← Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
Creators Are Flocking to Substack—but Should You Join Them?
00:39:21
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- [00:00]
Dylan
What is Substack? Is it a email service provider? Is it a blogging platform?
- [00:04]
Chanel
The waters are getting a little muddy. I'm not really sure anymore.
- [00:06]
Dylan
You had shared some fishy happenings on Substack that you had noticed.
- [00:11]
Chanel
It just makes me nervous to put all your eggs in one basket. So the age old question, Dylan, do you think that Substack has gone out? And welcome back to the Growth in Reverse podcast. I'm Chanel. Nope, Dylan's not here. Hello.
- [00:35]
Dylan
Hello. And I'm Dylan.
- [00:37]
Chanel
And today we're going to talk about the epic migration of people over to Substack and why everybody's moving. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? We're just going to jump in and talk through what we're seeing and what we think about it.
- [00:50]
Dylan
Yeah. I think by the end of this episode, the hope is that if you are contemplating, you know, should I be on substack? Should I be dabbling with it, migrating my whole list over to Substack? We don't want to inform you whether or not yes, you should or yes, you shouldn't or give our opinions if you should or shouldn't. We just want to lay out kind of what it is, how it works, who's using it, and then let you kind of make an informed decision that way. That's fair to say, wouldn't you say, Chanel?
- [01:16]
Chanel
Yeah. So I guess this all started. The last couple of weeks, I think have been pretty crazy. So Justin Walsh has moved over. He actually created a new email list on Substack. So he has a newsletter with like 170,000 people, the Saturday Solopreneur. He's still sending that through Kit, but he started a new newsletter on Substack. There's a paid tier to it. Dan Ko, who's another past deep Dive, also moved over and has a paid newsletter. We saw Jay Clouse move over recently and he actually introduced a paid tier too. I didn't realize that. So that's pretty cool. So there's just a lot of people moving over and. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty wild to see like all in one. It felt like all at the same time.
- [01:59]
Dylan
It did. And even, even other, let's call them maybe smaller, quote unquote, lesser known creators who I've been following in the newsletter space, at least for a while, who had maybe been on substack, left for greener pastures and then thought, oh, I think I'm actually going to come back. And so I've seen a few messages like, hey, I'm Coming back to Substack, so I'm kind of like, you know, we should talk about why, why this might be happening. And I've got, I've got a few ideas on why first of all, people might be doing this. But I thought it would be important to have an episode like this because I think if I'm wondering it, so are probably you and a lot of people.
- [02:34]
Chanel
All right, so the age old question, Dylan, do you think that Substack has gone out and paid some of these creators to move over?
- [02:40]
Dylan
Yes. Well, they even announced that they have a creator fund type thing. Right. Somebody from actually our Growth Reverse Pro community even even shared an article with us when we were talking. I think you had shared something in the community about some fishy happenings on, on Substack that you had noticed. And, and then, you know, the topic of conversation came up that these bigger creators were moving over and an article was shared like it might have something to do with this. And essentially it's a press release that Substack is essentially creating a fund for creators just like kind of TikTok did with their fund. Sort of like how YouTube has a. I don't know if they necessarily have a creator fund, but they pay out users as well for views and that SOR thing. So yes, I think some of these, I'm not saying they all are, but I think some of these creators were definitely enticed with some financial incentive on.
- [03:28]
Chanel
Top of the paid paid newsletter piece of things. This was the article from January, right? January 23rd.
- [03:35]
Dylan
Yes.
- [03:35]
Chanel
Introducing the creator accelerator.
- [03:37]
Dylan
So. And we'll share that link to that in the show notes. But yeah, I think it makes sense. Right. Like Substack is a VC backed business. Their goal is to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, drive revenue. And, and there are, there are some people who are critical of how they're running their business and the, or at least the direction that they've gone. But really they're the first responsibility is to their shareholders and their investors. So they need to grow this thing as much as they can. If that means incentivizing large creators who weren't using their platform to come over and use it, then that's what they're going to do if they have the funds for it. So I can't help but wonder if they even are maybe cutting down some of the subscription rates, the fees. Like they take 10% from the average Joe. And so I wonder if somebody like Justin Welsh is like, oh, we'll only take 3%.
- [04:24]
Chanel
Yeah. And I don't even Know if, well, maybe Justin Walsh would have this size audience, but other. Some other creators, probably, maybe not, but they're just moving over because the wave is naturally pushing other people. But I remember in the beginning, this is actually how Substack started. So for everyone out there thinking, oh my God, creator fun. Like, Substack has been doing this the entire time. They actually got some of the early journalists over in the. In the beginning to actually, you know, seed the marketplace, if you will, with some writers and that kind of thing. So this is not the first time they've done this. I don't know the specifics and how different it is this time, but I know this has been done before on their, on their platform.
