Question for Michael Lin on Engineering Influencer Course: Substack
Question: Why don’t you consider Substack a top funnel channel that could be more top funnel if there are more AI newsletters created in the last year and VC newsletters being the most popular and others profitable (I read somewhere that The Pragmatic Engineer is estimated at making 1.5M with 727K subscribers if they monetized a good chunk of their subscriber base?...not sure how true that is).
One of my Substacks has open rate is 40-60% with a varied click thru rate depending on content/ask (I have had Substack for a year now, that was based on an email list I maintained for 9 years). I know there are often less subscribers that actually are paid on Substack.
![Senior Software Engineer [E5] at Meta company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fmeta.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Da7a5bcc0-e178-4b5b-b71e-09bf6c6aefae&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
![Entry-Level Software Engineer [L3] at Google company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Fgoogle.jpeg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3D780356ef-3efc-4728-9eb4-d909b75bb4a6&w=48&q=75){kind=small}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 33 months agoEx-Netflix • Engineering Consulting for VC-Backed Startups
I mentioned Substack as top-of-funnel because it generally doesn't have automatic distribution built-in unless you have a lot of recommenders, which new newsletters tend to not have.
- 1
3 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI am not Michael Lin, but I do like Substack a lot as a top-of-funnel (assuming you have something bigger to funnel to) and as a platform overall. It's a very clean product, and the feature set is very rich and extensive. It's popped off quite hard over the past ~1 year and for good reason. I see little reason to use Medium now.
