Some really smart writing from some really thoughtful people makes it standout. Along with no damned Democrat Ministry of Truth style censorship. It should have wider readership.
I would welcome a change to the payment system. The concept of paying a monthly subscription doesn't work if you want to read articles from a number of writers but you don't necessarily want to read everything that person writes.
As a contributor, I don't charge a monthly fee because I don't want to be pressured into producing articles to a specific schedule.
A pay per read system would work better for me, both as a reader and as a writer.
Substack is an important opportunity for long-form free speech. Agree it is not well-known and agree it should be publicized (after some fixes). I think the commercial model is something more like the monetization model of X or YouTube. Your direction leads to too many subscriptions at cost levels that incrementally lose subscribers (and interest in subscribing) as subscriptions grow.
This is a good article with interesting ideas, some of which I have no idea what you are talking about.
I do agree that the push to get more subscribers by offering "prizes" for getting people to subscribe is not something I care for. I would rather have 200 subscribers with 90% of them actually reading what I write versus 2000 with 5% reading with I write.
Also, I do find that people are reading what I write even without paying and I know that because I get comments on social media shares or people sending me emails commenting about what I wrote. That is very gratifying even though I would like most of the engagement to be on the articles themselves.
The platform Substack uses for paid subscriptions does not include all countries in the world (Israel is not there, for example) and that is a distinct disadvantage to those of us from those countries.
Thanks, @Sheri Oz for your thoughts. I am going to propose a monetization model to the Substack management shortly which will empower writers and readers better.
For us older folks, I'd appreciate being able to change the text size, making it easier to read. I'd also appreciate being able to copy larger amounts of text (which I could then send to my friends to get them to read the full post on substack). Last, the "substack" name is not great; it communicates nothing of the treasure of information and opinion to be found here. It's sounds like something a computer scientist made up. Just my two cents.
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, “Substack” is very techie - like reddit posts or slashdot or StackOverflow…. But I am not sure changing the name when the goal is more awareness is the first priority.
I don't think it worked for "X" because people still talk about tweets and they will say X (formerly Twitter). At the same time, substack has not become as familiar a name as Twitter, and hence the need for Messina's article here. I think the name can be changed without losing anything at all.
To be fair, it is @Freedom To Offend’s article. Paul Finlayson wrote it. I reposted it because it’s got some good ideas and he is after all a Professor of media marketing, so he’s got some data to support what he’s writing.
As a private investor and long-time tech innovator, I think I see a model which can work, which takes bits of what Paul wrote.
I would welcome a change to the payment system. The concept of paying a monthly subscription doesn't work if you want to read articles from a number of writers but you don't necessarily want to read everything that person writes.
As a contributor, I don't charge a monthly fee because I don't want to be pressured into producing articles to a specific schedule.
A pay per read system would work better for me, both as a reader and as a writer.
Substack is an important opportunity for long-form free speech. Agree it is not well-known and agree it should be publicized (after some fixes). I think the commercial model is something more like the monetization model of X or YouTube. Your direction leads to too many subscriptions at cost levels that incrementally lose subscribers (and interest in subscribing) as subscriptions grow.
This is a good article with interesting ideas, some of which I have no idea what you are talking about.
I do agree that the push to get more subscribers by offering "prizes" for getting people to subscribe is not something I care for. I would rather have 200 subscribers with 90% of them actually reading what I write versus 2000 with 5% reading with I write.
Also, I do find that people are reading what I write even without paying and I know that because I get comments on social media shares or people sending me emails commenting about what I wrote. That is very gratifying even though I would like most of the engagement to be on the articles themselves.
The platform Substack uses for paid subscriptions does not include all countries in the world (Israel is not there, for example) and that is a distinct disadvantage to those of us from those countries.
Thanks, @Sheri Oz for your thoughts. I am going to propose a monetization model to the Substack management shortly which will empower writers and readers better.
Good article and some interesting ideas.
For us older folks, I'd appreciate being able to change the text size, making it easier to read. I'd also appreciate being able to copy larger amounts of text (which I could then send to my friends to get them to read the full post on substack). Last, the "substack" name is not great; it communicates nothing of the treasure of information and opinion to be found here. It's sounds like something a computer scientist made up. Just my two cents.
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, “Substack” is very techie - like reddit posts or slashdot or StackOverflow…. But I am not sure changing the name when the goal is more awareness is the first priority.
It worked for X, formerly known as Twitter. 😜
I don't think it worked for "X" because people still talk about tweets and they will say X (formerly Twitter). At the same time, substack has not become as familiar a name as Twitter, and hence the need for Messina's article here. I think the name can be changed without losing anything at all.
To be fair, it is @Freedom To Offend’s article. Paul Finlayson wrote it. I reposted it because it’s got some good ideas and he is after all a Professor of media marketing, so he’s got some data to support what he’s writing.
As a private investor and long-time tech innovator, I think I see a model which can work, which takes bits of what Paul wrote.