- [05:00]
Dylan
Okay, so that makes sense. I think that actually takes you. That takes us back to kind of the question, like, what is Substack? What is it? Is it a email service provider? Is it a blogging platform? Is it a social media platform? What is it?
- [05:12]
Chanel
Yeah, I mean, the, the, the waters are getting a little muddy. I'm not really sure anymore. I think in the beginning it was, you know, a blog slash newsletter platform, and now it's more of like a social posting, podcasting video with a newsletter on the side platform.
- [05:28]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [05:29]
Chanel
What do you think?
- [05:30]
Dylan
I think the goal posts have changed for sure or have moved. So it's definitely become more of an all in one platform. So you can do everything from just use it as a blog post site, if you will, like you did with 30 days of growth. Right. You were publishing there as one of the places you were publishing, but you weren't sending those additions to people via email. Right. We were just posting there by nature of being able to. So you can do that if you want, but then you can also just have a newsletter and quote, unquote blog post, if you will. So you send your newsletter, it posts on your Substack page, and then your subscript substack recipients or subscribers will ideally receive your newsletter in their inbox. We can talk about why I say ideally in a little bit, but they ideally, they get the email in their inbox and use it that way. But then you can also create a podcast. Like one of our growth Reverse Pro community members, Jessica, she's got a podcast that she publishes on Substack. And so there's just so much you can do with it, including, we can't not talk about notes. Right. Substack notes that launched what about almost two years ago, I think, kind of their version of Twitter. So to really dumb it down, really simply, it's it's like the Substack version of Twitter. So there is a lot you can do with it. Video has been introduced, so they're creating their own whole social content publishing ecosystem.
- [06:51]
Chanel
And it's, it's getting pretty. I don't know. I don't, I don't know what to think of it. Like, there's. You can pretty much do anything on there, which is good. And also makes me nervous in a sense of like, okay, so they're VC backed. What does the future hold for people when they eventually sell the company? I don't know that. It just makes me nervous for like seeing a bunch of people go almost all in on Substack. Like even publishing a podcast natively to Substack. Like, do you still have a podcast feed that lives outside of that? Um, I don't know how that works on the back end, to be honest, but it just makes me nervous to put all your eggs in one basket.
- [07:30]
Dylan
Yeah. And it's a big basket and you can put lots of eggs in, can be stolen from you. So I think that is the cautionary tale. And that goes with any, really any service provider that you're using. Even somebody like Kit or Mailchimp or whomever Beehive, they could all of a sudden, you know, lock you out of your account if they feel you're not using it correctly or what have you. Or if they. All of a sudden there's a huge data breach. You know, all these risks can occur there. So you should back up your lists on a semi regular basis to make sure you have that, um, spreadsheet net list on your hard drive. But I think, you know, that's going a little bit in the weeds. But I think with Substack, if you are putting all of your eggs in that basket, you just have to know the risks that you're taking. So my question to you, Chanel, would be, would you. Let's rewind the clock a little bit. And what would you do differently if you had started growth in reverse on Substack? What would you be doing right now to kind of de risk?
- [08:22]
Chanel
Definitely downloading my email list weekly. I. I don't know. I just, I get nervous. Especially the longer you're on something, the more comfortable you get with it and the less. I don't know. I. I feel like when you start somewhere you have like your senses are heightened and so like you're aware of certain things that are happening. What would I have done differently if I had started on or what would I be doing now if I had started on Substack.
- [08:44]
Dylan
Yeah, I think so, like, let. I don't. Because I don't want to tell people what to do. But I think if we approach it from like what would you do if you were using this platform just to make sure that you were not running the risk of, you know, losing things, running the risk of like getting crushed by an algorithm, all that sort of stu.
- [08:59]
Chanel
I mean, I think just exporting the data wherever you can. Um, I've seen stories recently where someone tried to remove their podcast feed from substack and all of their posts got deleted. So that makes me nervous. That's scary to me of like all of your content's gone essentially. Yeah, I'm sure there's like a export to save your content, like back it up every week or so often just to make sure that if something were to happen, you can still go back and find it. Yeah, I mean if I would have started on substack, I'd probably have like a hundred thousand plus subscribers at this point. Which based on the recommendations platform, I.
- [09:32]
Dylan
Was going to say, well, let's talk about that because really if you think about it, somebody could start a substack account like today, not use any other platforms and they could go grow a pretty robust, you know, theoretically they could grow a pretty robust audience and business literally on the back substack because it has everything you really need, including now a social media network. So you wouldn't necessarily need LinkedIn, you wouldn't need Twitter, probably would need Instagram or threads, you know, all that stuff. So let's talk a little bit more about like the benefits, I guess, of, of using it.
