Some thoughts for Substack's Product Management Team
The pressure to go paid and drive paid subscriptions could be moderated and ironically be more effective. Not sure they will listen, but this product manager has thoughts
I am a product manager in real life, and that brings to me a second sight that may be strange to other people.
For example, I wrote about observations using the self check out kiosks: “The Curse of Product Management1”. We are laser focused on finding problems, problems that enough people have, and that they might be willing to pay for a solution to.
I am (we are) just wired differently. Occupational hazard.
So, I have some notes for the Substack product team.
The hard sell on subscribing
Tell me if this has happened to you. You’ve read something from an author, you like it, you dive into their other writing, and you think “yeah, I could groove on this” so you mash the subscribe button.
Then you are taken to a screen where you are prompted to open your wallet:
Your state at this moment is that you just decided dip your toe in, and frankly, I am NEVER ready to drop $6 a month. This is shameless coercion, if you are not savvy enough to realize that you can hover over the furthest to the right option to just start with free.
Whilst I am certain that this leads some minuscule instant paying subscribers, what it really does is leave the average person with a sour taste that this stack is purely a naked cash grab.
In product management we often think about user personas — that is who the person that has come to this “product” — and use cases — that is how the user interacts with the product and gets value from it.
Use cases are written as user stories. They are formulaic:
As a [user persona] I want [product feature or attribute] so that I can accomplish [some valuable outcome].
In this case, I would write it thusly:
As a substack reader I want to subscribe to a new substack but not to be barraged with entreaties to instantly pay for it.
The value here is to not feel compelled or guilted in to a paid subscription without knowing whether you will attain value.
But I have no delusions that Substack will change this.
Why?
Simple, it is money. Substack’s only repeatable revenue stream comes from their 10% skim, so their motivation is to pressure the authors to sign up for and connect their Stripe account to Substack , even before you have a single subscriber.
Sure, they have articles for authors that give you tips and hints on when and how you should build an audience, but for fuck’s sake, if I see a new author that I like who has maybe 100 readers, and you (substack, not the author) immediately apply the full-court press to go paid.
I bet that really harms the ability of that author to grow an audience.
How would I do it?
First, I would build a set of marketing automation. When a user subscribes, you thank them, and perhaps give them some tips like what you write about, why you write, and where to find things on your ‘stack.
Then you monitor their behaviors. Do they habitually open the email? Do they interact (like, click on embedded links, comment, share/restack) If so, after a dozen or so deliveries, you send an email to the subscriber asking them if they are willing to convert to paid. Make it very customizable by the authors. Some of them will be more aggressively pursuing a revenue stream, but others view it as a sideline or hobby that might toss a few bucks into the beer/coffee jar.
Lastly, for the love of all that is holy, stop funneling writers who are just starting out to attach a Stripe account and go paid from the get-go2. Seriously, I question whether I want to subscribe for free if that is the red-headed stepchild of four options on that page. That tells me that this author may not want free readers and make me hesitate.
I will have more notes, but this one bugs me. I doubt they will fix it, because they need that sweet skim.
The Product Bistro is my professional blog. It was on Substack, but because it was tied to my real world persona, when the shit-show response to nazi’s and the epic rise in hate and antisemitism of Substack was outed, I moved it to Ghost.
The exception is when a new author is bringing a huge audience with them. Alas, they have already established themselves, and it makes sense to go straight to monetization.
I have a cautionary tale. Post.news was very popular with its users but went belly up because their users, like me, didn't really know how they were compensated. It wasn't clear to many of us that us buying points to spread around to users we liked was how they were staying alive.
I know that turning on paid subscriptions will put my Substack into a different algorithm - one that promotes my posts, instead of burying them. And I know that Substack relies on their 10% commission to make money, but the only reason I know that is because when I researched Stripe and the tax implications of receiving income from this source so that I could turn on paid subscriptions for the sole purpose of getting better exposure through their algorithms, their commission was stated up front.
As an aside, like the person who Creates on McKinley Road, I tend to get angry when I get a teaser of a post that I can't finish because I am not a paid subscriber. And how dare you not let me comment on your piece for the same reason? My response is to unsubscribe - and that's really not a good thing for Substack. And while I love the musings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I am not paying a multi-millionaire a dime just so I can see what I assume are more cute videos and funny memes beneath his paywall.
I am retired and never was a Product Manager, or heaven forbid, a Project Manager - most of whom I loathed in my career, but there has to be some way for the Substack folks to hear from us lowly users.
Regular users like me are in fact, their sales pipeline. Their future. There has got to be a better way to get us to throw money their way than the current system, but again, this isn't my field.
as much as i enjoy and need some peoples writing or wisdom, and as much as agree work is worth payment, i am getting over the constant bleeting by some about subscribing.....so i appreciate the post mate. a couple of things i notice and think for myself...if you are on substack you are a reader........so logically, in todays world of rising cost and me a pensioner etc....how many can I fully subscribe to even if for a coffee cost per month.....and even if I wasnt a pensioner, how many????
And yes I have been honestly drawn into oissues I care about and end up after the teaser, the good oil being behind a paywall or upgrade............I have noticed words and attitudes like fuck you then being in my head or on my lips......and I delete hit delete...and that writer slides down my respect and estimation hierachy. I will never be writing for paid.....and I do some interesting shite, but I am here for the brushstroke on existence, not to have anyone pay for me being me.......and that dont reflect a low sense or worth.....its about how I want the world to be. So a good write, a good stir, and yeah...its all aboot the money. Course I like money, but liking myself is more important. I want to change the world and be connected with changemakers......not peeps who want my meagre change/ buckeroos.