Today I decided to watch a vlog whilst eating my lunch. The vlog I watched was around about thirty minutes long (I didn’t get a chance to finish it) and to me, was completely free. Except for the ‘paid for advertorial’ around seven minutes in. The advertorial was in partnership with Farfetch which meant I watched as the influencer help up her latest Autumn purchases and then showed them in situ. Which in this context meant, her wearing them. This was not my first vlog of the day. The first I watched was around 11 minutes long contained no sponsored content whatsoever. I then watched one after this (so my second of the day) which was about 12 minutes and contained 1-2 minutes of the influencer wearing Crocs.
And of course, the downside of watching the early days of a new thing is that you may simply watch it head up the occasional cul-de-sac, before hopefully, eventually finding a model that works.
Certainly that was my experience with starting Mumbrella back in the day - looking backwards, it can seem like a 13 year growth story, but in truth there were plenty of dead ends and U-turns.
The same might end up being true of Substack. The reason I'm putting my bet on it, is that it reminds me of the earlyish days of Wordpress. If feels just right for me, or near enough. It's designed for independent journalists to try to build an income from, via paid subs.
Where I'm not certain about the philosophy, is the Substack preference against advertising as a model. But for the next year, while I'm part of the program, I'll be focusing on the subscription-onkly model. I'm lucky enough to have an (almost) risk free means of finding out whether I can make paid subs pay. But I've a hunch that advertising has plenty of life it it yet as a means of funding journalism.
Even if Substack doesn't work for me, it won't be time wasted. Sometimes you have to try and fail with one thing to learn enough to pivot to the thing that works.
The key though, as you allude to, is transparency: Whether influencers, subscriptions or advertising, audience trust depends entirely on that one thing.
And of course, I'd invite your readers to sign up to Unmade, even if it's only free version. My guess is that 80% of posts will remain outside the paywall.
Hi Natasha,
Thanks very much for the shoutout.
And of course, the downside of watching the early days of a new thing is that you may simply watch it head up the occasional cul-de-sac, before hopefully, eventually finding a model that works.
Certainly that was my experience with starting Mumbrella back in the day - looking backwards, it can seem like a 13 year growth story, but in truth there were plenty of dead ends and U-turns.
The same might end up being true of Substack. The reason I'm putting my bet on it, is that it reminds me of the earlyish days of Wordpress. If feels just right for me, or near enough. It's designed for independent journalists to try to build an income from, via paid subs.
Where I'm not certain about the philosophy, is the Substack preference against advertising as a model. But for the next year, while I'm part of the program, I'll be focusing on the subscription-onkly model. I'm lucky enough to have an (almost) risk free means of finding out whether I can make paid subs pay. But I've a hunch that advertising has plenty of life it it yet as a means of funding journalism.
Even if Substack doesn't work for me, it won't be time wasted. Sometimes you have to try and fail with one thing to learn enough to pivot to the thing that works.
The key though, as you allude to, is transparency: Whether influencers, subscriptions or advertising, audience trust depends entirely on that one thing.
And of course, I'd invite your readers to sign up to Unmade, even if it's only free version. My guess is that 80% of posts will remain outside the paywall.
Cheers,
Tim - Unmade
The most horrifying thing about this article is learning you don't have a YT account! Tash you frighten me