- [10:02]
Chanel
And I think if I were to have gone all in on it, I think now I would be, you know, if I were creating short form video for substack or having a podcast on substack, I would also be repurposing that content to other platforms. So yes, you don't need to go on to other social platforms, but it might be wise to start posting some of your videos there just as a repurposing exercise to make sure that, you know, if God forbid, something got deleted from substack, you have it on somewhere else. Um, and then you're just building your, your buckets elsewhere too. I think that's a smart move. I'm a big fan of people who go like all in on a platform for six to 12 months and then start going outside of that. But like you said, I think you can start. I still think you could start on substack today and grow a huge audience and then just take that email list somewhere else and migrate over. Yeah, it's. It's going to get more comp. Complicated and more like I said, muddy over the time that all these people are moving, moving over. Actually, right before we started recording, I posted on there, I said everyone's moving to Substack. Who are some of the more surprising people you've seen move over here recently? People were saying Dan Ko, but then also Pierre Poly. Poly Va. Is that like the French Prime Minister or something?
- [11:12]
Dylan
Good try, good try. He was running. He was running for prime minister of Canada.
- [11:16]
Chanel
Canada. Well, there's French people there, right?
- [11:19]
Dylan
There are.
- [11:20]
Chanel
It's horrible. Such an American. Rosie o' Donnell, I didn't realize moved over Ali Abdal, I didn't know.
- [11:29]
Dylan
Or has he just started another publication there? Kind of like Jay Clouse or Justin Welsh.
- [11:34]
Chanel
He. Let's see. Well, he's on notes. Well, kind of. I don't know. He's playing around, I think. Of course he has followers. I think this is only going to get more and more creator centric. Like all of the people that we've seen on LinkedIn and Twitter are now going to be moving here, I think, or at least testing it out.
- [11:51]
Dylan
Big people with big audiences who can bring their big audiences to Substack are going to be probably going to be attempted to be swayed at least, which is great for Substack. So, okay, so you touched briefly on. You'd have a hundred thousand subscribers right now if you start on Substack. And you're saying that by merit of their recommendations feature, right? Yes. Okay, so talk through a little bit about. Most people listening will know about recommendations, but let's just quickly talk through recommendations how it works and whether or not it's actually a good thing.
- [12:23]
Chanel
Yeah. So on Substack Kit and Beehive, you can set up a recommendations network so you can recommend other publications. They can recommend you back. And that has, I mean we've seen with Lenny Rachitsky, he's grown probably more than half of his subscribers through recommendations. He has thousands of publications recommending him at this point. So every time they get a new subscriber, a box pops up that says, hey, you might also like Lenny Richicky's newsletter or whatever else they're recommending. So it's an easy way to grow your email list. It's also a very low friction way for people to subscribe. So these might not be the highest.
- [13:01]
Dylan
Quality subscribers say it's not necessarily always a good thing, right?
- [13:04]
Chanel
Yep, totally. I'm actually more and more becoming someone who wants to add friction to get people to subscribe, because I don't know, there's something to that. But yeah, so the recommendations are a great way to grow a bigger list, but not necessarily the bigger, better list. TBD on how that all plays out.
- [13:20]
Dylan
But, yeah, I like that. Um. Yeah, put a pin in that. Adding more friction to getting setups. I think you're just calling out, like, actual engagement, like real subscribers who are truly engaged, as opposed to just looking at a vanity metric of people who, hey, I've got an email list of a hundred thousand subscribers. But yeah, your open rate's like 20% or something like that, Right? Okay.
- [13:40]
Chanel
And that's another thing with Substack. Maybe we'll dig more into the cons and pros and cons later. But one of the things is there's not really a good way to easily clean your list. I know you can do it, but it's not like, I feel like the vanity metric of, like, when you go to subscribe to someone's thing, it says, like 70,000 subscribers or a hundred thousand. And on Substack, I feel like that number feels more important than elsewhere. I don't know if that makes sense, but if I were to look at someone who has a thousand subscribers versus 40,000 on substack, I'm like, whoa, that's a really big difference.
- [14:12]
Dylan
Well, can you clean your list on Substack?
- [14:14]
Chanel
I think there's a way. I think you can sort by, like, low star, like they do with Star is like the rating, like one star through five star is how engaged your people are. I don't love that system. It's also, like, not great on many other platforms either. But, yeah, so I think, like, three stars, they've engaged in the last 60 days, but not recent. Like, not more frequently than that. I'll have to look back at it, but I don't.
