Why I settled on Substack after using four newsletter delivery services
Email Marketing for Independent Writers
Substack is a free email newsletter subscription service. It’s free, but you can publish multiple newsletters, and there’s no limit to the number of subscribers you can have. It’s also easy to create a paid newsletter. The only disadvantage I think of is that you can’t use automated emails except for welcome emails. I hope that they can install that function in the future.
I tried my newsletters once and failed
I’ve been publishing newsletters for a few years now, and I’ve used four different companies both Japanese and American. And now I’ve finally settled on Substack.
Since I started blogging in 2015, I would like to send out my email newsletter one day. In fact, I had tried it once a few years ago using a Japanese platform called Asmer.
However, I failed. As a beginner in blogging, I found it impossible to continue writing the newsletter. It was too early for me to do newsletters.
It has been a few years since writers, bloggers and marketers in English-speaking countries started to focus on email marketing.
So I took the plunge and started a newsletter again. This time I started using MailChimp, a free mailing service from the USA. I chose MailChimp because it was free. There were lots of Japanese companies that could provide similar services, but none of them was free.
Why I stopped using MailChimp
Mailchimp is reasonably easy to use. You can send out emails with stylish templates and it also has some great analytics features such as email opening rates.
However, they have made many policy changes and some of the features became paid at some point. Except for the welcome mail right after registration, the automated emails, which you can send at the scheduled time, is only available in the paid plan (but it is still not too expensive, I think).
I liked using MailChimp, but unfortunately, they didn’t like me. Mailchimp is now not allowed to insert affiliate links, or maybe the word “affiliate” is a wrong word to use because my account was frozen when I wrote something about affiliating.
My account on MailChimp was frozen. I didn’t know they had changed their policy. Or they may never allow users to insert affiliating links from the beginning. Anyway, I was panicked. I didn’t get any support from them even after I wrote to their help support department.
I changed my newsletter from MailChimp to a Japanese company because they had a 6-month free trial plan. I used that company for a while, but I was not planning to pay for them to continue. And then, luckily, I bumped into Substack. For me, it’s insanely timely. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
What is Substack?
Substack is an email and subscription service delivery system from the USA. It’s free to use and there’s no limit to the number of subscribers you can have. Although I can’t use automated emails, it won’t cost anything for me, no matter how many subscribers. I’m not going to complain about that.
In addition, Substack also allows you to publish a paid newsletter.
When a paid newsletter makes a sale, a portion (10%) of the sale is collected by Substack. It’s quite a good system.
