, and people will flock to you because you
| are doing it with no shame. Then once you have a bit of a
| base you are a player in that game for life with a career
| of conservative podcasting to always fall back on. Maybe
| you even have a shot for higher office. Of course, this all
| requires selling your soul, so there is some cost.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| And it came out in the Dominion trial that the Fox
| talking heads didn't even believe the "election was
| stolen" narrative.
| asdff wrote:
| It came out in Alex Jones's divorce trail that his entire
| persona is an act for commercial use. He's always selling
| weird testosterone supplements and such, he's a total
| snake oil salesman. Of course you know his fans would say
| that was fake news even if you showed them that evidence.
|
| ""He's playing a character" and is nothing like his
| online persona, attorney Randall Wilhite reportedly
| insisted in a Texas courtroom at a pre-trial hearing
| ahead of the right wing radio jock's custody battle with
| ex-wife Kelly Jones."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/not-fake-news-
| infowars-...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| See all these messages for just how few qualms people
| have for selling out their country's future.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/technology/fox-news-
| domin...
| monero-xmr wrote:
| [flagged]
| fnimick wrote:
| The Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true? Since
| when?
|
| Last I heard, nobody has any idea who the laptop belonged
| to, how it found its way into the computer shop man's
| hands, why Rudy Giuliani spent time with it, or how it's
| been modified. There's zero trustworthy evidence that there
| was ever any evidence of any illicit activity at all.
| sys32768 wrote:
| From a New York Times article last March [0]:
|
| >People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors
| had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and
| others about Burisma and other foreign business activity.
| Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a
| cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop
| abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The
| email and others in the cache were authenticated by
| people familiar with them and with the investigation.
|
| [0] https://archive.is/IdTMj
|
| Edit: Hunter Biden suing laptop shop owner for violation
| of privacy: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/
| 03/17/hunter-bi...
| mrangle wrote:
| Can you demonstrate that the substack accounts on the list
| largely profit on false-conspiracy promotion?
|
| I assume that you don't apply your logic to the MSM.
| Otherwise, your statement's inherent neutrality would make it
| pointless in a relative sense.
|
| Because the statement can't be neutral lest it be time
| wasting, it de facto correlates profitable writing, only
| outside of the MSM, to lies.
|
| This is one of the more implausible political statements I've
| read. You're essentially accusing consumers of supposed non-
| fiction writing to be tabloid readers. Only outside of MSM
| consumption, of course.
|
| What accounts for the stark difference in motivation of
| people paying for true MSM writing and false substack
| writing? I must be hallucinating the contradiction, because
| otherwise it would frame your model as nonsense that some
| might correlate with false-conspiracy thinking.
| nradov wrote:
| Lack of journalistic ethics is a problem. But let's not
| forget how many mainstream media outlets beyond Substack made
| huge profits during the COVID-19 pandemic by spreading lies
| that weren't even considered "fringe". This was
| misinformation that came straight from government officials,
| corporate executives, and credentialed scientists.
|
| https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/10-myths-told-by-covid-
| experts...
|
| Or to look a little further back, how much money did the New
| York Times make by publishing lies and conspiracy theories
| about WMDs in Iraq? Do we think they wouldn't do something
| similar again?
| ilamont wrote:
| "If I have 100,000 subscribers and only 1% sign up for the paid
| plan at $5/month, I'll be pulling in $60,000 per year. A
| million subs, and I'll be rich!"
|
| Problem is, almost no one wants to pay, and even if they do,
| you have to deal with massive churn and a constant demand for
| high-quality content that is truly unique, high quality, and
| impossible to find elsewhere.
|
| There are only a few top level people making this work, and all
| have deep knowledge of profitable niches or business customers
| who can foot the bill for their employees. Almost everyone else
| is constantly begging for people to convert to the paid plan,
| or burning out.
| aiappreciator wrote:
| Oh, if you have good enough content that's also important to
| people. People will pay. I've started paying for an AI
| substack because the news is so important to me, and I
| couldn't find high quality & deep coverage in mainstream
| media.
|
| Now, this does mean the 'average' journalist stands no
| chance. But 'average' news is already overproduced to
| worthlessness. No one needs the same boring take rewritten
| slightly. GPT-4 can already do that.
|
| They would have been unemployed anyways, because all the
| average newspapers (read local newspapers) died out. The only
| remainders are national newspapers that only hire the best of
| the best.
|
| At least now they get to experiment with their passionate
| topic, and potentially discover new markets, instead of being
| forced to report on mainstream topics.
| ilamont wrote:
| _Oh, if you have good enough content that 's also important
| to people. People will pay._
|
| The question is how many will pay (not just _say_ they 'll
| pay) and for how long.
|
| I used to pay for Molly White's excellent Web3 reality
| check newsletter. She changed the platform and I didn't
| follow her. It was interesting while she was reporting all
| of the BS and fraud, but after the bubble has popped it's
| less compelling.
|
| For someone getting into a hot field like AI, will the paid
| subscriber interest still be there in 1 year, 2 years, 5
| years? If the writer expands to an adjacent area, will that
| make some of his existing subs bail?
|
| Ben Thompson keeps Stratechery going not only because he's
| a strong, insightful writer, but he didn't go too narrow
| (for instance, only Apple strategy) and there's always
| something to write about for people who follow this stuff.
| Benedict Evans works in a similar way in terms of not going
| too narrow.
| aiappreciator wrote:
| Two factors here:
|
| 1. Journalists don't necessarily want to write about 1
| topic for their entire lives either. They can pivot, and
| its no harder than finding a different job for a
| journalist.
|
| 2. Journalist writers have a responsibility and freedom
| to choose more durable topics. If you built your brand on
| a fad (web3), even if to criticize it, you make yourself
| vulnerable. Whereas if you built on on say cloud
| computing/ancient history/how to find jobs in tech, you'd
| be on way safer grounds. I would say AI is the rare topic
| that is both insanely hyped and permanently durable. The
| industrial revolution lasted centuries, so will AI.
| iorrus wrote:
| What Substack is this? I'm interested in a good AI Substack
| that keeps me up to date. I follow a few free newsletters
| but something more in-depth would be very helpful.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Sounds like every other entrepreneurial endeavor. What % of
| startups go to zero, what % of restaurants close? Begging for
| people to convert is also called salesmanship
| ghaff wrote:
| That's more or less the classic "If I can only get 1% market
| share in China I'll be rich." Which turns out to be really
| hard.
|
| I did some research as a consultant once for a company trying
| to sell a product for 32-bit to 64-bit transition. They were
| obsessed with the total addressable market and assigned some
| percentage of that market they thought they could capture.
| Weren't interested in hearing about any more substantive
| advice and went out of business of course.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I'm not sure. There are a lot of talented writers out there and
| an ocean of mediocre ones. "Build it and they will come" has
| never been harder.
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