- [14:41]
Dylan
I don't love that either. And I think maybe we could get into some pros and cons of the platform. Right. So we talked a little bit about the pros. So we talked about, like, how this is a one in kind of a one size fits all sort of network, so. Or an all in one network, if you will. So you could, technically, if you. Even if you didn't love social media, like, all the variety of platforms and felt overwhelmed with them, you could start a Substack account and you have a newsletter, you have a potential for a podcast, you have a social media platform. That the only one you may technically have to pay attention to if. If at all. And you can publish posts and articles and all that stuff. So it's this great. All in one platform. And it's turnkey, Right. So you create an account, and I. I like equating it to kind of like the Shopify for E commerce. It's like the Shopify for newsletter writers. Right? You just create an account. All the stuff is there. You just have to plug in the name of your newsletter, choose, like, your font and color options, and you're kind of, you know, away to the races. There's a little bit more than that, but, like, within 30 minutes, you can pretty much be up and running. So I think it's great in that sense for people who are like myself when I first started, just like, paralyzed by decision. So when you have too many decisions to make, like landing page and font colors and background colors and types of, you know, all of these different decisions, it can be really paralyzing for some people. And so I love the nature of create an account and you're pretty much ready to go. You only have a few decisions to make and you're good to. You're good to run with it.
- [16:06]
Chanel
Also, I feel like on Substack, the writing is more intentional, if you will, versus let me start a daily newsletter about some local thing just so I can get subscribers and sell it. Right. It's more intentional. Your face is tied to it. You have a personal brand on Substack. I like that aspect of it. I really do. I think some of the writing I've. I've seen on there recently is just, like, really good. I found a substack this morning actually through YouTube. I got recommended a YouTube video about, of course, farming and moving to a farm. And this girl was like, oh, yeah, check out my substack. And I was like, what? So I clicked over and it was like, good. She's like 22, and she bought this plot of land and she's writing about how she's doing it and, like, how much it's costing and like all this stuff. And I'm like, I want to, like, buy it so bad, but I'm like, trying not to. So we'll see.
- [17:00]
Dylan
Like, buying a subscription to her substack.
- [17:02]
Chanel
Yeah. Because I want to know how much her, like, gravel road costed. Like, just these are the things I go down a rabbit hole about. But I was. I was shocked. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. So her growth mechanism is YouTube to substack, which is fun.
- [17:17]
Dylan
Create some semi viral YouTube content, get people to click through to your substack and then you have a paid tier for that. Because you're teasing just a little bit. You're not giving away the farm. Hahaha. And people have to pay to get through the farm door. So that is cool. And I think that actually is another feature. Right. That's a pro of Substack is the whole paid setup. Right. We just had a growth Reverse Pro member, Tom, who just launched his paid newsletter on Substack, which he had already had the newsletter, but he launched a paid tier for it. It's really cool in that you can, you don't have to mess around with a payment processing platform. I think you have to connect Stripe. But that's like really the, the hardest part. Otherwise it's, it's pretty plug and play. They set up the tiers for you. So I think that's a huge benefit to, to Substack.
- [18:07]
Chanel
Yeah. And the other part of it is like the name Substack is becoming so well known that if you say you have a substack, people know exactly what they're expecting and they know, hey, I'm going to go there, I might get recommended to buy this like paid subscription. And so they're, they're like going there knowing that that's a feature and they're going to get pitched it so they're not annoyed by it, which it's kind of nice. Whereas if you send someone to like a random website and you're like, hey, I have this newsletter, you want to buy it? They're like, wait, my credit card's not tied to it. I don't have all my subscriptions in one place. Like, yeah, there's something to that.
- [18:39]
Dylan
Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, Substack is its own kind of RSS feed, right? To some, to some degree. So it's nice having all of your paid subscriptions kind of bundled in one area. So those are all great features and I do think how they've grown the product in that regard is, is admirable. Um, now some people might argue that, well, they take too much revenue from you. So let's talk a little bit just about not to warn people, just to inform people that if you do start up a paid newsletter with Substack, they do take a cut, 10%.
- [19:13]
Chanel
So for not a small amount.
- [19:15]
Dylan
No.
- [19:16]
Chanel
But also like the same as Patreon. Doesn't Patreon take 10%? I'm pretty sure they do.
