I recently participated in a lively discussion on Twitter. As Substack now feels more like a landing page for Creators than a Newsletter platform, I wanted to get your opinions on who you think are Substack’s real competitors out there?
Substack now has targeted recommendations, podcasting mass adoption, community management and more scalability if you are able to grow your free subscriptions well. You can further get Sponsored Ad deals with major brands related to your niche to supplement your revenue growth providing a double-stream side gig. If you build courses around your niche, that’s a triple revenue-stream in the “ownership economy”.
I’m no expert in Email marketing or Creator platforms, but: (perhaps you know of better candidates?)
Here is a shortlist of potential candidates:
Tier 1:
Ghost
Medium
Twitter Notes
LinkedIn Newsletters
Facebook Bulletin
Apple (TBA)
Reddit (TBA)
Tier 2:
Mailchimp
Every.to
HackerNoon
Mirror.xyz
Patreon
Revue
Wordpress (Automattic)
ConvertKit
Pinterest (TBA)
Tier 3:
Buzzsprout (podcasts)
Captivate (podcasts)
Buy Me a Coffee (monetization)
Podia (monetization)
Memberful (Subscriptions)
Ko-Fi (donations and monetization)
Moment (Pre-Launch, “Crypto of Patreon”)
Quora
Jianshu (China)
Audience Picks (suggested from comments):
beehiiv
Answer considerations and ideas:
I’d love to hear your opinions on this for Creator landing pages, blogging, Email features, segmentation, scalability, monetization, datacentric analytics, UI, user-centricity, readership base, discovery, community building, customer support, ease of use, SEO and so forth.
If this specific questions doesn’t appeal or apply to you:
Discussion Prompt: Alternatively, why did you join Substack and is it working for you?
Wow I'd much prefer Substack to focus on being the best possible version of itself and not worry about the competition. So many platforms go wrong when they start basing their strategies on outdoing or snaring traffic/creators from other platforms.
ConvertKit is a big one I see people move to as they grow, but recently I’ve seen creators come back to Substack!
I just wonder, is too many competitors mean we will need to be omnipresent on things like LinkedIn and Twitter newsletter competitors as well as Substack? I wonder if this is where things are going
Yea I'm with most ppl here that I feel like Substack's recommendation engine and being listed as a top newsletter in a category is gigantically helpful.
As someone who used to use Mailchimp for our newsletter, I have found their efforts to lure me back to be laughable. And even if they add half the features Substack has, I have no interest in leaving the platform that has made us $12,000 more than MailChimp ever did. Because I'm a big Facebook user (Note: that doesn't mean fan), I was initially very intrigued by Facebook Bulletin. But as far as I can tell it's turned out to be a complete joke. Something they threw up to say "Look, we're doing newsletters too!" and then just let sit there.
Never say never, but right now it's very hard to imagine leaving Substack.
Aug 4, 2022·edited Aug 4, 2022Liked by Michael Spencer
For neophyte creators like yours truly, the improving discoverability and the whole expanding "landing page" offering you are referring to makes Substack's initial attractiveness hard to beat Michael.
(I do hope this is also the impression after having spent say >6 months here)
A Twitter product could of course scale faster in terms of attention-grabbing for some type of ad/sponsor or private community model. But how well would it work for high-value subscriptions? Would there be platform-related issues in areas of ownership (copyright), portability (subscriber contact lists), or subscriber long-term willingness to pay (churn/retention)?
For creators with marketing experience, massive followings, and/or other products to offer, I guess that other setups would offer customizable features.
Now, look forward to leaning back and learning from you and all the creators in the thread who actually know something here
beehiive is actually a Morning Brew mafia project. By Morning Brew alums Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett. Back when they launched in October, 2021 Beehiiv said it was looking to differentiate itself by focusing on making it easier for smaller creators to monetize their work, instead of focusing on the top 1% of creators that already have big audiences.
How do you scale the micro niche? Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years, so you'd think these people know how to scale a product?
Someone on Hacker News said: "I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert.
Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal."
A lot has been written about their growth playbook (I mean Morning Brew Newsletters):
I think it's important to point out if Twitter Notes falls flat even Google via Google Drive "had" an interesting project. https://area120.google.com/
The company’s internal R&D division, Area 120, had a new project called Museletter, which allowed anyone to publish a Google Drive file as a blog or newsletter to their Museletter public profile or to an email list. While "Museletter" shut down after only 3 months, Google is still in a position to create a Substack competitor if it wanted to.
