Substack's success shows that companies don't need a high-tech product to be disruptive: - **A leading media expert** went viral for arguing that Substack is a threat to journalistic integrity. Lack of editorial oversight, fact-checking, and governin
Substack's success shows that companies don't need a high-tech product to be disruptive:
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A leading media expert went viral for arguing that Substack is a threat to journalistic integrity. Lack of editorial oversight, fact-checking, and governing ethics are among the reasons cited, and she warns writers to be cautious about disseminating false information in this space.
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Audio Collective is the first major creator initiative to launch on Clubhouse. Founders should seal the deal with "audio influencers" now, before they explode and become less accessible.
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Life as an indie hacker began at 50 for this founder, and he quickly discovered that his family and community were his most valuable assets.
Want to share your ideas with nearly 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
⚖️ Is Substack a Threat to Journalistic Integrity?
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
Substack has more than 500K paid subscriptions, and the top ten writers are collectively making more than $15M a year. Substack's success proves that companies don't need a high-tech product to be disruptive.
Deconstructing the field of journalism
Over the last few years, journalists have flocked to Substack and similar newsletter services like Ghost, ConvertKit, and Revue to earn revenue directly from subscribers and bypass traditional editorial oversight. But what impact are these low-tech newsletter products having on journalism?
The no-background: Dr. Sarah T. Roberts, Associate Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California Los Angeles, recently went viral for her analysis on the ethics of journalists using Substack. Dr. Roberts is a leading authority on commercial content moderation, internet culture, and the intersection of media and tech.
The argument: Writing and reporting on a newsletter platform sidesteps traditional ethics and norms guiding news media and, according to Dr. Roberts, this threatens journalism as a whole. She is primarily concerned with the merging of traditional journalism and independent newsletters produced by former journalists.
You can read her argument in its entirety here.
TLDR: Newsletter writers don't do their own reporting, and rarely verify the information in their work. Since newsletter writers don't have an editor to hold them accountable, the system of checks and balances that exists in traditional journalism is absent:
A journalist earns bona fides and clout from a newsroom, which are governed by norms, editorial oversight, and ethics. Readers grow to trust the journalist, who sees she can make more money producing the same content on Substack.
She leaves the publication to launch a newsletter, taking with her the clout she earned in the newsroom to become an independent writer and her own editor. In essence, she has become an opinion writer. The public recognizes her experience and signs up for her newsletter, not necessarily knowing that her content is without the same journalistic vetting or ethics."
Dr. Roberts' concerns are well-founded. A former experienced journalist writing on Substack can lead people to believe that opinion content is actually news content. In addition to the lack of editorial oversight, Substack allows content to be hidden from broader scrutiny through means of a private subscription; this feature further compounds the issue.
Q&A with Dr. Roberts
To get more context on the argument and her concerns, I spoke with Dr. Roberts to learn more. The following are excerpts from our conversation:
Can you tell us about your field of Information Studies?
From a research perspective, information studies can include all sorts of interesting fields...my work sits at the nexus of the internet and society. For over a decade now, I've studied the phenomenon of commercial content moderation, which is the people, policies, and practices of primarily social media firms.
When and how did you realize Substack may be a threat to journalism?
I've been watching the oftentimes melodramatic exit of many individuals (many of whom are journalists, some of whom are other public writers) from the traditional news media world or independent news media… [Her tweet series on Substack] was a political-economic analysis. There were no particular individuals I was thinking about.
What's your top concern?
What is really important to me and to anyone who wants to talk about this in a meaningful way is to [separate opinion and social media] from journalism, which is an institutional practice and a profession. Those things have to be separated.
You argue the skirting of journalistic norms and ethics is also a concern. Why?
When a journalist moves from an organization… but doesn't make a clear and clean distinction between the work she did as an investigative journalist and in a traditional journalistic setting and does this other thing [such as a Substack newsletter], that's also a problem.
You note that by Substack promoting and paying certain writers, the company is making editorial decisions. Can you explain to readers what that means and its implications?