- [19:21]
Dylan
They might. Yeah. I I don't honestly know the Patreon fee, but there's still less expensive options I guess is is kind of my point. And, and that's why we mentioned off the top maybe somebody like Justin Welsh, they convinced him to come over and said, you know, we'll only charge you 5%. This is all just me totally guessing. I do not know this if this is true or not. And not saying it is, I'm just saying that could be a way that they've been able to get people with larger audiences like Justin to come over and launch a paid newsletter is by lowering that rate. So but yeah there, there's definitely is they're going to take a little bit of cash from you. So you just need to keep that in mind if you are going to. If you're thinking substack sounds great, I want to. I've got a great idea for paid newsletter or I've already validated that I've got a, a paid offering so I want to do it. Just know that they will be taking 10% of your revenue.
- [20:10]
Chanel
Yeah, I don't think that's a huge issue for smaller creators, to be honest with you. I mean thinking through the software you have to sign up for and like the website headaches that you might encounter and you're getting distribution, you're getting recommendations, I don't know that 10% is a huge deal for smaller creators. Now when you look at someone who has, you know, a larger audience where they might be making 50k a month or more, that's quite a sizable amount. And you could easily go buy like your own tech team or at least hire a developer to help you part time, like set up all your stuff and like figure it out. But I don't know that it should be like a barrier for smaller creators. That's just me my opinion but that's fair. Yeah.
- [20:56]
Dylan
I think also it depends on the revenue play here as well. Like is this your full time thing and do you want to be giving up that 10% or is this just like something that you're like hey, if I get, you know, 30 paid subscribers, it's fun. It's a side thing. Yeah, substack will take 10% but it's not like you know, the be all end all in terms of revenue then then that can make a difference as well.
- [21:15]
Chanel
So there's also people like Paki McCormick who does not do a paid newsletter, has 244,000 subscribers and essentially gets an email service provider for free. He his revenue model is based on sponsorships and paid partnerships. So I don't think they take any of his money, which is kind of funny. And I'm wondering if they're going to start incorporating sponsorships into their revenue model. I mean, I have to wonder because so many, so many creators, especially smaller ones, like have sponsorships as part of their revenue. And so I'm wondering if they're going to start like trying to figure out how to incorporate that into their, their own revenue. Maybe launch a marketplace of like sponsors that want to sponsor substacks. I don't know.
- [22:00]
Dylan
Yeah, they might, they might. I'm. I'm just thinking back to when I was on Substack. So I started Growth Currency, my newsletter on Substack, and ran it there for about nine months. And one of the reasons why I left Substack, among a few others, of course, it's not the, it's not the product and the ecosystem it is today. Back in fall of 2021, almost four years ago, I had gotten a newsletter sponsor and I couldn't really gauge how many clicks the sponsorship got. Like, it just the, the statistics, the metrics were very murky and hard to gauge and the way they calculated them was really odd. And so I was like, well, I can't justify. It would be really hard to run a sponsorship based revenue model with a newsletter on Substack when the metrics are this fuzzy. So that was another reason why I was like, well, this is the way I want to go. I had decided that if I was going to drive revenue, it was going to be through sponsorships. So I need to find a platform that shows that a lot clearer. So that's why I switched to KIT at the time. One of the reasons why I switched to KIT at the time. There are others that I can get into later. But yeah, I think that is still a limitation with Substack is their analytics are still not really quite up to par with some of the heavier hitters in the email service provider market.
- [23:15]
Chanel
Oh, definitely. The analytics are like, not great. But if you go into sponsorships and you tell your partners like, hey, here's the data I do get, and they still agree, like that's, I mean, I guess that's kind of one of the things you have to deal with. I think though, I think the reason that I hesitated starting on Substack or moving to Substack is because I heard this story about Cody Sanchez. Do you remember this story?
- [23:40]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [23:41]
Chanel
So she had built a sizable audience on Substack. I think she was. Had tens of thousands of Subscribers?
- [23:48]
Dylan
Well, she got 10,000 like a month or something, didn't she?
- [23:50]
Chanel
Yeah, yeah, but she had started there and she started her own, like, membership outside of Substack, like on a different platform. And I guess that was against their terms of service and they didn't warn her or anything. They just completely shut down her account. So she could not send emails, she could not access her email subscriber list, she could not do anything on Substack. And so she was like, no, thank you, I am out. And she, she did not go back. She. I think she tweeted about it and had a bunch of people. She finally got her account reinstated, but that was enough for her to be like, I'm out. And she left and went to a different platform. So, yeah, I mean, it's. It's happened before. I have a feeling it's probably happened since then, but that scared me enough to stay away.
- [24:31]
Dylan
You'll probably hear cautionary tales like that from. If you dig deep enough from any ESP or any service provider. Um, but it so happens that she had quite a large following on social media and she's pretty outspoken. She's an outspoken voice in the creator community. So it's no surprise that people heard about that. I do remember hearing about that, and that was, that was a bit of a warning for me as well. So.
