Should I Stay (on Substack) or Should I Go?

The Substack Dilemma: Has Anyone in the Beauty Space Talked About it?

This post is going to be very transparent about the trappings of Substack, the platform this newsletter is delivered through - and granular decisions as a creative in a dying landscape. It will not really be about beauty. If that isn’t your thing, you have my blessing to exit! If you are curious about how writers make things work - or don’t - keep reading along.

First, I’d love to know something from you - any subscriber can vote, not just paid subscribers. PLEASE DO! And share widely! I want a true temperature.

• For readers blissfully unaware, Substack, the platform which this newsletter is based on, has a Nazi problem. I’m a co-signer on the Substackers Against Nazis letter and have been following it along pretty closely.

  Substackers Against Nazis

  Altogether I have been unimpressed by the lack of movement - and sometimes the sheer audacity - of the Substack team in response to it. I do not believe the framework they provide that this is an issue of free speech and techno-democracy; as a long-time media worker who has worked at Golden Era BuzzFeed and Twitter, I’m deeply familiar with the tech-exec handbook they’re taking cues from. It didn’t work at Twitter and it doesn’t work now. The alt-right demographic and so-called conservatives make them an immense amount of money and give them lots of traffic; they want plausible deniability that they’re actively courting them for as long as possible and just want everyone else on the platform to sit up and play nice on the playground. The co-founders were found out to have assisted in organizing a counter-letter themselves. I don’t think this fact is as common knowledge as the rest - but it’s an important one to me personally.

  • Some of the biggest newsletters on this platform have left in response to all this. They aren’t in the same niche as mine, so I’ve never felt the need to address this situation before now. But I’ve been keeping track and running numbers. Because honestly - truly - being in the same clown car as alt-right “conservatives” and, say, Bari Weiss - does not fill me with joy. As a non-binary writer I feel disrespected by Substack’s transphobic apologia, and as a former tech worker I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day in Hell. I don’t want to invest in a place that doesn’t want me to be here. But the math of leaving presents a trap, too. I’ve broken it down exhaustively:

    

    I’ll be so forreal right now: Substack right now feels like a trap.

• The math of migration doesn’t math for me yet - it’s the difference between making rent and not. And this is from a ‘best-selling’ substack! Had I had this Substack revenue calculator at the very beginning I think my approach would have been different. But I’m gonna be honest with you; I’ve always treated this newsletter as letters to friends rather than a formal business requiring a content calendar, scheduled deliverables, and performance metrics to reward or punish myself for. It has given me less stress because of it but by no means has there ever been exponential growth of my subscriber base. But as soon as I began taking it even a little bit more seriously - if only to show up for my own writing practice more regularly - the rewards presented themselves. So, I do regret not taking it more seriously as a business - if I had done so sooner, perhaps I would not be in between a rock and a hard place right now. I have enough paid subscribers to make rent, but not enough to make a living, and any disturbance of that number risks my literal livelihood.

• Most of the new subscribers I get are from within the Substack ecosystem, which means leaving it would cut off growth by 86%. These numbers are reflective of 90-days across all subscribers, not All-Time. For just paid memberships across the same period, 25% come directly here, but the rest are from the existing ecosystem. It would be growth-death to switch to another platform without at least a referral network in place. This newsletter operates best within a community - because I do, too!

• The Substack alternatives that people are going to - Ghost, Beehiiv, and Buttondown:

  • Buttondown does not have a referral network in place, which renders it a no for me. It’s much cheaper overall, though.

  • Ghost does, but the all-in cost of transferring given my subscriber count would be $984. That upfront cost is the difference between paying rent or not for me. If I had 300 more paid subscribers, I would eat the cost, because I could then afford the risk. I would be sacrificing more than half of my typical growth leads and battle subscriber drop-off from the transfer, but the padding of several hundred more paid subscribers would make it possible without endangering my main source of income. But the numbers are infallible: I would need at least 300 more paid subscribers to make that happen.

    • I’ve spoken to people with various subscriber counts who’ve moved to Ghost - and all of them moved back to Substack eventually because they experienced no growth at all during their expatriation.

  • BeeHiiv does have a referral network as well, and frankly, a bunch of stuff that Substack doesn’t. But it has, again, an up-front cost. For the needs based on what I have here, right now - I’d need the Scale plan, which means I’d be paying, again, $1K upfront to transfer - the difference between making rent, or not. I could pay monthly, sure - but it’s still a cost I currently can’t budget for.

    • I haven’t spoken to enough people yet who have had meaningful time at Beehiiv yet to see if they’ve grown considerably. The categories at Beehiiv are different than here. This is a top-in-category newsletter in the Fashion & Beauty niche on Substack. I’ve been poking around the Trial version of Beehiiv and the community of Beauty publications on the platform is borderline non-existent.

If other beauty newsletters were considering switching platforms - reach out to me, and we can consider migrating en-masse. Based on what I know my needs are, and my audience, moving to Beehiiv makes the most sense to me but only if I’m in community with other newsletters and we support each other’s ecosystems. I do not want to be in competition with my colleagues in beauty but in conversation and commiseration with them. I already edit and provide feedback to a handful of other beauty writers on this platform and off it - I would be happy to do so to others who migrate with me.

Why haven’t I talked about this sooner? Because media platforms and publishers failing those they serve is not new to me or surprising. And also because I wanted to believe that they’d sort their shit out, so I could focus on what I’d really like to do - share all the many ways beauty shapes the world, shapes culture, shapes my own life and the communities I’m part of.

But the thing is, Substack is embroiled in the “culture wars” of identity politics and institutional posturing - just like we all are as individuals. The way I see it, conversations about beauty are inherently part of these struggles, too. What is beauty criticism if not identity politics at war with itself? What is a beauty ideal if not a political position with a filter on it? Racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, colonialism - these are generational projects that shape how we treat each other and ourselves. These frameworks shape how we perceive each other, treat each other, recognize each other as human, as comrades, as enemies, as victims, as terrorists, as ugly, or as beautiful.

Beauty is culture. Beauty is political! I know this - you do too. The places where we have these conversations about beauty - and how they make us and others money - is not something I have ever felt comfortable ignoring. I don’t like it here. I want better options.

I wanted to walk you through what I’m thinking about for the future of this newsletter, because it does not exist without your input to begin with. Your support keeps me working as a writer both on and off this platform - and I want to keep your feedback in mind as I grow as a creative.

Realistically, I’ll be staying on Substack until I reached a fixed number of subscribers and then switch to another platform. 300 more paid subscribers to go. The countdown starts with this email. This means every subscriber helps me leave sooner - so please subscribe if you can, and support as a paid subscriber if it’s possible.

When and if I switch, the payment systems and everything else will remain the same. You’d get this in your inbox the same as before. I’ll just be happier as a writer, not embarrassed to be associated-via-platform with Nazi apologists and people I would generally ignore at a dinner party.

I’m not saying anyone else here should switch - everyone has their own reasons and logics for staying or going. But I do know some folks have decided to stop supporting newsletters that use Substack, and I understand the motive and want to make it clear I’m really thinking about what is sustainable and supportive of me as a writer. I’ve already been the person who quits my job to preserve my integrity before - it would be nice to not have to rage quit every time the situation presents itself. So I’m talking it out! Here, with you. Did you know about this drama before? Does knowing make a difference to you as a reader? Do you run a beauty or fashion pub and want to talk moving somewhere else together?

Comments are open if you’d like to ask any questions or just say hi.

Much love,

Arabelle