Since Google understand what people are into at scale, this could be very high-value for Creators.
If someone in the future were to combine some of the features of Medium, Patreon and Substack into one platform, it would do pretty well. ByteDance or Snap would be in a position to do this if they ever wanted. There seems to be little motivation to do this because written content is so hard.
It is possible Web3 might give some of the future competitors in the space by giving more of the revenue to the Creator and monetizing in different ways. Subscription burnout for consumers in 2023 is probable. For Web3 NFTs could be leveraged to form new incentives in such an ecosystem.
However who can compete with Substack's ideological differentiation I am not totally clear? Substack is in this sense all that Medium could never be in terms of moving away from Ads and algorithms. This is a strong unique value proposition that appeals to me and many other writers.
In Terms of actual reach, a Newsletter services around Reddit or Apple makes a lot of sense. Apple News could open up a Newsletter service to the public. That would immediately be a major competitor. A lot of real discussions on the internet now occur on Reddit or Discord.
I am not sure comments on Substack posts or in discussion threads at this point will ever reach much scale. Why would I debate on Substack if it didn't have the traffic or diverse points of view, what would be the incentive? While Substack does give the ownership economy a 1-1 indie media feel, it's an uphill battle for us to create communities of scale, although I know some of you have incredible micro niche communities.
As a futurist and Venture capital watcher, I often imagine who is most likely to acquire Substack should they fall on hard times? As with all startups, we always have to remember this is a distinct possibility in the years ahead.
As for Revue, by all accounts, and correct me if I'm wrong, since the Twitter acquisition it's momentum has basically died? Twitter would not be doing Twitter Notes if that wasn't the case.
Is it just me or is it literally even to come up with a name that is really Substack's competition? Substack appears to be a category leader in its own niche, a quasi third space community platform where Newsletters are only the medium. But podcasting, discussion, essays, op-eds and a wide range of formats actually occurs.
It's surprising that nobody really did this before in quite the same way? LinkedIn acquired Pulse in 2013 but literally did nothing with it until itself was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 - this was a massive missed opportunity.
There's just no way we can consider Ghost or beehiiv (whatever that is!) competitors of Substack. Even Medium or Twitter Notes would probably be closer competitors just in terms of mind-share. But Substack for monetization and scalability is better than all of these others combined for the moment.
I guess for me even without "category competition", my worry is Substack's growth while okay, is not tremendous. It needs to scale in the 2020 to 2025 period to have a real first-mover advantage that benefits us all.
Wow I'd much prefer Substack to focus on being the best possible version of itself and not worry about the competition. So many platforms go wrong when they start basing their strategies on outdoing or snaring traffic/creators from other platforms.
The ones most on my radar are Ghost, Beehiiv, and ConvertKit. But that's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ConvertKit is a big one I see people move to as they grow, but recently I’ve seen creators come back to Substack!
I just wonder, is too many competitors mean we will need to be omnipresent on things like LinkedIn and Twitter newsletter competitors as well as Substack? I wonder if this is where things are going
Yea I'm with most ppl here that I feel like Substack's recommendation engine and being listed as a top newsletter in a category is gigantically helpful.
I have looked at Ghost - it could be cool, but idk I feel like I would need to have a giant audience before moving like the Welcome To Hell World dude did https://luke.substack.com/p/leaving-substack-check-your-promo
As someone who used to use Mailchimp for our newsletter, I have found their efforts to lure me back to be laughable. And even if they add half the features Substack has, I have no interest in leaving the platform that has made us $12,000 more than MailChimp ever did. Because I'm a big Facebook user (Note: that doesn't mean fan), I was initially very intrigued by Facebook Bulletin. But as far as I can tell it's turned out to be a complete joke. Something they threw up to say "Look, we're doing newsletters too!" and then just let sit there.
Never say never, but right now it's very hard to imagine leaving Substack.
For neophyte creators like yours truly, the improving discoverability and the whole expanding "landing page" offering you are referring to makes Substack's initial attractiveness hard to beat Michael.