In this case, Substack has gone from being a container, vessel, or dissemination tool to something else, which is a content provider. A payment schedule… changes the nature of what the platform is, intrinsically. It chooses who it pays. It changes the playing field.
How might we address this concern as a society?
Stop having affective, quasi-romantic relationships with your tech platform of choice uncritically. You can like it and use it, but understand what it's really doing.
Subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
👓 Apple is preparing to reportedly release its mixed-reality glasses in 2022. The headset will run independently of iPhones and function as a portable device.
🐦 Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is selling his first-ever tweet: "just setting up my twttr" as an NFT on Valuables, a website that auctions digital memorabilia. The highest bid is currently $2M.
💡 Tesla moved into the US energy space by building a mega-battery for the Texas grid. The battery would store excess electricity which can be sold back to the grid when demand increases.
👸 Google announced $25M in grants to fund nonprofits and social enterprises committed to empowering women.
🐶 Mark Cuban's Mavericks are the world's largest Dogecoin merchants. The team has completed over 20K Dogecoin transactions.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🎧 Audio Collective Launches the First Major Creator Initiative on Clubhouse
from the User Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko G.
Audio Collective, a production group that helps Clubhouse users elevate and advance their content, launched on Thursday. As one of the first dedicated creator initiatives on the platform, Audio Collective partners with creators and brands to build interactive audio events. The growth of Clubhouse initiatives present opportunities for founders to connect with new audiences.
What are audio influencers?
The overview: "Audio influencer" is a phrase you'll likely start hearing more often. As new companies launch to connect influencers (audio and otherwise) to brands on Clubhouse, we will see a rise of creators in this space.
Clubhouse has been exploding for the past few months, recently surpassing 10M users. There are users there who have the power to start a room and gather hundreds or thousands of people in a matter of minutes. Wired recently published a report of the biggest influencers on Clubhouse, and some already have millions of followers.
That's a lot of power there, and companies are starting to realize this power.
Why you should care: At the moment, Clubhouse is largely a B2B platform. More than 50% of the rooms are on topics like digital marketing, crypto, and SaaS. This is a great opportunity to identify Clubhouse power users in your niche. Because the platform is still pretty new, you may be able to negotiate deals that will be less accessible down the line. Connecting with audio influencers now could mean them mentioning your business in their heavily-attended rooms.
Strike now: At the moment, this whole "audio influencer" thing is very new. You're likely to get cheaper rates now than five months from now, when everyone will be aware of the term (like with Instagram).
Using content for growth
An expert marketer recently published a piece that analyzed how tech companies use content to drive growth. He categorized his conclusions in a graph:
How to make use of this graph: Imagine you finish writing a post. That post can help you grow by either:
a) Slowly starting to ranking on Google, driving you search traffic, or
b) Going viral (on Hacker News, Product Hunt, etc.).
This is the vertical SEO/Virality graph.
Alternatively, instead of you writing the post, you can let your users write it (think Quora, Reddit). This is the horizonal (UGC/Editorial) graph.
There's also data-generated, SEO-optimized content, and this is where you use your software skills to auto-generate hundreds or thousands of useful content pieces. Example: Zapier has a page for each integration (e.g. MailChimp + Google Sheets), so when people type "mailchimp google sheets" into Google, Zapier appears first.
Why you should care: There's a big chance you're only using one or two of the methods above to grow with content. You're probably writing high-quality articles and then promoting them, hoping they'll rank on Google some day for your target phrase.
What can you do: Think about writing content for, say, various Facebook groups. Also, think about how you can use data and software to generate hundreds of relevant pieces for long tail keywords. Read the article and get your creative juices flowing.
Identifying power users
Advisor community Reforge recently wrote an amazing article on how you can use power users to grow your product.
What is a power user? Most people think that a power user is someone who was active for most of the days in the past month:
This is a big mistake, and if you use this definition you'll miss many opportunities to grow your product.