- [24:53]
Chanel
Yeah.
- [24:54]
Dylan
So then do you want to talk about a few other limitations that, that people should know about, I think, when they, if they're considering Substack as a, as an email service provider?
- [25:02]
Chanel
Yeah, I think the one, the one that makes me a little questionable now is what I posted about in the pro community. So Substack is heavily pushing their app. Um, I think it's a decent app. I used. I was going there daily to like, read stuff and, you know, I was like doing my hair and like reading substacks because I thought it was better than like Twitter or LinkedIn. Yeah, but.
- [25:25]
Dylan
And are you talking about notes on the app?
- [25:27]
Chanel
You can read notes. You can also read publications, so articles, that kind of thing. Um, but. So I downloaded the app and I, I didn't think anything of it. And then all of a sudden I'm realizing, like, hey, I'm not getting emails for all the substacks I'm subscribed to. And I realized I was getting one email a week, I think it was. And it's just like a, a roll up of all the articles posted in there. So I am not getting a separate email for any of those people that I'm subscribed. To. So I'm a subscriber, but I'm not getting their emails. And so I posted about this and someone had mentioned, like, yeah, there's like a setting in the app, I guess, if you don't notice and you click like, do you want to? I think they said, prioritize app notifications versus email. And I must have. I don't think I clicked this, but I must have. Makes me super nervous that that's a thing. So default setting.
- [26:14]
Dylan
The toggle is defaulted.
- [26:15]
Chanel
I don't know if it's default. I am not sure. But so now I only get a substack email that is just like it says the date and then it says and 17 more because I have way too many substack subscriptions. And so it just has like the top five, I guess. And then continue reading in your inbox or go like it sends you over to substack to read in there. So I'm like, okay, so I'm technically a subscriber to all of these, but I am not getting an email for them. I don't like that.
- [26:44]
Dylan
That's the whole point of having a newsletter is that people get it in their inbox and read it at least the traditional way that we've known email and newsletters to work. That's how it works. What, what, what it'll be in the future? Who knows? Maybe this is kind of the way the future. But, um, that's not how you wanted it to work, right?
- [26:59]
Chanel
No.
- [27:00]
Dylan
Or it's not how you expected it to work. So here's. Here's a quick. We'll do this live. We're doing it live. Um, I'm. I don't have the substack app until now, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna continue my sign up here really quickly. And we can obviously buffer through this in the editing, so there's no massive delay. But I want to see what it does when I. Oh, hey, look at this. Okay, so this is the very first screen after I said continue with Google. It says, how do you want to receive posts in email and app or Smart. I'm trying to read this backwards. Smart notifications. What's the other option? Only in email. And so the default setting there, as people can see, is it was already toggled to in email and app. So that's interesting.
- [27:43]
Chanel
So continue with that because I don't think I would have clicked any of those other options. That would not have been what I would pick.
- [27:49]
Dylan
So allow substack to send you notifications. Yes. Of course I got to verify my number. So we will fast forward through this part.
- [27:56]
Chanel
I did not know you were going to do this live.
- [27:58]
Dylan
I didn't either until I was like wait, I've. I've reluctantly neglected to download the Substack app. Choose your interest. Okay so now I've got this screen where I'm going to you know, choose your interests and all that stuff which I am going to just randomly select three us politics. Yeah, let's do it. It's right up here. And health and wellness. There we go. Perfect. And then it suggests a whole bunch. I'm going to hit. Done. Oh shoot. I think they automatically all um. Great.
- [28:26]
Chanel
I was subscribed to a bunch of.
- [28:28]
Dylan
So this is great. I, I log in. The first three. Three people I see are three people I know. Chris from our community, you and Lex Roman. So Lex is going to love that cuz she rails against substack but she still posts there. I love it. So I'm on the app and now I'm curious to see if I get any more substack emails in my inbox. So fun experiment but now people know kind of what, what to expect when you sign up.
- [28:52]
Chanel
So that's so interesting. Yeah, I, I get the app thing and I liked the app but I still want to receive emails especially if I like didn't click through on the app and like you know, read it there.
- [29:04]
Dylan
Yeah, it's. It is, it is kind of, kind of weird. I think it also brought up. I don't know why this is not really super related but one thing we talked about when you brought up this fishy happenings in the community was how when you subscribe to a substack and you sh. The next page is the recommendations page. Right. There is a top tab. We will show this on screen so people can see what I mean. But there's a top tab that says follow these basically like follow these people. It's interesting because that's kind of. You're just following people and they're recommended. I'm not sure how they determine who they show you to follow but essentially you're, you're suggested to follow. You know it could be 15 to 25. Oops, 15 to 25 different people on substack and then they're below that. There's also some publications that are recommended in there. So just because you're following somebody doesn't mean you're subscribed to them. You're not following them in the social context but you're not going to necessarily get their newsletter. So there's all these really weird and interesting, I don't know, weavings of followers, subscribers, social media newsletter. I don't know, it's. It's all very kind of confusing.
