Substack Will Survive. Will You?

Last week I made the case that Substack the company is like a motel with a bug problem. The base company is fine, not dying, it just needs to clean house somewhat—get rid of the bots, trolls, and scammers. I said that the death-language we’ve seen some keep reaching for doesn’t actually apply. I said that a platform of this scale, especially in the contemporary era of internet platforms, simply doesn’t “die” like MySpace anymore.

This piece is a spiritual sequel of sorts; the other half of the same coin. Because “the platform survives” and “you will be fine” are not the same claim, and treating them as interchangeable is exactly the delusion driving some people to distraction. Substack’s own marketing sells you on a misconception: that everyone can come here and make a living. It’s not true, it’s never been true, and it’s a big part of what’s driving the discontent we’re now seeing in aggregate.

On platforms like this, it’s a zero sum competition. Hell, that vibe applies increasingly in entire job sectors, journalism in particular—only a small fraction of most people who try to monetize their wits will actually succeed. Before, it seemed like industries like the news business or tech were ones where people could be paid just for showing up. Well, no more.

Let’s talk about what happens when the business of media creation quietly stops being a place where competent, consistent people can make a living, and becomes a tournament instead—a small number of winners, an enormous field of everyone else, and a platform that has every incentive not to tell you which one you are.

In economics, there are terms like “tournament theory” and “winner-take-all markets“ for the concept I’m roughly trying to invoke here. Basically, the idea of the latter term, which the former phenomenon feeds on or feeds into, is that once a specific entity’s product or service is consistently favored over competitors, even if only slightly, it will receive a disproportionately large share of the revenues for that class of products or services. Prestige breeds success at escape velocity. The rich get richer, in a sense. Coke makes nearly half (around 46%) of the gross income in the soda market, for example. One company, yet insanely outsized marketshare and market position.

Substack is like the soda industry, for better or worse. This platform is a subset/epitome of the broader creator economy, a rat-race clusterfuck of epic proportions. Given all this, it’s fair to say many creators, and the broader userbase, are under a misconception about these realities. (Some) People see Substack as just a place to share their content, with or without direct monetization, with or without clear and consistent expectations. Some think this place is like Patreon, a vehicle for making money off their hobbies or getting serious about an independent, direct-to-audience career in media, including things like fiction and video—not just “pure” journalism.

Contrast the above with journalism-as-was, a profession where “good and consistent” reliably meant “safely employed,” roughly across a wide class of participants. Whereas now, journalism/content-creation as it currently works is about relative rank. It’s a dog-eat-dog field where said rank determines nearly all reward. Being good is often useful, but not exactly necessary, and nowhere near sufficient to guarantee an income. Even outside of the audience-first independent scene, the world of institutional press legitimately is crumbling. Perhaps “dying” is still too strong a word even there, but it’s not entirely unfit. Outlets are shuttering, lifers are unemployed, et cetera, et cetera.

What makes this all worse, circling back to Substack, is that so many creators are under some delusion about what we’re actually doing here. This is because Substack has sold a decent plurality of its userbase on the idea of being a creator—instead of the correct pitch, “come here for content.” Doing this runs afoul of the model that works for YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and other platforms. It also leads to a weird liminal space for some writers who want an audience but don’t necessarily care about making money. Or who want to make money, but think that competing for that money is some crass category-error, especially on a high-minded place like they imagine Substack to be. Both are naive, and both lead to dysfunction.

Substack markets itself, sometimes implicitly and other times explicitly, as the old journalism model—show up, do good work, get paid—while functioning, provably, as the new one. It makes no sense. Substack isn’t an employer. It’s not even a gig platform in the more straightforward sense that Uber or TaskRabbit are. It’s a social platform with a heavy content monetization piece. An ultimate hybrid. Notes is a big part of that, but so is the general ethos of “come here and write, just for writing’s sake.” An ethos that gets hairy when we remember the creator economy aspects, and the fact that monetization is still the core function for Substack as a company.

I do think Substack bears some responsibility, but the main point of today’s piece is to talk about creators like myself. Writers have agency. Writers are (putatively) adults here. If some want to write for fun, with no expectations, like a public-facing diary, so be it—many do the same on other platforms, I used to do it on Twitter. If some want an audience but won’t monetize it, I will start to tilt my head quizzically. If folks want to monetize but don’t (want to) see that as putting themselves in competition with anyone else, I’ll start to roll my eyes. We must be honest with we ourselves here.

Sure, simply hoping to make some money isn’t a crazy ask. Plenty of people have a few paid subs and earn modest sums—beer money, as it’s informally called on Reddit and elsewhere. But I prefer viewing the prospect of actively seeking paid subs as something more substantial. Substack may sell people on a liminal dream, a weird superposition between being a hobbyist and a professional, but we don’t have to buy in. Again, we’re all adults here (ostensibly, anyway). If we’re gonna run in this rat-race, we should run it responsibly. Eyes open. Training and upfront costs paid. Expecting a return. And willing to fight, really fight, to earn our living. Not just coast or hope.

