Yup, every time you post, I get a notification on my phone, and if I can I usually start reading. Before Iād have to remind myself once a week or so to go to your blog.
The switch makes no difference to me. I donāt need nor want an email reminder about your posts. It is acceptable to me to read them when I have time and I donāt understand Richard Hananiaās āfrictionā comment at all. I generally find what you post interesting, but I donāt need to read your posts right after you make them. Theyāll wait for me.
The one issue I had re: substack is that Gmail classified your posts as "Promotions" and so put them in the same semi-hidden bucket with spamming stuff like a t-shirt company saying they're offering 20% off. I had to manually move the post to "Primary" and confirm that I wanted all future posts of yours to go to Primary. Not sure if there is something you can do on your end or if people need a warning, etc.
Glad you're here. I know that the tradition of bloggers has been to all use "whatever platform works" but the more people on one platform the more legitimacy it has, the more familiarity readers have with its mechanisms and layout, and the larger its network. For readers there is an aura of professionalism that's a halo effect from the bigger more well-known Substacks, which especially helps earlier on.
I really like the substack move. One advantage is that you can see the commenters and their blogs in the comments. The people who comment on Bryan Caplan's blog might have interesting things to say, so I've checked some of them out.I think the formatting is better and I find substack aesthetically pleasing. The color you've chosen is a bit dark.
The econlib website felt a bit tedious to navigate to the blog. I ended up using RSS, so it was fine, but a lot of people don't know about RSS. I could imagine someone just never going to your blog after finding it. Commenting was a tab bit more difficult as well. You know from writing about paperwork that it can discourage people and this was probably just a minor inconvenience thing that had a big effect.
If you want to get people to sign up, you should choose the button that says "subscribe with caption" after a page break. I now do this for every article. You can put them throughout the article but you articles are short anyway. It's another minor inconvenience thing and it might not even enter someone's mind. If the button is there and a blog post goes viral, you just type your email in. Very simple.
It's kind of important because few people will sign up for your Newsletter already and not having a clear means of doing so is going to reduce it further. For example, one of my buddies got a substack article to around 30K views but only had about a 0.5% sign up rate. If you don't even have a sign up rate, you might do less. People need the email in their inbox or they might forget about you. Obviously, you'll still have a core audience that will go anywhere though.
I've already suggested podcasts, but why not try to substack podcast feature? Your recent interview with Richard Hanania was really great! I think a Bryan Caplan podcast would be my favorite and people like listening to audio content slightly more in my opinion because it's much easier to listen to especially if it is long.
Although not a, "Every post needs a graph or a chart," kind of guy, Substack makes it so easy to integrate visualizations--charts, graphs, tables--that you might think about adding some stuff and images (liked the Europe trip images).
My one request is that you interact more in the comment section. I have seen some insightful critiques of your posts on your econlog, but I have no idea if you've read them or not and considered them. I would love if you offered long replies addressing them, but even a like or a short reply to the best critiques/comments of your Substack article would be nice. Sometimes I think you would change your mind, update your position, etc. if you would just consider the comment.
Yep, I'm all of a sudden reading most of your posts, instead of a minority. Which was odd because I've been a big fan of your for years. Richard was right -- that tiny friction is a nontrivial factor in what actually happens.
I find substack much less efficient than my Feedly aggregator. I have dozens of blogs on Feedley and can move from one to another with one or two clicks. I find Substack awkward and much in need of improvement. Navigating from one article or one subscription to another, and then back to the home page is absurdly inefficient.
Welcome to Substack and nice to read you here as well. I would like to contact you later regarding a proposal for safer, easier, and freer migration to Europe
I wasn't following you on Econlog, but I'm following you now (via email) and enjoyed some of your recent posts, so I guess I'm part of the success story here. I was following you on Twitter for a few years, I think, but honestly didn't realize you were an active blogger (I was aware of some of your older Econlog material, though).
I don't mind that all Substacks look similar. The clean Substack interface cues my brain to focus on text, which is the important part.
Yup, every time you post, I get a notification on my phone, and if I can I usually start reading. Before Iād have to remind myself once a week or so to go to your blog.
I used to read what you blogged only when Tyler linked to it. Now I read it every time you post something new.
It's fine, but I'm also a Twitter follower and I could do without the dozen-tweet summaries of your blog posts.
