Advice Wanted
My substack has been running for about three weeks and at this point I would like advice from readers on how I am doing it.
One decision I made initially and have so far stuck to was to make it clear that I am not a one trick pony always posting on the same set of issues. Subjects of posts so far have included climate, Ukraine, a fantasy trilogy, moral philosophy, scientific consensus, economics, religion, child rearing, implications of Catholic birth control restrictions, education, Trump, SSC, and the history of the libertarian movement. Do people here find that approach more interesting than ten or fifteen posts on one topic, then a bunch more on another?
Another thing I have done is to put out a new post every day. That was possible partly because I have a large accumulation of unpublished chapter drafts intended for an eventual book or books and can produce posts based on them as well as ones based on new material. Part of the point of the substack, from my point of view, is to get comments on the ideas in the chapters before revising them for eventual publication.
I can't keep up this rate forever but I can do it for a while. Should I? Do readers find that a post a day is too many for the time and attention they have to read them?
One final and perhaps odd question. Would people take the substack more seriously if I charged for it or had some posts only for paid subscribers? I write to spread ideas, not as a source of income, and as an economist my first guess is that a higher price will result in a lower quantity demanded — but there might be complications associated with price as a signal.
David - a couple thoughts.
1. Make it possible for people to pay you. Even if you don't want the money, even if you give it away to charity or something. If you don't, the signal you are sending to some (whether you like it or not) is "I don't think this is worth money". Having the option to pay removes most of that signal, even if you don't pay-gate any of your content.
2. Once a day is probably not "too much", but it's also probably very heavily in the realm of diminishing returns. If it was me (it's not, because I'm lazy) I'd drop to 2-3 posts a week. 3 a week is still "a lot" for non-community-builder posts, and it's not at such a level that you'd have to worry about fatigue.
3. I don't think anyone really minds the variety of subjects. The only other real viable option besides that is the kind of blog that's about someone's specialty - say a crypto guy who only writes about crypto, or only about defi yield farming - and I don't think that's what you are trying to do. Outside of that, I've come to the conclusion that nobody minds variety even if that means not every post is an absolute winner for every single person.
The frequency is much too high for me, I think one of two posts per week would be better. I also feel that letting people pay you and not hiding anything behind a paywall is obviously strictly better than not allowing and not hiding? (Ignoring second order effects such as incentivising future self to paywall content, or making people accidentally feel guilty for not paying.)