Substack: What Is It And Why Are People Getting Excited?

Imagine having a kind of blog where, every time you wrote a new blog post, it was immediately sent out – perfectly formatted – to a list of email subscribers. Without having to pull any complicated levers.

Imagine if that same platform was totally free and without limits. As many subscribers as you want, as many newsletters as you want. No charge.

Then imagine if, apart from posts/newsletters, you could put podcasts on there too. As many as you like.

Then imagine that you could start micro discussion threads that would get mailed out to everyone inviting their participation.

Well, those are the main reasons people are getting a real buzz over Substack!

Before you head over and sign up as fast as toilet rolls sell in a pandemic,  are a few caveats. 

Don’t think of this as an Aweber or Getresponse alternative. It is certainly not for short promotional emails. This is designed for proper newsletters. These should be more like blog posts than emails. Full of images and even videos.

Don’t let that put you off, though. If you are an authority in a niche and you are used to creating value-led content, this could be a real game-changer.

Putting out a weekly newsletter that is well written and interesting, will gain you a following.

And here’s the best bit (and how Substack finances itself)…

There is a built in “paid newsletter” function built right in using Stripe.

You can have a paid subscription for your premium content (you choose what goes out to the free and paid subscribers). No need for a members site. It is all there with a couple of clicks (literally). You can’t do that with a Facebook Group!

The clever model they use to keep all of this going? They take a 10% charge on your subscriptions.

But considering what you get in return, it is a bloody good deal!

So far, I have only played about with it. I was able to import my posts from this blog using RSS (simple) and, I could add subscribers from other platforms in there too, if I wished to.

My conclusion is, if you put out quality content regularly, this is a pretty big deal. Forget paying a load of cash for tools like ConvertKit. This is probably better for you.

If you need the segmentation and marketing flexibility of an autoresponder service, it probably won’t replace it. But it would be a good “different” channel for people to subscribe to.

>> Here my newsletter on there

And you can subscribe with this form if you wish to…

Not sure how I will use it yet but it is pretty cool.

Oh, also, it integrates directly with Viral Loops (on a Black Friday sale at Appsumo right now.

Let me know what you think in the comments…