Paid-only Substack posts get you money from people who are willing to pay for the posts, but reduce both (a) views on the paid posts themselves and (b) related subscriber growth (which could in theory drive longer-term profit).
So if two strategies are
entice users with free posts but keep the best posts behind a paywall
make the best posts free but put the worst posts behind the paywall
then regarding (b) above. the second strategy has less risk of prematurely stunting subscriber growth, since the best posts are still free. Regarding (a), it’s much less bad to lose view counts on your worst posts.
Not sure if you intended this precise angle on it, but laying it out explicitly: If you compare a paid subscriber vs other readers, the former seems more likely to share your values and such, as well as have a higher prior probability on a thing you said being a good thing, and therefore less likely to e.g. take a sentence out of context, interpret it uncharitably, and spread outrage-bait. So posts with higher risk of negative interpretations are better fits for the paying audience.
Substack started off so transparent and data-oriented. It’s sad that they don’t publish stats on various theories and their impact. Presumably you don’t have to be that legible with your readers/subscribers, and you can test out (probably on a monthly or quarterly basis, not post-by-post) what attributes of a post advise toward being public, and what attributes lead to a private post. The feedback loop is distant enough that it’s not a simple classifier.
You’re missing at least one strategy—paid for frequent short-term takes, free for delayed summaries.
I believe Sarah Constantin’s self-described strategy is roughly (b). You actually pay for “squishy” stuff, but she says she thinks squishy stuff is worse (though the wrinkle is that she implies readers maybe think the opposite).
Another set of strategies I’ve been thinking about are for mailing lists. You can either have your archives eventually become free (can’t think of an example here, but I think it’s fairly common for Patreon-supported writers to have an “early access” model), or you can have your newsletter be free but archives be fee-guarded (for example Money Stuff uses this model).
Paid-only Substack posts get you money from people who are willing to pay for the posts, but reduce both (a) views on the paid posts themselves and (b) related subscriber growth (which could in theory drive longer-term profit).
Is there any actual evidence of (b) being true? You can easily make the heuristic argument that paywalling generates additional demand by incentivizing readers to subscribe in order to access otherwise unavailable posts. We would need some data to figure out what the reality on the ground is.
By “subscriber growth” in OP I meant both paid and free subscribers.
My thinking was that people subscribe after seeing posts they like, so if they get to see the body of a good post they’re more likely to subscribe than if they only see the title and the paywall. But I guess if this effect mostly affects would-be free subscribers then the effect mostly matters insofar as free subscribers lead to (other) paid subscriptions.
(I say mostly since I think high view/subscriber counts are nice to have even without pay.)
Paid-only Substack posts get you money from people who are willing to pay for the posts, but reduce both (a) views on the paid posts themselves and (b) related subscriber growth (which could in theory drive longer-term profit).
So if two strategies are
entice users with free posts but keep the best posts behind a paywall
make the best posts free but put the worst posts behind the paywall
then regarding (b) above. the second strategy has less risk of prematurely stunting subscriber growth, since the best posts are still free. Regarding (a), it’s much less bad to lose view counts on your worst posts.
3. put the spiciest posts behind a paywall, because you have something to say but don’t want the entire internet freaking out about it.
Not sure if you intended this precise angle on it, but laying it out explicitly: If you compare a paid subscriber vs other readers, the former seems more likely to share your values and such, as well as have a higher prior probability on a thing you said being a good thing, and therefore less likely to e.g. take a sentence out of context, interpret it uncharitably, and spread outrage-bait. So posts with higher risk of negative interpretations are better fits for the paying audience.
Substack started off so transparent and data-oriented. It’s sad that they don’t publish stats on various theories and their impact. Presumably you don’t have to be that legible with your readers/subscribers, and you can test out (probably on a monthly or quarterly basis, not post-by-post) what attributes of a post advise toward being public, and what attributes lead to a private post. The feedback loop is distant enough that it’s not a simple classifier.
You’re missing at least one strategy—paid for frequent short-term takes, free for delayed summaries.
More strategies:
all articles start paid, the become free after 1 month
articles are free, discussions are paid
articles are free, open threads are paid
I believe Sarah Constantin’s self-described strategy is roughly (b). You actually pay for “squishy” stuff, but she says she thinks squishy stuff is worse (though the wrinkle is that she implies readers maybe think the opposite).
Another set of strategies I’ve been thinking about are for mailing lists. You can either have your archives eventually become free (can’t think of an example here, but I think it’s fairly common for Patreon-supported writers to have an “early access” model), or you can have your newsletter be free but archives be fee-guarded (for example Money Stuff uses this model).
Is there any actual evidence of (b) being true? You can easily make the heuristic argument that paywalling generates additional demand by incentivizing readers to subscribe in order to access otherwise unavailable posts. We would need some data to figure out what the reality on the ground is.
By “subscriber growth” in OP I meant both paid and free subscribers.
My thinking was that people subscribe after seeing posts they like, so if they get to see the body of a good post they’re more likely to subscribe than if they only see the title and the paywall. But I guess if this effect mostly affects would-be free subscribers then the effect mostly matters insofar as free subscribers lead to (other) paid subscriptions.
(I say mostly since I think high view/subscriber counts are nice to have even without pay.)