"Six-figure Substack incomes and subscriber numbers sure sound great, but they're not the only ends to the means."
Has Substack’s subscription model really “maxed out?”
Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.” When we recently wrote about writers who are leaving Substack, they mentioned control, pricing, and the social feature creep among their reasons for choosing competitors like Ghost and Behiiv. [Link: Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax | https://www.theverge.com/tech/927294/substack-tax-ghost-beehiiv | The Verge]
Substack Writers Concerned as Subscriptions ‘Plummet’ Due to Follow Feature
Substack writers are expressing their concerns about the platform’s following feature on social media, which some argue is suppressing their subscription growth.
🔋Turbo · For You
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The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing
The Subscription Model Has Maxed Out
App subscriptions were always inevitable
The future will be paid for in small increments
Tread carefully, because you tread on my fucks.
This newsletter is free to read, and it’ll stay that way. But if you want more - extra posts each month, access to the community, and a direct line to ask me things - paid subscriptions are $2.50/month. A lot of people have told me it’s
Molly White
Yep. I saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month just from switching from Substack to self-hosted Ghost. I pay a roughly flat $85/month now (~$75 for mailsending, $10 for hosting), vs. 10% of all my subscription income. Here’s some napkin math for how expensive Substack is compared to its competitors:
Why you should charge more for your app subscriptions
The conventional wisdom for app subscriptions is to price affordably, like $1.99/month, and hopefully attract lots of subscribers at a low price. Then by having low pricing, fewer will reject the idea of subscriptions, and you’ll make up the difference with volume. But this is the wrong
Substack Policy
I quit tech to stop helping bad guys. As Substack gains traction, it's important to me that I have no part in the making of their monopoly.
How I’ve Attracted The First 500 Paid Users For My SaaS That Costs $5/mo
You Don’t Have To Get Covered on Large Blogs, Why Churn Rate is Surprisingly Low, Spend a Lot of Time At User Forum, etc..
I Will Never Respect A Website
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How churn can limit your subscription business
Or how you can estimate subscription revenue with a leaky bucket... Given Apple’s push behind App Store subscriptions and the number of apps that have made the switch like DayOne [http://dayoneapp.com/], Ulysses [https://ulyssesapp.com/blog/2017/08/ulysses-switches-to-subscription/], 1Password [https://blog.agilebits.com/
It's Time to End our Subscription Addiction
Can the media survive the inevitable horrors of 2025?
Can you really leave Substack? Substack was built on the promise that creators could leave whenever they wanted, taking their audience & payments with them. Then they built an app, started processing payments through Apple & Google Pay, & now if you leave, you lose everything.
Yep. I saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month just from switching from Substack to self-hosted Ghost. I pay a roughly flat $85/month now (~$75 for mailsending, $10 for hosting), vs. 10% of all my subscription income.
Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue
digiday.com
