[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello. My podcast people, and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite podcast. If you're tuning, listening, watching In Watching in listening in on the day that it drops, it is Monday. April, what? 21st? Not the 14th. I have the right, the wrong date written here. The 21st.
Welcome to the backend of April. We got my guy with me. If you're watching, you got, you got Rubes here with us. Give zero fucks, uh, a few life updates and then we'll hop into the main episode, which is, should you start a substack? I think you folks already know what I'm gonna say. Um, but I, I'm actually very excited to get into that.
Um, and, um, I have a lot written down, so let's get into the up life update. So first off, uh, I recorded myself playing volleyball. Wow. That was unfortunate. So usually we don't record just 'cause like, it's kind of hard to share the videos. They're long. And so I use this thing called spor fee that Kim had put me onto and I was like, all right, I'm gonna record it.
It's just games and I can send it to the other, it's like a link and everyone else can watch it. Wow. Um, it's one of those things where you're like, wow, I thought I was way better. So while I know I've said in previous episodes that, you know, the game is slowing down. It is. Uh, but my technique needs to be picking up.
So, um. It's a net positive because I have specific things to work on, but it was a humbling experience. Uh, so speaking of volleyball, it is volleyball season. Uh. Yes, I play all year round, but like, it's actually the appropriate season now, which means that basically the only thing on I TV is volleyball spent last Saturday down in Huntington Beach, uh, for the a VP qualifier watching Kim.
Um, I'm excited for her and I'm excited for her season, which is not nearly as long as it should be or could be because the a VP has had another example of a business that is running itself into the ground. Uh, I feel like maybe I'll do an episode at some point on. The A VP as a business and just this whole need to have versus nice to have and kind of how that plays into sports as a business.
'cause we see plenty of sports. Those are just nice to have and they are making zillions of dollars. Um, and the A VP is not, and it's really unfortunate to me and it's kind of perplexing and maybe I'll dive into it in episode, but. Moving forward. Let's talk about tv. Finished severance. No spoilers. Don't worry, I'm not gonna say anything about it.
But, um, I finished severance As the time that this episode drops, I will have finished Wheel of time. I enjoy watching tv. That's the take home from this little part. I enjoy watching it. I don't beat myself up about it. I watch it every night. I'm always looking for new shows. I'm not looking for recommendations for news shows.
Honestly, I don't trust people. People got bad taste. I said what I said. Um, but I did watch Severance and I enjoyed it. Lex slept through most of it. Um. But I did enjoy it. I have thoughts, uh, if anyone wants to chat about it, slide into the old dms. Uh, but let's hop into the main topic, shall we? Main topic today, should you start a substack now?
I don't really love making things black and white, um, although last week's episode, which we will link. Thank you Courtney, and thank you to myself. I am now doing the editing and such for YouTubes, and by editing I mean like the little like stuff that has to get written and everything in the, in the.
Blurb part and stuff. I'm doing that now 'cause my guy Jojo's on, uh, and I'm doing the thumbnails 'cause my guy jojo is on paternity leave. So shout out to Courtney and then shout out to me. Uh, but last week's episode I talked about, uh, should you display your prices? Black and white? Yes. Always. No nuance.
Fucking put 'em up everywhere all the time. Um, but as it relates to Substack, maybe there is slightly more nuance here, but in general, no. I do not think you should start a substack. All right, let's chat. So first off, what is Substack? If you're listening to this episode, watching this episode, it's a good chance, you know what it is.
'cause that's why you're watching this episode, listening. Um, but if you don't know what chat, what substack is, or maybe you've heard of it and you're like, yeah, I heard it, but I don't really know. I asked chat GBT to give me a succinct, simple sentence. And here's what it gave me, and I agree with it.
Substack is a platform that lets writers publish and monetize their newsletters directly to subscribers. It combines. Email and blogging into one space, giving creators full control over their content and audience. So perhaps at phase value. Sounds good. Publishing newsletters, that's a good thing.
Monetizing newsletters, that's a good thing. Control over your content and audience. It's also a good thing. So what's my gripe? It's a lie. That's what my gripe is. You don't own it. It's really hard to monetize and there's just a better way to fucking do it. Right. So I'm gonna refer you back to episode 6 49.
Thank you, Courtney. Thank you myself. Uh, that was professionalizing the creator economy. And the, the, the take home from that is that I want you to own your shit. I want you to have full control over your shit. I want you to. Future proof, pandemic proof your shit. I want you to be in charge of how and when you get paid.
I want you to utilize every single bit of technology that we have available that allows us to cut out the middleman, right? When we cut out the middleman, we keep more money, which means we need less people. Yes, I know you wanna help everybody, but one, everybody doesn't want your help. That's the first thing.
