Moxon has switched to Ghost for his impartial weblog, The Reframe, an open supply Substack different that woos customers by migrating accounts for customers and ditching Substack’s charges, which take a ten p.c lower of every Substacker’s transactions. Which means customers can simply change platforms and earn more money on Ghost, if they will appeal to as broad an viewers as they acquired on Substack.
Nonetheless, some customers really feel that Substack’s design, which can assist extra customers uncover their content material, is the important thing cause they cannot change, and Ghost acknowledges this.
“Getting visitors to an impartial web site may be difficult, after all,” Ghost’s web site mentioned. “However the rewards are that you just bodily personal the content material and also you’re benefitting your personal model and enterprise.”
However Gillian Brockell, a former Washington Submit workers author, attested on Bluesky that her subscriber charge is up since switching to Ghost. Maybe that is as a result of the hype that Substack heightens engagement is not actual for everybody, however Brockell raised one other concept: “Perhaps as a result of I am much less ashamed to share it? Perhaps as a result of an increasing number of folks refuse to subscribe to Substack? I dunno, however I am happier.”
One other former Substack consumer, comics author Grek Pak, posted on Bluesky that Buttondown served his e-newsletter wants. That platform costs decrease charges than Substack and counters claims that Substack’s “community results” work by pointing to “proof” that Substack “readers are typically much less engaged and pay you much less.”
Fisher-Birch instructed that Substack’s largest rivals—which embody Ghost and Buttondown, in addition to Patreon, Medium, BeeHiiv, and even old-school platforms like Tumblr—may gain advantage if the backlash over the push notification forces extra common content material creators to ditch Substack.
“Many individuals don’t need to use a platform that doesn’t take away content material selling neo-Nazism, and several other creators have moved to different platforms,” Fisher-Birch mentioned.
Imani Gandy, a journalist and lawyer behind a well-liked on-line account known as “Indignant Black Woman,” instructed on Bluesky that “Substack just isn’t sustainable from a enterprise perspective—and that is earlier than you get to the truth that they’re now pushing Nazi content material onto folks’s telephones. You both transfer now or transfer in disgrace later. These are the 2 choices actually.”