(I do hope this is also the impression after having spent say >6 months here)
A Twitter product could of course scale faster in terms of attention-grabbing for some type of ad/sponsor or private community model. But how well would it work for high-value subscriptions? Would there be platform-related issues in areas of ownership (copyright), portability (subscriber contact lists), or subscriber long-term willingness to pay (churn/retention)?
For creators with marketing experience, massive followings, and/or other products to offer, I guess that other setups would offer customizable features.
Now, look forward to leaning back and learning from you and all the creators in the thread who actually know something here
beehiive is actually a Morning Brew mafia project. By Morning Brew alums Tyler Denk, Benjamin Hargett. Back when they launched in October, 2021 Beehiiv said it was looking to differentiate itself by focusing on making it easier for smaller creators to monetize their work, instead of focusing on the top 1% of creators that already have big audiences.
How do you scale the micro niche? Morning Brew went from college newsletter to $75M in 5 years, so you'd think these people know how to scale a product?
Someone on Hacker News said: "I thought the newsletter trend was a bit ridiculous, and then I started writing one. Writing a blog feels a bit like throwing messages into the wind, and tweeting sometimes feels like trying to start a conversation in the middle of a concert.
Writing a newsletter and knowing there's a group of people who signed on to hear directly what you have to say feels so much more personal."
A lot has been written about their growth playbook (I mean Morning Brew Newsletters):
https://thegrowthplaybook.substack.com/p/how-morning-brew-grew-their-business
A/B testing headlines and titles for higher open-rates for example and the referral programs.
I think it's important to point out if Twitter Notes falls flat even Google via Google Drive "had" an interesting project. https://area120.google.com/
The company’s internal R&D division, Area 120, had a new project called Museletter, which allowed anyone to publish a Google Drive file as a blog or newsletter to their Museletter public profile or to an email list. While "Museletter" shut down after only 3 months, Google is still in a position to create a Substack competitor if it wanted to.
Since Google understand what people are into at scale, this could be very high-value for Creators.
If someone in the future were to combine some of the features of Medium, Patreon and Substack into one platform, it would do pretty well. ByteDance or Snap would be in a position to do this if they ever wanted. There seems to be little motivation to do this because written content is so hard.
It is possible Web3 might give some of the future competitors in the space by giving more of the revenue to the Creator and monetizing in different ways. Subscription burnout for consumers in 2023 is probable. For Web3 NFTs could be leveraged to form new incentives in such an ecosystem.
However who can compete with Substack's ideological differentiation I am not totally clear? Substack is in this sense all that Medium could never be in terms of moving away from Ads and algorithms. This is a strong unique value proposition that appeals to me and many other writers.
In Terms of actual reach, a Newsletter services around Reddit or Apple makes a lot of sense. Apple News could open up a Newsletter service to the public. That would immediately be a major competitor. A lot of real discussions on the internet now occur on Reddit or Discord.
I am not sure comments on Substack posts or in discussion threads at this point will ever reach much scale. Why would I debate on Substack if it didn't have the traffic or diverse points of view, what would be the incentive? While Substack does give the ownership economy a 1-1 indie media feel, it's an uphill battle for us to create communities of scale, although I know some of you have incredible micro niche communities.
As a futurist and Venture capital watcher, I often imagine who is most likely to acquire Substack should they fall on hard times? As with all startups, we always have to remember this is a distinct possibility in the years ahead.
As for Revue, by all accounts, and correct me if I'm wrong, since the Twitter acquisition it's momentum has basically died? Twitter would not be doing Twitter Notes if that wasn't the case.
Is it just me or is it literally even to come up with a name that is really Substack's competition? Substack appears to be a category leader in its own niche, a quasi third space community platform where Newsletters are only the medium. But podcasting, discussion, essays, op-eds and a wide range of formats actually occurs.
It's surprising that nobody really did this before in quite the same way? LinkedIn acquired Pulse in 2013 but literally did nothing with it until itself was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 - this was a massive missed opportunity.
There's just no way we can consider Ghost or beehiiv (whatever that is!) competitors of Substack. Even Medium or Twitter Notes would probably be closer competitors just in terms of mind-share. But Substack for monetization and scalability is better than all of these others combined for the moment.
I guess for me even without "category competition", my worry is Substack's growth while okay, is not tremendous. It needs to scale in the 2020 to 2025 period to have a real first-mover advantage that benefits us all.