And two, it's a strain when you're just like, man, I gotta keep finding new people, or I gotta find a g. Zillion people. If you can keep more money that you're earning, you don't need as many customers. Plain and simple. You don't have to raise the prices either. So the number one reason I think people use Substack is because they believe it's gonna help them with the hardest part of business, which is customer acquisition.
I. And this is very much within the context of business, AKA, making money, right? The subheading on the Substack website says, building a new economic engine for culture. That is a lot of words, a lot of fucking words. A little further down the page. There's a lot of words. It says a lot of nothing, right? A lot.
A little further down the page, it says, when subscribers pay writers and creators directly, they can focus on doing the work they care about. Most. A few hundred paid subscribers can support a livelihood. A few thousand makes it lucrative. Yes, absolutely. Math, I agree. Right? And this is actually simple math that we see use quite often.
It is nonsense. Gets people in, but it's not actual real math, right? So simple math here, charge $7, get a thousand people, and you're making bank $7,000 a month. Easy, right? More on this math later. The big question we should be asking is where are these people coming from? Where are these thousand people coming from?
Enter. Substack. If friends, it sounds too good to be true. It probably is. Substack is just like any other social media platform. It will favor people with bigger audience, bigger audiences, right? It will. So if you're gonna get like featured, it's because you already have some massive audience that you grew, right?
It's not like the platform's actually doing you any favors. Personal audience. Your own personal audience tends to be the most effective source of growth. Meaning when people like come from a different platform and move to another, that tends to be the most helpful in terms of having an audience size.
We saw this with threats, right? People that came from Instagram. You already had an audience. You had a high number there. There is not necessarily the opposite. Or sometimes you'll see people have a bunch of followers on threads and not very many on Instagram. That's very real. Right. I wanna talk about this in a little bit in terms of, actually, I'll talk about it right now.
Right? So if we're thinking about Substack growth or having a lot of people on there, oftentimes it's that these, these folks that come to Substack and then have these massive audiences, they brought their audience from somewhere else. From more, more traditional social media platform like Instagram, right?
Or, or threads. Right. Or from a traditional media outlet, like a newspaper, they're like, you know, some big name and they're, now they have their own personal thing and people are like, yeah, I'm gonna follow you over there. It's not that they just grew organically on this thing. Right. Realistically, you are just going to be promoting your substack on your Instagram to get subscribers.
So promote your own site instead. Right. This is where this whole thing is headed, is that it's something I don't want you to blog. I actually have a blog. I never talk about it 'cause I kind of just revived it and it was really largely from my own thoughts, but it's on my website. Put this shit on your own website instead.
Like don't go to something else that you don't own. Right? Yes. Recommendations as Richmond relates to social media can help if a bigger account recommends you. That's absolutely what we see in terms of social media, right? Where like you get reposted by somebody else and then, uh. They, their followers actually respect them and trust them, and you are speaking with something that their followers care about, then yeah, you can grow.
I'm thinking about, uh, K'S economy, K'S Economist, right? I, I spoke about her on like a previous few episodes ago. I found her account through. Katie and Katie is, uh, what is her name? She has money with Katie. That's her podcast, but I found money with Katie, brought K's Economist on, and so I found it. That's through, through that and you can see growth because of that, this idea of like virality or just getting pushed natively on Substack, it doesn't exist the same way that it exists on social media.
It's just not the same thing. And so my gripe is that Sub Substack really looks to push that, you know, all these platforms look to, to see that. And I have an issue when it comes to people being, tricking people into being like, yeah, you can monetize it this way. And I'm like, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way.
Like, like YouTube isn't out there, just like. Making people go viral automatically and just like kind of giving things out like this, like there's an algorithm to it. There is, um, recommendations. Like there's a, there's a, a method behind this and it doesn't, they're not promoting that you're gonna be able to make money on this thing.
That's where my issue is, that Substack is really trying to be like, Hey, you can come here and make money. Meanwhile, it's not like they're just gonna be paying you to create. That's the difference with YouTube. It's like the platform eventually pays you. This is like, Hey, come here. Bring people and maybe they'll pay you and you can use our payment processor.
Like what? Even with recommendations on ConvertKit, which we're gonna talk about. Because that is my email marketing provider that I, that I recommend. They have like a recommendations thing and it's like you're not gonna blow up through that thing either. Like, it just doesn't, it doesn't work out like that.
We all under, we all know that word of mouth is the best referral source, but when you ask people to refer you or refer friends, like you don't get like a rush of fucking people coming in. It just doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way in person. It doesn't work that way online. Right. Especially when what they're trying to market here is that people are gonna pay you.