- [30:12]
Chanel
I, I agree. It's. And it's like changing all the time, which is good. I, I don't know. I think, I think overall the platform's good. I would not put my whole list on there and send emails from there. I've heard a lot of people saying that like the open rates are really low, like 20%, 30%.
- [30:33]
Dylan
It's because they're not going to the email.
- [30:37]
Chanel
I mean maybe or like people subscribe to so many that they just like, I don't know, I don't know what it is. But I did, I did look in the back end of my substack with my 159 subscribers over there just to look at like the analytics and I don't really send emails, so the analytics are weird. But you can see some people are five star and whatever you can sort by that. But then to delete people I think you have to like, I don't know, I don't think you can send like a re engagement campaign like you can with Kit or Beehive. All you can do is either like delete them because you're like, well, I don't really want these people on there because they're not opening or leave them on there. Which I think most people probably just leave them.
- [31:15]
Dylan
I think I've been able to kind of condense this into two camps. Okay, do you want control or do you not want control? If you want control, then maybe Substack isn't right for you. You can do a lot of great things and there's a lot of opportunity, but you are giving up some control when you sign up for Substack and you run your whole newsletter and social ecosystem through it. If you want to have more control and you want maybe even security, I will use that loosely in what you're doing. Then maybe an option like Kit or Beehive or you name it, mailchimp, whatever might be better for you. So to me it kind of might come down to the level of control you want. And I think we didn't really touch on features that it's lacking. But I think just the. As email marketers, which I don't think we are necessarily email marketers, but there is some email marketing at play. When we send our newsletters, you can't do much like tagging, segmenting, automating, Sending multiple sequences. Your pop up newsletter that you did with Kit would have been a little bit trickier to do on a platform like Substack. So I think those are things that people really need to keep in mind is that they can't plug in APIs to substack to do things the way they might want to do them, and they can't segment and automate the way they might want to with another ESP platform.
- [32:32]
Chanel
Yeah, I think what I'm doing and what I did for the 30 days of growth is because I was publishing there, I knew I'd get subscribers from Substack, but I'm not sending emails there. So I'm just porting those people over to Kit. Like if someone subscribes on Substack, I port them over to Kit and I don't send emails on Substack. They just, it shows them as subscribed there. They might see the publication maybe in the app or something, but they're not going to get an email from both. They'll only get an email from me from Kit. So I'm just trying to like, I don't know if that's against their terms of service or anything, but that's the way I feel comfortable doing it.
- [33:06]
Dylan
Same way I do it. So even though I switched to Kit almost four years ago from Substack, I still have a list there and I still get trickles of subscribers from Substack and I get a notification in my email. We're talking like a couple a week maybe, right? So I get a notification in my inbox that I've got a new subscriber on Substack and I just copy and paste that subscriber into Kit and I've got my own a welcome email from Kit that is specifically for these Substack subscribers. So when they come in, they're kind of like, wait, didn't I subscribe on Substack to this guy? Or maybe they don't even remember subscribing. I just make that really clear so there's context to what they're getting. And they're also tagged with the Substack tag in Kit so that I can treat them accordingly if need be.
- [33:48]
Chanel
Yeah, I think that's, that's the way I've seen a lot of other people do it that way too. Um, that's just the way I feel comfortable doing Substack. But I know that's not like the, the kosher way or the best way that people see it. Like I know Substack people are like all in on Substack. They love the platform, and I'm like, that's great, but I'm. I'm just dipping my toes in, so.
- [34:09]
Dylan
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of cool things about it. The aesthetic, too. Like, we. We talked about the aesthetic when you were also launching 30 days. 30 days of growth. I think your template used in Kit. I don't know if we want to keep this in or not, but you called it, like, substack style template because you. You just, like, you genuinely liked the kind of the look and feel of the Substack newsletter. So I think there's. There's a lot of great things on it, but there's definitely some things that you might sacrifice if you're going to it.
- [34:40]
Chanel
Yeah, no, I totally made. I purposefully sat down and made the design look like Substack.
- [34:45]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [34:45]
Chanel
Um. Cause I. I always wanted to have a substack, and I just haven't. So that was my way of doing it.
- [34:51]
Dylan
Cool. So is there any parting thoughts? Uh, we've been talking about this for about 40 minutes. So do you have any parting thoughts on Substack and where it's headed and, like, how are you going to approach it?