We’re in a brutal winner-take-all market. One only exacerbated by the fact that supply far outstrips demand. Pepsi and Dr Pepper can at least say the soda market is one where supply and demand are in a fairly profitable equilibrium. Even some of the no-name sodas can make a small return with a lean operation. No one is giving out soda for free. The sellers don’t outnumber the buyers. Yet with writing, all those conditions are violated. So the price of not being one of the winners isn’t simply making a smaller slice of the pie, it’s getting no slice at all. This is why being honest with ourselves is so important.

Ultimately, this piece is about agency instead of grievance. I want to talk about how creators who actually care about making money can do so. Even if the deck is stacked against them. But only if they really want it. Only if they’re truly hungry, ravenously so. Most don’t and aren’t, which is their prerogative. All I’d say to such people is, “don’t complain if you lack audience-share or lack revenue.” We only get what we fight for.

Let’s establish two important challenges: audience churn and creator churn. Both have the same underlying mechanism—the tournament dynamics and the bot/scammer behavior degrade the experience for spectators whilst simultaneously starving the players. Before you worry that I’m contradicting myself or talking out of both sides of my mouth, allow me to explain.

For audiences: attention and trust get misallocated toward whoever’s gaming the system, the same bot/incentive material I outlined from last week’s piece. The good stuff gets harder to find because there’s too many people blindly fumbling for visibility without even having a clear plan. Or people with a plan that’s premised on peddling trash. We can’t stop the latter, but we can address the former. More on that in a bit tho. I gotta address my fellow creators again first.

For creators: real writers producing real value lose the relative-rank contest to inflated accounts, regardless of absolute quality. The Cokes of Substack are making half the money, maybe more (revenue breakdowns by creator income level aren’t public). It’s estimated that, like I said previously, around 5% of creators earn money through Substack annually, but that percentage includes non-monetized accounts. Roughly 40% of writers here don’t monetize at all, so we’re looking at a tournament or marketplace where only a slim majority are treating this like (small) income source at all. The math means “good” stops being enough, and we must fight for that income.

So, why exactly do people leave, and why is it related across both buyers and sellers? Going back to my mall analogy, some people view this less like a marketplace and more like a public part or an art studio. They get frustrated with being hawked at, even as a few of them too are doing some measure of hawking. They especially get frustrated seeing either the same pre-existing winners (the Cokes) predominate alongside content that’s being pushed more on raw assertiveness or salesmanship than quality. Audiences feel confused and annoyed. Creators feel drowned out.

My advice here, modest tho it might be, will endeavor to solve for both problems.

First and foremost: as I’ve been saying, writers on this platform need to be introspective about what they’re really doing here, what they really want, and what it takes to “win” (if they even want to). That looks like figuring out whether or not they’re in the 40% of confirmed hobbyists or non-monetized bloggers. It also means locking in hard if they’re part of the 60% who actually want to earn money.

Second: everyone on Substack—ALL users of all types, plus the company itself—needs to do a better job of curating their feeds and amplifying the creators they think add real value. (Ideally those creators will be monetized, tho I understand some fully free accounts may get the shine as well.) We have to, all of us, be the change we want to see. If bots and scammers represent an estimated 10% of the userbase; are responsible for well over 15% of the activity (a disproportionate share, by definition); and are cutting into even a small percentage of the paid sub revenue, we need to do better. The President Plump saga is just one reminder of how wrong things can go.

Third: we need to be disciplined about not drawing attention to bad actors, even in the process of criticizing them. I’ve written before about how Outrage Merchants like Andrew Tate and even local PhilStack personalities make money off ragebaiting people. My advice is not to fall for it. Don’t quote them. Don’t follow them or subscribe to them. Don’t name-check them unless absolutely necessary. Starve them of the attention they crave, the visibility that fuels them like blood to vampires or leeches. Again, see step #2 and put your energy into amplifying good creators.

Fourth, and this is strictly for creators: be prepared to fight. I’ve spoken before about an action film scene I love where the star ominously intones to his attackers, after they refuse to walk away peaceably, “remember—you wanted this.” I tell myself that every week. I chose this path. The career of a creator, the work of writing. When we choose to take our publications seriously, we’re opting into struggle, and to competition. Mine is unlikely to be a Purple Bestseller (the highest tier), probably not even Solid Orange. But Basic Bestseller (the lowest tier)? Top 100 in one category? I can pull that off. I already did the latter, however briefly. I’ll work to get back there and then some.

Relatedly to all these, there’s a way to thread this needle without being too overt or aggressive about it. I said before that “How to Grow” type content is one of many scourges we see in the current paradigm. You should never pay someone on Substack to help you earn money on Substack. Their bonus is monetizing wannabes, not minting competitors. Likewise, you shouldn’t go out of way to signal that you view people as competition, or your success as zero-sum. You should lead with lightness and be a good digital citizen. Whether you want to make money here or not.