It's one thing if it's like, okay, maybe you'll grow and follow and, and followers, because they're not, I guess they're called subscribers, but they won't be paid. Right. They'll like, maybe they'll read your stuff, but like we're trying to get people to pay. That takes time and trust. And for Substack to put that as like the front thing, the front marketing piece, I do take issue with that.
Right. So if Substack was touting itself as another social media platform, you know. This time it's for readers and writers. I have no qualms with that, but it really positions itself as this like new age quote unquote disruptive platform where writers can make money and that's at the front of their marketing and messaging and where they will help writers to make money.
And I, it's just not the case. Right. Are people earning money on there? For sure. Absolutely. But it's folks who already had audiences, not folks who were blown up by this amazing recommendation network on Substack. Right. Sharon just says, Sharon says, so, you know, I love her. She's a perfect example. She's making a killing and I actually do pay for her substack, namely, as a way to support her.
I would rather she hosted it somewhere else than I could pay there, and I don't have to at all support this platform, but it's what it's right. I'd love to pay her directly. That's the main reason that I, that I pay her. Yes, it is also nice to have access to some of the things that are behind a paywall, but like I don't really need it.
It's largely 'cause I'm like, dude, you do so much good work. Like here's $7 or whatever, 10. I don't even know how much it is a month. Like some nominal. FI literally never look at anyone that's recommended. I don't even know if they'd recommend. I'm like, get outta here. I don't want this shit. I'm literally on there for Sharon and I'm definitely not gonna go and pay for someone that it's recommended me like immediately.
Immediately. No. So what's the solution, right? 'cause I'm not here to just complain. Understand that the eyes, the audience, they're gonna come from general socials, right? I think that actually a threads is a really good. Starting place because people are already reading, right? The mediums are the same. If anything, if I'm gonna join anyone's like newsletter or anything like that, it's because I've been reading stuff from them on threads and I'm like, oh, you have really good ideas, you're really helpful stuff.
Or I've been reading stuff from them, seeing stuff from them on, on Instagram and I'm like, cool. I want, I want more of this, right? They have good information and other places that lends itself to me and people wanting to learn more, right? This is definitely good for learners and people that are deep divers.
This. That may be somewhat of a personal bias, right? Because it's how I use it as like for learning and, and deep diving. Um, but it's how I see it used. And I'm guessing that a lot of you watching this listening to this are the same. Uh, so it works out. My ask my play here. My solution here is that you host this shit on your own website.
Like what are we doing? Host it on your own website, or at least with your own email marketing service provider. Again, my push, my play, my favorite is ConvertKit. It does this. You can have a paid newsletter if you want. You could have a paid blog on your website. You just need to have it, uh, be behind a paywall.
Right? The, the, the, the goal here, the thing that I'm just like so fired up about is that when it comes to getting paid, I want you to get paid. I'm sick of these platforms being like, okay, we reduced a little bit of friction and so now we're gonna keep so much of your money. And I was like, fuck it. I'll just take some of that friction.
'cause it's usually this one time when you're setting it up and then you keep all that margin. Right? Substack keeps a portion, they just like Patreon, right? Substack keeps a portion and the creators ends up seeing about 87% of the payment that comes in with something like hit. You're simply paying the 3.5% plus 30 cents per transaction, right?
The transaction fee. It's very typical. Right, because what happens with Substack is you're paying that 3.5% plus 30 cent transaction fee, and then on top of that it takes 10%, right? Yes. With something like ConvertKit, you were also paying for the subscribers, but they have a free tier for up to 10,000, uh, subscribers, but you only get one.
Automation don't use that tier, but they do have it. The $25 a month, uh, creator plan gives you up to a thousand subscribers, and that works out to be about 2 cents. Per subscriber. All right, so if we go back to that original easy math of get a get a thousand subscribers charge, $7, you're gonna make Bank, okay, let's do that and let's compare the two.
Let's compare Substack and your own platform, or Substack and and ConvertKit. I. So $7 a month for your paid newsletter, a thousand subscribers with ConvertKit, right? The gross revenue would be $7,000, right? It's seven times 1000 subscribers. The stripe fee of 3.5% plus 30 cents transaction fee ends up being about $545 in fees, and then if you add on the $25 per month.
Fee. Um, for like the kit plan, that's $570 in, right? Five, yes. $570 in fees, which means your net is $6,430 a month. That's fucking amazing. Alright, Substack, same thing here. $7 a month, a thousand subscribers. That means that your gross is 7,000. We have the stripe fee again, it's the same, so that'd be 545.