Works fine for me - I use feedly rss feeds so it works fine on either platform.
The switch makes no difference to me. I donāt need nor want an email reminder about your posts. It is acceptable to me to read them when I have time and I donāt understand Richard Hananiaās āfrictionā comment at all. I generally find what you post interesting, but I donāt need to read your posts right after you make them. Theyāll wait for me.
The one issue I had re: substack is that Gmail classified your posts as "Promotions" and so put them in the same semi-hidden bucket with spamming stuff like a t-shirt company saying they're offering 20% off. I had to manually move the post to "Primary" and confirm that I wanted all future posts of yours to go to Primary. Not sure if there is something you can do on your end or if people need a warning, etc.
Glad you're here. I know that the tradition of bloggers has been to all use "whatever platform works" but the more people on one platform the more legitimacy it has, the more familiarity readers have with its mechanisms and layout, and the larger its network. For readers there is an aura of professionalism that's a halo effect from the bigger more well-known Substacks, which especially helps earlier on.
I really like the substack move. One advantage is that you can see the commenters and their blogs in the comments. The people who comment on Bryan Caplan's blog might have interesting things to say, so I've checked some of them out.I think the formatting is better and I find substack aesthetically pleasing. The color you've chosen is a bit dark.
The econlib website felt a bit tedious to navigate to the blog. I ended up using RSS, so it was fine, but a lot of people don't know about RSS. I could imagine someone just never going to your blog after finding it. Commenting was a tab bit more difficult as well. You know from writing about paperwork that it can discourage people and this was probably just a minor inconvenience thing that had a big effect.
If you want to get people to sign up, you should choose the button that says "subscribe with caption" after a page break. I now do this for every article. You can put them throughout the article but you articles are short anyway. It's another minor inconvenience thing and it might not even enter someone's mind. If the button is there and a blog post goes viral, you just type your email in. Very simple.
It's kind of important because few people will sign up for your Newsletter already and not having a clear means of doing so is going to reduce it further. For example, one of my buddies got a substack article to around 30K views but only had about a 0.5% sign up rate. If you don't even have a sign up rate, you might do less. People need the email in their inbox or they might forget about you. Obviously, you'll still have a core audience that will go anywhere though.
I've already suggested podcasts, but why not try to substack podcast feature? Your recent interview with Richard Hanania was really great! I think a Bryan Caplan podcast would be my favorite and people like listening to audio content slightly more in my opinion because it's much easier to listen to especially if it is long.
Substack is perfect!
I often just read your posts directly in my email inbox, so I don't need a new browser tab.
Have liked it.
Although not a, "Every post needs a graph or a chart," kind of guy, Substack makes it so easy to integrate visualizations--charts, graphs, tables--that you might think about adding some stuff and images (liked the Europe trip images).
My one request is that you interact more in the comment section. I have seen some insightful critiques of your posts on your econlog, but I have no idea if you've read them or not and considered them. I would love if you offered long replies addressing them, but even a like or a short reply to the best critiques/comments of your Substack article would be nice. Sometimes I think you would change your mind, update your position, etc. if you would just consider the comment.
Yep, I'm all of a sudden reading most of your posts, instead of a minority. Which was odd because I've been a big fan of your for years. Richard was right -- that tiny friction is a nontrivial factor in what actually happens.
As a reader, I find it substantially worse: https://setharielgreen.com/blog/substack-sucks/
More pop-ups, more grayed-out text, more pressure to subscribe -- all things that get in between me and the words I want to read.
I find substack much less efficient than my Feedly aggregator. I have dozens of blogs on Feedley and can move from one to another with one or two clicks. I find Substack awkward and much in need of improvement. Navigating from one article or one subscription to another, and then back to the home page is absurdly inefficient.
Welcome to Substack and nice to read you here as well. I would like to contact you later regarding a proposal for safer, easier, and freer migration to Europe
I wasn't following you on Econlog, but I'm following you now (via email) and enjoyed some of your recent posts, so I guess I'm part of the success story here. I was following you on Twitter for a few years, I think, but honestly didn't realize you were an active blogger (I was aware of some of your older Econlog material, though).
I don't mind that all Substacks look similar. The clean Substack interface cues my brain to focus on text, which is the important part.