Let us go straight for the jugular: nostalgia. Do you remember Fotolog? MySpace? Blogger? Those were the days when the internet was a place you deliberately went to, before it became a place where you are constantly present. Times that feel very far removed from the era of immediacy we are living through now.
Substack, which was born in 2017, was created as a platform for building your own newsletters. It was founded by Chris Best, co-founder of the messaging app Kik; Jiaraj Sethi, a developer; and Hamish McKenzie, a former technology reporter at PandoDaily. But today it is much more than a site where you can launch a newsletter. More and more people are using it to escape social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, or even X, since Substack has a much less aggressive algorithm that does not encourage doomscrolling.
Currently, Substack has surpassed 35 million monthly active users.
In broad terms, Substack is a platform that allows you to create a blog and send newsletters to people subscribed to your profile. However, it also combines article publishing with the formats we are used to on social media. You could say it looks quite a bit like X (Twitter). In fact, you can also publish short-form posts, just as you would on Elon Musk’s social network or on Threads.
So no, you do not need to subscribe to every Substack newsletter you come across. You can simply use the app to read what your friends, writers you like, or journalists you follow are publishing. After all, the platform was originally aimed at these kinds of creative profiles and experts across all kinds of industries, since it allowed them to publish content directly to their subscribers’ inboxes. Today, it is designed for:
One of the most striking things about Substack is that it allows direct monetization: creators can offer free content, but they can also put up a paywall (monthly or annual subscription) for their most exclusive articles or content.
As we have already mentioned, on Substack you can be a reader who simply interacts with the content that interests them and that they are subscribed to, or a creator who publishes their own content.
If you are a reader, you subscribe to your favorite creators’ profiles with your email address. When they publish something, it arrives directly in your inbox, or you can read it through the Substack app or website. There are no intrusive ads or clickbait.
For creators, there is a very easy-to-use text editor, simpler than WordPress. In it, you can write, upload your podcast, or upload videos.
There is also the “Notes” section, where you can publish short-form posts without it turning into the minefield of toxicity we have become used to on X.
As the company says on its website: “Substack is free to start, and free to leave.”
As for how much money you can make on Substack, that depends on how many subscribers you have and how much you charge for your subscription. However, one thing is fixed when you enable paid subscriptions: 90% is yours, and the rest is used to improve the platform. Substack keeps 10% of the revenue from your paid subscriptions (plus a small Stripe fee for the payment gateway). If your content is free, you use the platform for free. Users will find you through recommendations, Notes, and the collaborations you do. But of course, if you already have a community following you on another channel, you can share it with them so they can find you on Substack as well.
As we mentioned, “it is free to leave.” That means that if you decide to leave Substack, the platform allows you to export your subscriber list. And yes, if you are bringing it over from another provider, you can migrate it directly to your account. First, you will need to export your contact list from another platform in .csv, .xlsx, or .ods format. Then, to upload it to Substack, you just need to:
Today, more than 100,000 people write on Substack. They range from everyday users to influencers, singers, actors, and recognized experts in different fields. For example, Mariang, known for being one of the minds behind the podcast “La pija y la quinqui,” reflects on addiction to new technologies in an article she published on her Substack profile. A profile that already has more than 6,000 subscribers.
Rosalía, the famous spanish singer who has been one of the most important character in the Euphoria TV Series this year, has her own Substack. But she is not the only international celebrity using it. Major names such as the singer behind “brat summer”, Charli XCX, are there too; renowned actress Pamela Anderson shares deep reflections with her fans; historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews current events in American politics in her newsletter “Letters from an American”; and even documentarian Michael Moore, the force behind one of the rawest documentaries about what happened at Columbine, among many other works.
Perhaps the fact that such recognizable public figures have created profiles and are sharing their thoughts is what sparked this wave of people joining the platform. Whether to learn more about their idols or simply to be like them. But the reality seems to be something else when you dig a little deeper into the rest of the social platforms at our disposal.
People are tired of AI-generated content. We have already seen it on LinkedIn, which is taking steps to limit it, and on platforms such as YouTube or Instagram, which, although they allow it and have their own AI engines, still penalize content that does not meet minimum quality standards. These days, it is very hard to escape AI slop, “fruit soap operas,” or brainrot.
That is why users are looking for content signed by a real person, someone imperfect who earns their trust little by little and through their own merits. In that sense, Substack becomes a major opportunity for brands and content creators. After all, it is a platform for growing communities and building a more intimate relationship with them than you would on other platforms.
It has definitely become the kind of platform that makes you look cooler than you probably are. And yes, I also think Gossip Girl would have a Substack.
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