Substack

Ghost: open-source Substack that doesn't take a revenue cut

Shaan frames Ghost as an open-source Substack alternative: instead of taking 10% of your revenue like Substack, Ghost charges a flat ~$10/month, which can save heavy creators thousands of dollars a month.

“It's this low cost instead of, let's say, Substack, they take 10% of all your revenue. Ghost just says, hey, pay us $10 a month and we're happy. And so they don't take— they don't take a percentage of your revenue. So for a lot of people, that could be thousands of dollars a month. That you're saving if you use Ghost.”

Steal thisUndercut a percentage-take incumbent with a flat monthly fee that saves your biggest users the most money.

'Substack: where B players teach C players what A players do'

Shaan quotes a critique he attributes to Hunter Walk — 'Substack, where B players teach C players what A players do' — as a sharp, harsh-but-true callout that the true icons (e.g. Elon Musk) rarely create content because they're busy doing the actual thing.

“I remember reading once that I can't get this out of my head, which is like, they go, Substack, where B players teach C players what A players do. I was like, oh shit, that's so good. That's such a kill shot.”

1,000 true fans is dead — now it's 100 true believers

Shaan reframes BitClout-style creator coins: where Patreon/Substack/OnlyFans sell access, a creator coin lets early supporters also profit as the coin appreciates. The old '1,000 true fans paying $10/mo' model becomes '100 true believers' who get rich by backing you early, like buying Amazon stock.

“So it takes the concept of 1,000 true fans, which was like a, like a 20-year-old concept that a lot of people talk about. Hey, if you can get 1,000 people to pay you $10 a month, you can make a living as an artist. 1,000 true fans is gone. Now it's 100 true believers, 100 people who actually invest in your coin. Not only are they enough for you to make your living, but they will get rich by being early in you too.”

Build the Substack for paid communities

Shaan pitches a dead-simple product that gives a creator a splash page, takes payments, and paywalls access, then sends members to Slack/Facebook/Discord rather than trying to host the community itself, just as Substack nailed paywalled newsletters.

“Somebody needs to do the Substack for paid communities where you're, you give somebody a very quick splash page where you're like, you describe the community, you let them take payments, and then it says, great, here's where the community lives. And you actually don't try to build the community part. Let them put it in Slack or Facebook or Discord or wherever they want to put it.”

Steal thisBuild the paywall-and-checkout layer for paid communities; let creators host wherever they want.

Shaan made $50K/month on Substack and quit in 3 months from burnout

Shaan ran a paid personal newsletter that earned $50K/month and made him a top-5 Substack earner, but he burned out and quit after three months. The lesson: percentage-take newsletter platforms can't fix the underlying grind that breaks most writers.

“I had a personal newsletter for 3 months that was paid, and I, I burned out in 3 months and it made substantial money. I was making $50K a month and I was just like, fuck this. I don't want to do this anymore. And I was probably like one of the top 5 Substack earners, but you know, I just didn't want to keep doing it. It was too much.”

Your reward for succeeding on a percentage platform is losing the customer

Calacanis argues percentage-take businesses (Substack, Patreon, ad rep firms) are structurally doomed with their best customers: once a creator gets big, the cut becomes a salary's worth of money and they leave for flat-fee tools, just as Sam Harris left Patreon for his own site.

“And so your reward for succeeding was losing your best customers. The reward for Patreon succeeding is they lose that customer to a Stripe or Ghost, or, you know, there's all these like tools that charge you a flat rate to do subscriptions.”

Steal thisIf you build a percentage-take platform, lock in value beyond billing or your winners will defect to flat-fee tools.

The Hustle paid newsletters to run ads when Substack wouldn't

Sam recounts that The Hustle went direct to a handful of Substack writers and paid them collectively into six figures to run ads in their emails; those writers made more from the ads than from their subscriptions. He notes ad-monetizing an email usually requires an expensive full-time sales team.

“And so The Hustle, we went direct to a couple of guys, a couple of different people, and we paid them X amount of dollars. I don't even remember. But collectively maybe 6 figures spread out, and they monetized their email with advertisements, and they actually made more from us than they did their subscription. And in order to monetize an email with advertising, you actually have to hire a full-time sales team.”

A newsletter ad network for creators Substack won't serve

Immad predicts someone will build a newsletter-for-newsletter ad network because Substack refuses to do advertising on principle but can't stop creators from wanting it. He notes Facebook makes roughly $4/user/month on a free product, showing how lucrative ads are with the right audience and data.

“And actually, this is a good startup idea. Someone is probably going to make like a really nice newsletter for newsletter ad network, right? Like, because Substack's not going to do it. I don't think they can stop the creators doing— wanting it.”

Steal thisBuild the ad-sales and matching layer Substack refuses to touch, so newsletter creators can monetize with ads without hiring a sales team.

Substack for video, especially live streams

Shaan pitches 'Substack for video', an easy way to gather paid subscribers for live or recorded video behind a paywall. He thinks live is where the opportunity is because it sidesteps the heavy editing burden of recorded video, unlike Twitch or Instagram Live which can't paywall.

“So Substack got really popular in the kind of like tech community as a really easy way to create a newsletter. With a paywall if you want. Um, and so you can get subscribers and you can send them emails and you can charge them for emails. And a lot of people are trying to do this for video.”

Steal thisBuild creator subscription tooling for paywalled live video, where low production cost lets creators publish far more often than recorded content.

Email marketing is just expensive hosting of zeros and ones

Kagan estimates ESPs pay roughly $0.00015-$0.002 per email sent, and frames email companies as very expensive hosting where the real profit comes from subscribers who never send. Substack and SendFox disrupt this by making sending free and monetizing elsewhere.

“$0.002. It might be $0.00015 times how many subscribers, how many emails they're sending a month. The profit is all in the people who don't email. It's basically, I think of email marketing companies as very expensive hosting. You're basically paying a lot of money to host zeros and ones and digits that don't cost anything.”

Build a better paywall: publishers all build their own

Existing paywall software is so bad that NYT, WSJ, The Economist and Business of Fashion all built their own from scratch, and TechCrunch reportedly spends six figures in software fees on a vendor. Sam says he'd pay $5,000/month for a good web-based paywall product (Substack only does newsletters).

“Oh my God. It's so like, I will give someone right now $5,000 a month if they made this to try to, to try to start this.”

Steal thisBuild a web-based paywall product for publishers; demand is desperate enough that customers will pre-commit thousands per month.