Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Dave Karpf
Last I checked, good ‘ol WordPress is still free.
Just make sure to change your favicon and change the “Powered by WordPress” footer to “Not Powered by Substack” to keep people from calling you a Boomer Millennial hailing from the year of our Lord 2003.
(Also Tumblr! Tumblr is still free! Tumblr just has very little monetization, though. By contrast you can paywall WordPress with extensions if you want. Though if you’re legitimately insane you could also try self-hosting Ghost or some even more niche CMS.)
EDIT: and if you move to Tumblr, people might confuse you for David Karp (no “f”)!
Dave: love the newsletter. Followed you for awhile now.
I respect what anyone feels they have to do to stay relevant and solvent in the current media environment. The only thing I wanted to say is that I think if you turned subs on you’d EASILY make enough money to be in the black, even if you moved to another service. Not saying you should definitely move but I wouldn’t make financial considerations part of your calculation. That is all.
Keep up the amazing work and thanks for a great year of newsletters!
I am playing with Buttondown, and so far I like it, but I have like 20 subscribers, so the free plan works well for me so far. It is more work, but I am a bit of a geek. I moved from Ghost to Substack, and the main differences were less customizability on Substack, but far easier to grow an audience on Substack. The community and recommendations just work here, and it feels forced at Ghost.
The one thing I hate about Substack is that they pre/post-pend the "Pledge Your Support" to try to guilt me into turning it into a revenue stream for them. What I write is very niche, so it just isn't palatable to my small audience to *pay* for my content. And it is a hobby for me.
Now, if I got to say 1,000 subscribers I would rethink that, but I don't believe I will ever have to cross that bridge.
Reading your posts has been a bright spot in my life, and I will follow should you leave!
If you move to a paid subscription, consider charging less than $100. Maybe $99.99 would do it, but $100 is a fair chunk of even my relatively generous media budget. Another possibility to consider is offering monthly sponsorships. If you move to a service that charges around $90 a month, I wouldn't be surprised if you find monthly sponsors or perhaps half sponsors. Let people sign up ahead so you can cover the year ahead. Subscriptions can feel daunting.
I used to buy interesting magazines at Reading International in Cambridge, MA. I'd grab several at a time, and often would pick up several issues of the same magazine a few times a year. Only in one or two cases did I sign up for a subscription even though the subscription price was sometimes less than the multiple issue prices. (Issues cost about $5 back then, so that would be $20 now. That's a casual purchase. $100 is still a big purchase.)
I think the problem is more fundamental. I call it democratic governance. As an example, on the one hand one wants a public sphere that is censorship resistant, on the other hand people want to enjoy socializing, meeting, discussing. More generally, we want a society where everybody is free to do what they want, but also a society where its members are freedom to collectively build public goods. These two aims contradict each other. Afaics, nobody has proposed a solution to this problem yet ...
I read quite a bit about the Substack Nazi Problem and see both arguments. This newsletter is one of the more interesting ones on this topic.
"Moderation costs money and isn’t any fun. Substack wants to be a revolutionary platform for the creator economy, without spending money on the not-fun stuff."
"And then [Cloudfare] realized that you don’t get to be an important platform and also ignore how your tools are being used."
My best case scenario is a situation where writers and readers can choose. There will be sth like Substack which covers the extreme right and left as well as some dissenters that are more difficult to categorize. Then there will be platforms with other identities. Finally, there will be writers who just run their own server. Btw, as setting up platforms is getting easier there will be a lot of competition for Substack.
Last I checked, good ‘ol WordPress is still free.
Just make sure to change your favicon and change the “Powered by WordPress” footer to “Not Powered by Substack” to keep people from calling you a Boomer Millennial hailing from the year of our Lord 2003.
(Also Tumblr! Tumblr is still free! Tumblr just has very little monetization, though. By contrast you can paywall WordPress with extensions if you want. Though if you’re legitimately insane you could also try self-hosting Ghost or some even more niche CMS.)
EDIT: and if you move to Tumblr, people might confuse you for David Karp (no “f”)!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Karp
Great reflections Dave! And you for the reading list to work through over the festive period 😊
Dave: love the newsletter. Followed you for awhile now.
I respect what anyone feels they have to do to stay relevant and solvent in the current media environment. The only thing I wanted to say is that I think if you turned subs on you’d EASILY make enough money to be in the black, even if you moved to another service. Not saying you should definitely move but I wouldn’t make financial considerations part of your calculation. That is all.
Keep up the amazing work and thanks for a great year of newsletters!
Looking forward to more of your work. Happy holidays!
I am playing with Buttondown, and so far I like it, but I have like 20 subscribers, so the free plan works well for me so far. It is more work, but I am a bit of a geek. I moved from Ghost to Substack, and the main differences were less customizability on Substack, but far easier to grow an audience on Substack. The community and recommendations just work here, and it feels forced at Ghost.
The one thing I hate about Substack is that they pre/post-pend the "Pledge Your Support" to try to guilt me into turning it into a revenue stream for them. What I write is very niche, so it just isn't palatable to my small audience to *pay* for my content. And it is a hobby for me.
Now, if I got to say 1,000 subscribers I would rethink that, but I don't believe I will ever have to cross that bridge.
Reading your posts has been a bright spot in my life, and I will follow should you leave!
In all fairness, Substack is partly crowd-funded and owned by its users: https://on.substack.com/p/wefunder
If you move to a paid subscription, consider charging less than $100. Maybe $99.99 would do it, but $100 is a fair chunk of even my relatively generous media budget. Another possibility to consider is offering monthly sponsorships. If you move to a service that charges around $90 a month, I wouldn't be surprised if you find monthly sponsors or perhaps half sponsors. Let people sign up ahead so you can cover the year ahead. Subscriptions can feel daunting.
I used to buy interesting magazines at Reading International in Cambridge, MA. I'd grab several at a time, and often would pick up several issues of the same magazine a few times a year. Only in one or two cases did I sign up for a subscription even though the subscription price was sometimes less than the multiple issue prices. (Issues cost about $5 back then, so that would be $20 now. That's a casual purchase. $100 is still a big purchase.)
I think the problem is more fundamental. I call it democratic governance. As an example, on the one hand one wants a public sphere that is censorship resistant, on the other hand people want to enjoy socializing, meeting, discussing. More generally, we want a society where everybody is free to do what they want, but also a society where its members are freedom to collectively build public goods. These two aims contradict each other. Afaics, nobody has proposed a solution to this problem yet ...
I read quite a bit about the Substack Nazi Problem and see both arguments. This newsletter is one of the more interesting ones on this topic.
"Moderation costs money and isn’t any fun. Substack wants to be a revolutionary platform for the creator economy, without spending money on the not-fun stuff."
"And then [Cloudfare] realized that you don’t get to be an important platform and also ignore how your tools are being used."
My best case scenario is a situation where writers and readers can choose. There will be sth like Substack which covers the extreme right and left as well as some dissenters that are more difficult to categorize. Then there will be platforms with other identities. Finally, there will be writers who just run their own server. Btw, as setting up platforms is getting easier there will be a lot of competition for Substack.
Winner of the dumbest and most ignorant post of 2023. Congrats. You beat Trump's tweets.
Ready to fork over my 6, 8 or 9 dollars a month as needed.
I will follow you and pay for the privilege.