Dollars plus that 10%. It's so much. Oh my God. The 10% substack fee, that's $700 a month for a total of $1,245 in. Fees that you're paying here, that means your net earnings are 575, excuse me, 5,700. $5,755, right? That shit adds up, man. You are losing 600 and you, you're losing $675 a month if you go with substack a month, that adds up.
I understand that there's a cost for convenience, but that's too fucking much of a cost, right? The convenience is largely the tech component. It's not that they're gonna be feeding you subscribers, right? It's not the customer acquisition side and that tech component, like I get it, tech trips people up, but fuck Tech Tenacity is one of the, this at the heart of being an online business owner, and it's also at the heart of keeping way more of the money that you are earning.
I, I actually dove into the tech side of this a bit while I was out loading this episodes to see like if I wanted to run on my own website. I have a WordPress website, like how could I do this? And the Kit WordPress integration is dope, right? Kit in general is dope 'cause it has an RSS to email feature, which means that you can have your blog post gets sent directly as emails.
Right. That's, that's amazing. I know that for some of you, that goes over your head, but suffice to say you could make a blog post on your website and have it be pushed out automatically when it, when it, uh, publishes. Or you could have like a summary one that goes out like on every Friday, and that's, that's a free part of Kit.
That's great. Right. The kit to WordPress integration can also have broad broadcasts, so the emails that you send from Convert, you can have them be published to your website as blog posts. That's amazing. It's all part of just having kid. Then when it comes to pay walling things, right? There is, uh, a little bit more tech that can be involved or you can just go natively but have a paid newsletter through kid.
Right? But you could also do some more functionality and something have like, basically kind of like a, a paywall membership kind of thing. Um, that would, would still work. It's, this is like a little bit more techy tech involved. And all that to, if you wanna nerd out it by all beans, d me, happy to nerd out.
Right? But all that to say you can do a lot and you can do it on your own and you can keep way more of the money that you are earning, that you're bringing in, which means you need less customers. Might there be some, a little more friction for the customer? Yes. That's okay. People are fucking adults. We have made things, you know, Ellen has a standup routine where she talks about like, people remember when those things that like the breath strips are just like melted in your mouth.
And it's like, that's where we're at where people can't even like chew. They can't even chew gum. They can't even like suck on a fucking like mint. They're just like put the thing in my mouth that it disintegrates and just does everything for me. Like it's okay if there's a little bit of friction for the people to find something or if it's not like this super pretty like thing.
Like it's okay, look where we're at and how we got here. And part of that is that we're just trying to like make things so seamless and frictionless and like you don't have to do anything. And it's just like, it's okay if your customers. Do some things.
So if you google Substack drama, you can read for yourself some of the other issues, the vigor issues, the kind of the socioeconomic, uh, the, uh. Um, social issues that I and other people have with supporting Substack in general. Um, namely their willingness to support literal Nazis. Uh, but I don't want this episode to be like a smear campaign against Substack.
I actually was reading, um, a piece about Substack and it was just like, this feels skewed because it was written by like another kind of player that offers a similar thing as Substack. And I was like, you're just. I don't like that. Right. It's a, it is a, it's, you know, I'm not a huge fan of the anti positioning marketing or anti position marketing.
Um, I'm just like, what do you have? And it's just like, it was just so, like, smear. And I'm like, you can form you folks here. You can form your own opinions about the policies and politics of Substack, but I will raise your, you know, open your eyes. Hopefully the fact that like there are policies and politics surrounding substack that, that I don't like, that are based on my values.
It's up to you and your values. Right? But speaking of values, the real impetus for this episode, the real inspiration for this episode is that I see folks looking for another place to acquire eyes, given the very fickle, fickle nature of Instagram, like the Instagram algorithm. And I just see people being like, this isn't working.
I'm tired of it. I'm just gonna like go over to here. And I'm like, that's fine. If you just wanna create to create. Okay. You have, have heard my hesitation to really continue to promote Instagram just given the predatory nature of the owners and like these big companies that don't give a fuck about the individual user.
Like I'm already on Instagram and the, the cost benefit is still in my favor in terms of like my people are there and I can help people there. So I'm still there. But when that like. Becomes unbalanced. Like I'm out. Like it just, so all that to say substack is no difference. That's why I'm like, don't fucking start.
Especially when they're blatantly lying and being like, we're gonna feed you customers. I'm like, but you're not. I'm just, I'm over here trying to hold up a sign that's saying if you are leaving a social media platform, you're, you know, leaving Instagram or something. She's like, I'm going over there. You are literally jumping out of the pan and into the embers of a burgeoning fire.
