Hmm. I am not sure about this. The most profitable newsletters are analyst content, but the median newsletter is more cultural commentary and op-ed'ing. Anyone have statistics? twitter.com/alexqgb/status
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I think the broad unifying feature is that it is pseudo-public content built around individuals or cozyweb redoubts. Unless you're subscribed, you only get to see the public posts. There's something besides money-making to this access control. An element of discourse control.
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Hmm... yeah, the difference between bloggers and newsletterers (I think we'll default to this out of convenience despite the awkwardness) is drawing a boundary around the discourse. It's like a small city state where a blog is more like a storefront for free stuff in a metro.
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In a strange way, bloggers seem more commercial despite making less money. Newsletterers are ideologues for pay.
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There's enough competition in the space that that's not accurate, plus normatively I don't like validating monopolistic brand-capture of a medium. Especially email which is at least still a cosmetic commons despite capture by gmail etc.
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Replying to @vgr
eh, substacker is probably right
it's a proprietary eponym, like how people user Kleenex instead of "tissue"
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Replying to
im just making a descriptive claim, not a normative one :P
there are also a lot of tissue companies!
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Then do you have data? I see plenty of ghost, buttondown, and even good old mailchimp still going
if you claim to be descriptive gotta back it with the numbers
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I don't have hard numbers off hand, but we run a reading product and substack is certainly the majority (of solo writer newsletters) for our users!
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maybe actually an interesting thing for us to run the data on and publish (on our ghost blog 😛)
cc
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also, fwiw, though I'm rooting for you guys to dominate the space, I wouldn't call what your users do readwising. Something more like readlatering
agreed ❤️
(but we're still at least a year or two away from the kind of market domination substack has 😂)
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