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1. Embed this notice
   Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:11 JST Eric Matthes

   All right, for anyone wondering I am definitely planning to move off of #Substack quite soon. I want to take a moment to share some specifics about why it's hard for a lot of people to move off the platform, even though you "own your list".

   I think most of the stories people are seeing about migrating away from Substack are from prominent writers. If you have a large subscriber base, it is cheaper to use a different platform:

   • Embed this notice
     Buttondown (buttondown@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:04 JST Buttondown

     in reply to

     @ehmatthes I would be remiss if I didn't plug our 'platform fee' tool which sadly does not have charts but _does_ allow for folks to plug in their own costs / subscription counts:

     https://buttondown.email/comparison-guides/take-rates

   • Embed this notice
     Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:08 JST Eric Matthes

     in reply to

     • Buttondown

     I believe the trends hold true for other platforms as well. Here's the 0-100k chart for Substack, Ghost Pro, @buttondown and beehiiv:

   • Embed this notice
     Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:09 JST Eric Matthes

     in reply to

     Note: I'm calculating Substack's fees with a broad assumption of $40/year revenue per paid user, and a paid ratio of 2%.

     For newsletters doing better numbers than that, Substack's take is even higher than what's shown on these charts.

   • Embed this notice
     Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:10 JST Eric Matthes

     in reply to

     Here's that same chart, focusing on 0-5k subscribers. For all those people with under 5,000 subscribers, Ghost is significantly more expensive.

     It's $100/ year just to get started. If you make it to the magical 1,000 subscriber mark, your reward is...doubled hosting costs. If you make it to 3k you're pushing $500/year, and at 5k subscribers you're bumping up against $1k/year.

     This is exactly the range where people struggle to monetize a growing newsletter.

   • Embed this notice
     Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:10 JST Eric Matthes

     in reply to

     Substack pulls people in by letting them export their data, but they're also subsidizing a bunch of writers with VC money.

     That is a really effective form of lock-in, that's probably pushing a bunch of people to just put up with Substack's increasingly bad policies.

   • Embed this notice
     Eric Matthes (ehmatthes@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 06:41:11 JST Eric Matthes

     in reply to

     That chart is interesting; for people who have more than 25k subscribers, Ghost Pro (the hosted version) is cheaper than Substack.

     But that lower left quadrant is where most newsletters exist, and it's worth a closer look.

   • Embed this notice
     Daniel Hakimi (danhakimi@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 15-Jan-2024 13:56:23 JST Daniel Hakimi

     in reply to

     • Buttondown

     @buttondown @ehmatthes I'm not sure what you're using to calculate the price of Ghost, but... this is not how Ghost (Pro) Pricing works, at all.