Once they start promoting and monetizing the PLATFORM itself too much (aka "doing a fantastic job of surfacing all the content"), then the brand will lose its prestigious shine. It will become associated with "Twitter randos", rather than "former columnists at Rolling Stone and The Atlantic", etc. It will become more like Medium.
That in and of itself isn't the death knell. But that nail in the coffin will come as soon as competing turnkey-monetization alternatives emerge with fresher brand reputation. And I'm sure those competitors will emerge once Substack opens up the door by dialing down its prestige to promote itself more broadly.
Honestly, I don't know why people invest so much in online content. The early "hot new brand" stage has the shelf life of milk. Some of these brands stick around forever (Slate, Salon, etc), but it seems like they're slashed to skeleton staff after the first 5 or so years when the hotness cools. I guess the long tail of that white dwarf remnant stage trickles in enough revenue to justify keeping them around after people have moved onto the next thing?
Paid news letters aren't new and didn't wait either Onlyfan or Medium to be a thing.
If we are missing a feature you want, come help us build it!
Is it a blogging platform mixed with a newsletter tool?
Either I missed it entirely, or the landing page assumes I know what it is before I get there.
Even the about page is buried in "link soup" at the bottom of the page and just leads to hand waving and eventually a short story about something in 1833.
I don't know what needs to be built, but I do know that I don't know what this is.
>We make it simple for writers to publish to an email list that they own, get discovered on the web, and charge for subscriptions.
Sounds to me like a blogging and newsletter platform with subscription fees paid to writers
For readers - yes, there is something on Substack you will absolutely love. We don't do a fantastic job of surfacing all the content yet, but we're working on it.
For writers - depends on what you want. If you want to self-host or customize every bit of design - we probably aren't for you. If you want it to be super easy to publish a free or paid newsletter - Substack is great.
If you are wondering if the field is saturated yet - I don't think so. I see new successes on Substack popping up every week.