18 Comments
Oct 22, 2023Liked by James Lyons-Weiler

Most Substack posts charge something in the $5 -$7 monthly range for paid subscriptions, with a reduction for annual price such as $50.

This way one can support 20 of your favorite writers for $100 monthly. ..a bargain for real info.

(and it’s probably hard to read many more than 20...but who knows!)

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I know the information is worth more but when you have to pay a bunch of substacks, it is impossible for a lot of us. $1 month x number of substacks - can be affordable.

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Yes, this is the main issue

for paid subscriptions.

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I have to continually weed out my Substack subscriptions because I am busting my news and information budget. I am a high-speed reader and semi-retired so I can easily read 30-40 articles daily. Substack writers publish 1-2x weekly on average, so that would mean hundreds of $ WEEKLY! Mainstream news sources have free newsletters with paragraph summaries of each story, and if you want to read the whole thing it's paywalled; Substack should allow writers to do something similar. Maybe aggregate a group of similar writers into one newsletter and allow recipients to select which ones they want to read a la carte for $1-2 each? Just a thought.

Look at your poll results and think about how many more subscriptions you would get at a lower price point.

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5 is a good number because it's a symbol of balance. There were five golden rings . It's a prime number. It's the atomic number of boron. It's a pentagon and the symbol on the Olympics. Mozart was five years old when he wrote his first composition. I vote for $5.00 a month.

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I love people whose minds make these beautiful connections! Maybe 5 will be my new lucky number…

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Your information, and the important work that you do, is priceless. That’s also true for many other Substack writers. So I have been a paid subscriber to you, and to about fifteen other Substackers. But my income is just $13,044 per year now (Social Security), and that’s what I live on. So you can see that continuing to spend on paid subscriptions is well, difficult. I would bet that most of your free subscribers would absolutely love to be able to pay, but just can’t. You have your own financial challenges, so I know you understand, Dr. Jack. And thank you for understanding!

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Great thinking! Support those most important to oneself, however one can. Those who CAN pay $5, or whatever Dr. Jack decides SHOULD.

Others who can not might consider expanding his reach by sharing his name, his messages, and IPAK-edu.

I now speak to just about everyone whose path I cross each day...be it grocery shopping or other errand running, hiking, walking, helping out at the local garden, volunteer efforts, with service providers at my home, or outside my home that I'm utilizing (health and wellness care). And I always mention the classes I'm taking, or have taken on IPAK-edu.

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I got slammed on another Substack for expressing my opinion - when they asked the same question. Here's goes anyhow . . . .

We are in an extremely precarious time right now! It's us against the mainstream media. Fighting back is crucial. Therefore it is of the utmost importance to educate people, spread the truth, warn, save and protect them. How could you charge for that? Only people that pay get saved?

It galls me when I see many writers who certainly don't need the money! Steve Kirsh, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Matt Taibbi, Seymour Hersh, Alex Berenson and the list goes on and on.

Blocking content to non-subscribers, in my opinion is selfish. We're the ones who take the time to read all these articles and then pass it along to others. You do the writing but we do all the leg work spending hours every day reading all these posts and often forwarding them to friends.

Why do people start a Substack? Certainly it's not for the money. It's because they want people to read what they have to say. So many people wrote they're subscribed to 20 + Substacks. Imagine how much time effort and devotion that requires.

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Oct 22, 2023·edited Oct 22, 2023

Right now I've subscribed to 2 annuals that are about $30 a year. I want to sign ip for all, but can't.

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Substack’s business model has become my pet peeve. I don’t think it makes sense.

It is my understanding that S/S imposes a $5 minimum monthly charge, which results in $5-$8 range.

If, like me, you follow several dozen authors it would cost almost $300 a month to subscribe to everyone you want to follow.

Groups like Free Press are better deals, but still of questionable value, despite their production rate (Nellie is priceless).

Annual subscriptions aren’t that great - I accidentally signed up for one, and within a minute there was a $290 debit on my credit card, and correcting the error was challenging, but that’s another story.

My impression of a substacker’s cash flow is “feast or famine” some have found a gold mine (lucky you, Bari) - but some nobody just starting out should be able to charge a dollar, or less, per month. (Sort of like a penny stock.) Perhaps that explains the infrequent / erratic posting by some people.

Also, why can’t we read a post and pay a per diem; or pay a cluster fee for say a dozen posts by affiliated writers.

So much for venting.

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Substack gets a 10% cut, and small monthly transactions are likely a lot of busy work for the company.

The 'Buy me a coffee' option set up by the author would be better for smaller donations/payments.

On individual's websites I have seen PDFs or ebooks being offered for a smallish per each price.

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Jennifer:

I’d be surprised if Substack, itself, hasn’t become something of a cash cow - 10% seems like a lot for what they do.

I don’t think S/S has any significant competition; and don’t computers do most of the busywork. - Thank God for Substack.

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Worth and value and affordability are different things. There are are too many great Substacks to pay for them all. Comparably it is like buying a bunch of newspaper or magazine subscriptions..

Substack gets 10% and doesn't allow smaller monthly amounts. Stick up a Donate button, 'Buy us a coffee', type thing and that way people who want to support at smaller levels could.

I have a subscription on IPAK rather than here.

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I agree with LW and Maurine Meleck. Your information is great and wish I had time and more $$ to take classes. You might also add a sale or discount rate now and then to increase members. Right now I am working on a particular focus: EMF and graphene from shots and chemtrails plus the need for more work on the heart. Is there a reason that myocarditis is such a big issue with the shots? And so many shots contain graphene. And now the requests from HeartMath and GCI following the Maui Massacre and then the request from The ET Watcher Collective via ET Talk to help bring Peace by simple steps of visualizing Peace and we can sign up. So the reason that the shots and chemtrails contain graphene etc is to turn us into transhumans. So the remedy is to reverse the process and bring Love instead of Fear. And i just read yesterday that adrenaline also is a trigger.

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Oct 22, 2023Liked by James Lyons-Weiler

Man I’d love to support all my subs but quite honestly $5 fuel per gallon is killing my discretionary spending. Thanks for keeping some content free for those of us taking our debts seriously.

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I would be happy with any of the options if I wasn’t living out of savings. As long as my mom needs me, I won’t have any extra. 😢

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I read MANY substacks. No way I could pay $5 each.

It would be nice if substack had a wallet, where I could put in money and then have it distributed in small payments to 50 or so substacks.

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