There are 5 million paying subscribers on this platform, as of 2025 figures. That’s more than double from the 2 mill from 2024. I’ve said already that growth isn’t necessary for the best of us to make a living, but it’s certainly encouraging. Clearly, the money is there. It’s up to those who want it to earn it. The hard way, whilst not looking too much like a tryhard on main. A delicate balance, but I think we can pull it off.

This will be brief, and as the section header indicates, it’s not for the general user, so feel free to skip if you’re not a creator trying to monetize. The following are concrete tactics for operating inside a tournament you can’t opt out of:

• Discovery diversification. Don’t depend on Substack-native recommendation/Notes traffic alone. Seek out, and recommend, the best content you can find. You should be recommending at least a couple publications each week, either in the form of great article or an overall excellent creator. Your outgoing referrals should match this. Be the change you want to see.

• Competitive coalitions over solo leveling. Like I just said, cross-recommendation and real-human networks as a hedge against the whims of fate. Make friends, push people to them, asking them to return the favor. Symmetrical cooperation is the essence of any healthy environment. Mall stores are friendly with their neighbors, bazaar vendors can tell you which people have good offerings, so on and so forth. (This is something I’m working on myself.)

• Read the real signals, not the noise. Focus on engagement levels over raw follower/subscriber growth, focus on paid sub numbers over raw general sub numbers, focus on open and restack rates over raw reads or even just likes. Treating spikes with suspicion.

• Be prepared to (re)define your own win condition. Do you want sizable, stable profit? Would you be okay with never being “famous” on the platform, let alone offline? Anyone seeking full-time income is, by definition, chasing top-of-tournament outcomes, but there are limits. I know Bestsellers who still don’t seem satisfied, because they’re chasing the next shiny object rather than being content and seeing their income as enough. This ties back to part one’s “value over growth” thesis. Are we here to provide value or to grow endlessly? Are we doing real economics or some sort of speculation bubble rigmarole? Only you can say.

Live, work, create. Most people on Substack aren’t creators, they’re audience members. Only a slim 60% of creators even monetize. ALL of us have a responsibility to know what we’re here for and to help the creators we value to succeed. Those who read more than write? They especially have an onus on them to amplify the best stuff they’re seeing, not the bad. To support people with likes, comments, restacks, and so on. Some 5 million and growing are actually putting their money where their mouths are too, and paying creators directly. That’s all beautiful I’m literally for it.

You’re here to, whatever your reasons. I’m reminding you to be present, and to provide. Not as a cynical ploy, but as a way of reclaiming this space. We can’t out-tournament a tournament, but you can choose which thing you’re optimizing for. Collective responses to a tournament structure will solve for stuff that individual tactics alone can’t fix. Transparency demands as a group action would be huge. Imagine writers and readers collectively pushing Substack for the audit/methodology asks from part one rather than just whinging aimlessly with individual complaints.

I wanna land this piece on agency without pretending agency solves the structural problems. I freely admit that stuff brought up last week, and today, should give some of us pause. Yet even as I acknowledge the ceiling honestly, I must end on what’s actually in our hands, your hands, to do something about. If you are a creator, you need be honest with yourself about why you’re here. That will look like making a firm decision on monetization or its lack, setting explicit norms around what “success” looks like, and being happy with what you achieve here. Work with people among your own peer network, lift others up.

If you’re in the audience, you matter. Indeed, you matter more in some ways. Audience members outnumber creators. They’re important for platform health. We should never take them for granted, nor act like it’s “not enough” to read without writing.

Ultimately, we can be the change we want. Indeed, we must be. It won’t happen without us. So let’s start now.

Bestwriting. “35 Substack Statistics for Writers (2026).” bestwriting.com, 2026. (5M paid subscriptions in 2025, up from 2M in 2024; ~100,000 of 2M+ publications earning money; $450M gross writer revenue; Substack’s $45M take.) https://bestwriting.com/substack-statistics

Frank, Robert H., and Philip J. Cook. The Winner-Take-All Society. Free Press, 1995. (Origin of “winner-take-all markets” as an economic term.)

Knifepoint (Blood Knife newsletter). “What Is/Was the Deal with Substack’s...” knifepoint.substack.com. (Unable to verify content this session — confirm claims before citing directly.) https://knifepoint.substack.com/p/what-is-was-the-deal-with-substacks

Lazear, Edward P., and Sherwin Rosen. “Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts.” Journal of Political Economy 89, no. 5 (1981): 841–864. (Foundational tournament theory citation.)

Market.us. “Coca-Cola Statistics & Facts 55+ 2025.” market.us, 2026. (Coca-Cola market share figures, with the caveat above about category scope.) https://market.us/statistics/food-and-beverage-companies/coca-cola-company/