- [35:02]
Chanel
Yeah, I think I'm going to approach it more like a social platform. Post there, engage there, ask questions, that kind of thing. I don't know that I will start a second publication. I think one. One is good enough for me right now. But I think if you are planning on using Substack, just know what you're getting into. Maybe go the hybrid model for a little while until you're like, sure. And you see all the features or lack of. But yeah, I think. I think it's a great tool and platform, and I think there's a lot of growth opportunities for people that are on Substack. Yeah, I don't know. I'm excited to see what comes of it.
- [35:35]
Dylan
I think we'd be remiss not to quickly just mention. Like, I think part of the reason why grown quite a bit in the last six months is just because of the challenges people are facing with algorithmic growth on other platforms where Substack. I wrote about this recently in my newsletter. Substack is like this, like, kind of new fertile ground that creators who have completely grazed all over LinkedIn and Twitter and eaten all of the green grass. It's gone. There's not much fertile ground there now. It's like, ooh, Substack, there's some green grass. And they go. And we're just like, we're eating it all up, and so there's still grass to be eaten there. There's still audiences to be had. But I think I see it as, like, this new platform that people are trying to take advantage of, for lack of a better term. Not because they're bad people, just because there's more reach and there's more people who might be interested in their content there that may not have been on other platforms. So I think that we will see it kind of grow in that. In that. In that way. But it might also get overly saturated with creators in. In a short time to the way LinkedIn has in the last 18 months and the way Twitter did too.
- [36:38]
Chanel
Means there could be 18 months of grazing there for you. So if you do end up on Substack, go find me and Dylan on there, see if. See what we're doing. I don't know. I need to do more. I think there's lots of opportunity over there. I just hesitate and forget that it exists, to be honest with you. Um, so, yeah, maybe we can post this as a video on Substack and see what happens.
- [37:01]
Dylan
Ooh, I like it. I like it. We could do that. Um, we'll put our links to our substacks in the show notes too, so you can just hop down there to. To see. I'm curious what other people think. Like, what anybody listening or watching, what their experience has been like, what they. Maybe some warnings that they might have or some huge wins that they've had with Substack. I'd be. I'd. I'm open to it all. I'm not saying this is a bad platform or I'm not saying this is the best, be all, end all platform, but it is a platform and it's a tool that, that we can use if we. If we so desire.
- [37:26]
Chanel
I'm excited to see what comes of it. Um, but, yeah, I guess we'll. We'll see you over on Substack maybe.
- [37:31]
Dylan
Yeah. And if you are. And if you are in Boise for kits, craft and commerce in a few weeks. Well, when this launches, it'll be. But in about a week. So Chanel and I will both be there, so. So don't be a stranger. Come say hi to us. And we will. We will say hi back. So hopefully we'll see some. Some of you there.
- [37:50]
Chanel
I'm excited. That's one of my favorite conferences. So. And you have never been.
- [37:54]
Dylan
I've never been. I've never been.
- [37:56]
Chanel
This is gonna be so good.
- [37:57]
Dylan
Yeah, it's gonna be Exciting. We're actually gonna meet.
- [37:58]
Chanel
We're gonna meet in person.
- [38:00]
Dylan
Yeah. For the first time, which we never have. Which is kind of funny.
- [38:04]
Chanel
Super funny. So it'll be fun. Well, we'll record a live podcast there too, which will be interesting.
- [38:10]
Dylan
Yeah. We've got some studio time, books. I'm looking forward to it.
- [38:12]
Chanel
Yeah, me too. Cool. And if you're on Substack, the Growth and Reverse Pro community has a specific substack call that happens mostly every month. So we're doing that this month or in June, I should say. And I'm excited to jump in and dive in and get on Substack here.
- [38:28]
Dylan
Yeah, we've got some people with substantial substack audiences and experience in it, so anytime we come, we kind of have our questions about it. They're really good at chiming in and being like, well, this is why it works, and this is how it works. And it's been really useful to help guide us, especially when you were talking about the fishy happenings, somebody hopped in right there and be like, I think it might be a setting in the app. And sure enough, that looks like it's what it was. So I know.
- [38:52]
Chanel
I was, like, ready to raise the red flag. I was like, oh, my gosh. Substack. And they're like, no, no, this is a known problem. I'm like, oh, okay, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, got it.
- [39:01]
Dylan
But, yeah, it's a great. It's a great source of info and actually just. Just great, genuine people.
- [39:06]
Chanel
Totally. So, all right, cool. Well, we'll see you maybe in Boise. If not, we'll see you on Substack.