Some Tentatively Final Thoughts on Substack

I appreciate the emails I received from my two posts on starting a Substack. I am also grateful to David Lat who chatted with me at some length about the pros and cons of Substack. David has one of the most successful legal substacks, so he knows the business well.

I’ll put my tentatively final thoughts up front: starting a paid Substack probably isn’t worth it.

First, David explained how conversion rates actually works. In short, almost all substacks offer different tiers of subscriptions. Everyone can sign up for a free subscription that grants access to some content. Others sign up for a paid subscription that grants access to all content. The percentage of unpaid subscriptions that become paid is known as the conversion rate. I’ve seen some estimates that the Substack conversion rates hover around 10%. For example, if you have 1,000 total subscribers, about 100 of them are paid. David relays that the average conversion rate is probably closer to 5%. With the same number of unpaid subscribers, there may be about 50 paid subscribers.

Second, subscriber numbers are not static. People who cross the threshold to pay are very willing to cancel the subscription. If there is not enough content, they may think the price is not worth it, and unsubscribe. If there is too much content, and their inbox is being flooded, they may also unsubscribe. There is also a cyclical nature where people tire of a particular site and seek out other subscriptions. I’ve talked to several Substackers, and they all indicate that subscription numbers have largely plateaued. Once the market reaches its saturation rate, new subscribers are hard to find. Plus, old substacks had something of a first mover advantage. New sites will struggle. We may have already reached peak Substack.

Third, much work goes into keeping the conversion rate high and the unsubscribe rate low. Authors have to give considerable thought into how much content to generate, what type of content to generate, when to publish the content, and how to make the emails worth opening. If the author fails at any or all of these tasks, the subscriber rate will go down. Authors will necessarily obsess over these matters, and I think this concern will necessarily impact the quality and quantity of materials produced. Perhaps some authors have figured out the right balance, but many do not. Some substacks will simply fade away in relevance, and readers may never know.

These three points above have impacted how much I could reasonably expect to make. Assuming a $5/monthly subscription, to make $1,000 per month, I would need 200 paid subscribers and about 4,000 total subscribers. To make $10,000 per month, I would need 2,000 paid subscribers and about 40,000 total subscribers. Based on my rudimentary calculations, I imagine my paid subscriber rate at the outset would be towards the bottom of this range. Maybe it would grow over time, but it would inevitably plateau as I saturate the market. As one person told me by email, how many posts can I write about Chief Justice Roberts’s political approach to judging? (Hint: another one is coming tomorrow.)

In candor, a few thousand dollars each month would be some nice pocket change to have, but not enough to justify the change. Moreover, I enjoy the current routine: I blog when I want, don’t blog when I’m doing other things, and do not much care how many people actually read the post.

Anyway, these are my tentatively final thoughts for now. I of course remain open to revisiting this topic in the future. Thanks to all who contacted me!

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