If I want to fully support myself from my blog, is substack basically the only reasonable game in town? I'd like that to not be the case, but it seems like it might be?
From numbers people have posted, substack has a much higher conversion rate for writing than patreon, GH, etc.
From numbers people have posted, substack has a much higher conversion rate for writing than patreon, GH, etc.
It seems like 10% isn't an uncommon conversion rate, which seems incredibly high if you compute what the equivalent number would be for a blog that's supported via Patreon or GH sponsors.
You can try to make up the difference by adding higher tiers, like Andy Matuschak has, but
You can try to make up the difference by adding higher tiers, like Andy Matuschak has, but
substack also supports tiers and, to make up the difference in conversion, you'd need very high tiers, like Evan has for vue.js support.
Evan does get sponsors for the high tiers, but they're corporate supporters, which isn't something you can expect for a programming blog.
Evan does get sponsors for the high tiers, but they're corporate supporters, which isn't something you can expect for a programming blog.
I tried adding some equivalent tiers in my Patreon, patreon.com/danluu, to see if that works, but that seems unlikely?
OTOH, if you asked how much I expected my Patreon to earn, I would've been surprised by my current numbers given that I haven't really advertised it.
OTOH, if you asked how much I expected my Patreon to earn, I would've been surprised by my current numbers given that I haven't really advertised it.
I definitely have the traffic levels to run an ad-supported site (see danluu.com/blog-ads/ for old numbers; last month, I had 363k uniques across millions of "real" hits).
I think this means a substack would likely "work", but it's less clear for Patreon, GH sponsors, etc.
I think this means a substack would likely "work", but it's less clear for Patreon, GH sponsors, etc.
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