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A comment on Substack is laying off 14% of its staff. Parent comment

Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by dqpb on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @04:27PM (#31925332)
On the flip side, how does a blog platform cost more than $9M per year?
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Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by rchaud on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @05:27PM (#31925927)
One big difference. Substack is push, blogs are pull.

Managing the reliable sending of millions of subscriber emails is expensive.

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Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by gowld on Thursday June 30, 2022 @11:13AM (#31933512)
How much?

Mailchimp charges $12K/year for 150K contacts and 180 emails/contact/year.

(Above that is "call us" pricing.)

At that rate, it is about 10c per contact per year. Substack has 500K paying reader-subscribers, 10-20x that in "total readership", whatever that means, and "millions" of readers (but I believe those are web viewers).

https://backlinko.com/substack-users#how-many-paying-subscri...

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Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by tempestn on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @04:44PM (#31925488)
I would guess mostly marketing—building the brand and the audience. Also recruiting writers to the platform.
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Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by meheleventyone on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @04:49PM (#31925523)
Doh, cross-posted the exact same thought!
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Re:Substack is laying off 14% of its staff by meheleventyone on Wednesday June 29, 2022 @04:48PM (#31925518)
You pay writers to come to your site and all the other marketing gumph.
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