We see with Substack, they've added video, they've added podcasts, and it's just like, y'all just want people's money. Stop saying that you're this like disruptive new age or for the creator or for the, for the writer rather. You're be honest, you're not. I just want transparency. You don't care about the creators.
You care about making money. Fucking taking 10%, 5%. Okay. It's still a lot, but like I get it. For some people it's just like, this is like just such a heavy lift with the tech and tech side of stuff. Okay. I can get it. But my guess is if it's such a heavy lift with the tech and you can't like outsource it, you know, the time, like you're very new in your business and it's, I wouldn't put your beginning writings on something that you don't own, like put it on your own fucking website.
I, I just, I cannot support this. Like, it just doesn't make any sense. It just something that you can absolutely 100% house on your own website, Patreon, I give it a little bit more grace because of the, the functionality of just like. Having the tears, and then it was for artists and it was like videos and all these things that like, there is a bit more friction with that and website and, and, and things like that, but like this is literally a blog with a fucking paywall.
Like what? Yes, there is an RSS to email component of that, meaning that when something gets published to the website, quote unquote, it would get sent to your email. Basically all email things can do that now. Right chat, GBT can help. You can literally walk you through how to, what you need, how to do it. So no, I do not believe that 10% should be going to that platform, especially when that platform doesn't seem to stand for, in my opinion, according to my values, good things.
Right. So if you wanna start a substack, start a substack. Go ahead. Right. You're an adult. Do what you wanna do. I'm not here to shame anyone, but if you want my opinion on whether or not you should start a substack, which is why you're listening to this, my opinion is, no, I get it. Folks want growth, but substack is not the answer, right?
For what it's worth, neither is the ConvertKit, you know, recommendation network thing. My growth on any platform takes time. I say it all the time and does a long play game that. Not everybody even gets to win. You could be like, I've been here forever and you could still not have won the game. There is a big luck component to To social media, traditional social media.
Absolutely. I, and if you take a step further, if we're looking to make this into paying customers and they're not just paying us an attention, they're paying us in money, that takes even longer, even longer. And it is all still ultimately, or I should say, but it is all still ultimately founded in trust, which is mostly helped by, or greatly helped by social media.
Right, and the familiarity and relationship imbalance that it fosters. And when I say relationship, I balance. It's like, Hey, this person is like giving me something every day, helping me out all the time. I just wanna like say thank you. Right? Social media allows for that. You get to pick what medium that is.
And if you're a writer, yeah. Right. Go ahead, have a blog. Where are you gonna promote it? Probably on another platform where people read. So it'll be, you could do it on Instagram, right? Instagram started out as a platform and people do read stuff, right? That's what the caption, you know, length is 2200 characters.
Like people will read and I see people put carousels up, like yes, people will read. And threads is a phenomenal way as well. It's like, 'cause it's all just written stuff. And then we can use something like Instagram to show me your personality. What do you like? Right, and then we can go ahead and, and put to push them to a paid, a paid, written, you know, thing, paid newsletter or whatever.
But either way, the growth takes time. No platform is just gonna blow you up. No one's just gonna feed you leads. It doesn't work that way. Ever. And if we kind of, if we take this and liken it to the in-person realm, and I just had a call about this, a coaching call about this, right? This is why if you're an employee, you don't make as much money.
Should the gap be smaller? Yes. But all this to say, as an employee of like a physical therapy practice, if you're just getting fed clients, they're doing the hard part, you're doing technically the fun part, which is treating right, but they are doing a very difficult part, which is getting people through the door.
I So just keep that in mind. No one's just gonna hand you, hand you leads. They're trying to justify, Substack is trying to justify that 10% cut by being like, we're feeding you leads. And it's like, but you're not doing that. So again, if it was just touting itself as just like, Hey, this is another social media platform that's for long form content, cool, long form written content, cool.
But it's not, it's saying, Hey, come make money. And I'm like, just do that shit on your own website. All right. Alright. And if I, I'd be remiss if I didn't say this. If you're looking to just write, that's your thing and you wanna get found via your written stuff, then that's gonna be SEO, right? And Lex, that is her thing.
She's the queen, the SEO sensei, like that is her thing. So I will link her. She has actually been, and this comes out, I think the, when this episode comes out, I think the wait list will be closed for her. SEO school, but public launch will be starting probably the week after. So either way I will just link, I'll link her stuff, her, her website, and her Instagram.
Um, so if you're looking for the SEO side of things, then that's who you wanna be going for going to. And that's if you're like, Hey, I wanted to get discovered by people, like Googling things. I like to, and that's like to read. That's how you're gonna do it. Okay. Alright. That's it. I'm looking at the time, a little bit longer this week, making up for the short one.
Last week, uh, as always, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Is your next friends maestro out?
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