Examples: One of the types of power users mentioned in the article are "power influencers." They might not be as active in engaging with your product in comparison to traditional power users, but once those influencers do something, it has a large impact on your product. This is due to the fact they have a lot of followers themselves.
Another example: Power lurkers. They might not be as engaging as traditional power users, but they can help you with monetization (if you're doing ads). If you have a marketplace, you can even find a more direct way to connect the lurkers to the creators (so the creators get an ego boost, and the lurkers get more content to consume).
Why should you care? Two words: missed opportunities. Read the full article and identify the different types of power users within your product. The next step is to identify how to best use their strengths to grow. Reforge gives you some ideas on this.
Subscribe to User Acquisition Channels for more.
🧠 Harry's Growth Tip
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
Been chatting with the owner of a decorative concrete company.
Each month, they pay $600 for an ad in a local magazine that gets sent to 7K wealthy homes in Georgia. In the last three months, they've made $75K from these ads.
Don't complicate marketing. Fish where the fish are.
Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
💞 Of All This Founder's Assets, Loved Ones Were the Most Valuable
from the Milestone Road newsletter by James Fleischmann
Devan Sabaratnam of HRPartner ($12K MRR) left the business he spent decades building to start something new. In the process, he was reminded that family, friends, and communities are a founder's best assets.
Turning 50 brought a fresh start
When he turned 50, Devan vowed to leave his business behind. He wanted to start something new and venture into the unknown:
I'd put everything I had into my previous business. I'd built a reputation around town and had great clients who had been with me for 20+ years.
But I was burnt out and, frankly, tired of building software for other people. I wanted the freedom to explore and try new technologies.
Knowing that the decision would have major implications, Devan was nervous about sharing his plan with his wife. He didn't know how she would react, and was certain that she'd think he had lost it! Little did he know, he didn't need to worry:
To my surprise, my wife was extremely supportive of my decision. We had a small amount of money saved up, and I would be getting a payout over two years from the sale of my existing business.
With his wife fully onboard, Devan sold his consulting business and started over by writing an HR system from the ground up. He figured that his savings would buy him at least two years to spend building HRPartner.
New challenges on the horizon
As many indie hackers know, things can take longer than expected to take off. After launching the first beta version, it took a full year for HRPartner to get its first paying customer. Devan watched his savings deplete at an alarming rate, but the support of his family was unwavering:
That was hard at times, to see [my wife's] utter faith and belief in me when we barely had enough money to do a full grocery shop for our family. Was this what she signed up for back in '96 when we exchanged vows? It put a lot of pressure on me to make it work. But in the end, I think it was the right sort of motivation I needed to press on when things seemed really dire.
To make ends meet, Devan's wife took on a few part-time jobs although she hated the work and the hours. Meanwhile, Devan practically lived at his laptop, cutting code and working to progress faster so that she could focus on her art. Things took another downturn in 2017 when his first co-founder abruptly left HRPartner; at the time, they still only had about 20 paying customers. This took a huge toll on Devan's health:
After a month, the extra stress saw me admitted to the hospital. I thought that would mean a long break from work. But once again, my wife stepped up and cared for me above and beyond. In fact, my whole family did.
One of my sons stepped into the business, as did my sister-in-law and some extended family. They helped me with various tasks until I literally got back on my feet. My older son, a musician, busked on the streets of our town to earn money that he put towards groceries and other household expenses.
By mid 2019, HRPartner had hundreds of customers, and a year later, it had well over a thousand. Devan was earning a steady salary, and his wife had quit the extra jobs. No more collecting and washing dishes; her hands could go back to painting, drawing, and doing work that she loved again.
What's next for Devan?
With HRPartner stabilized and growing, Devan is looking to give back some of the support that his wife and family gave him:
We have decided to travel the world when the current COVID-19 issues are over. [We'll] spend months at a time in beautiful locations where she can paint and I can work from my laptop.
I've promised her that. It's the very least I can do to repay her for her years of support.
Any stories to share about specific family members or friends who have supported your indie hackers dream? Share in the comments!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Milestone Road for more.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Darko G., and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing
