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SubStacker News - Territories as newsletters

1349 sats \ 31 comments \ @Scoresby 9 Jul meta

tl;dr

Pay for a territory, run it like a personal newsletter or blog. You get zap functionality and effective comment moderation and you would keep 91% of what you get zapped -- and you get access to an already engaged audience of thoughtful Bitcoiners.

How it could work today

Start a territory using the name of your newsletter.
Set your posting fees fairly high.
Write interesting articles and publish them in your territory.

Advantages over Substacks and blogs:

Out-of-the-box monetization of your content via zaps
Built-in zap functionality/moderation in your comments
Access to an active, thoughtful community of Bitcoiners
Stackers can subscribe to your territory and get notifications when you publish
If your articles are popular they might show up on the SN front page

Rationale

I'm sure other stackers have already thought of this use case, but it crystallized in my mind the other day in this particular way and I wanted to describe it to hear what stackers think. (Also, I'm hovering over the buy button for the ~Scoresby territory.)

I hate newsletters

I really like writing on the internet. I'd like take it to the next level and spend more time doing it. So what are my options? The most popular answer seems to be "start a Substack" but I hate newsletters.

I don't like email in general. If we lived in a world where you could self-host email, it might be worth the awful reading experience. But self-sovereign email is pretty much dead and reading long email chains is always unpleasant.

This is why I don't understand people's desire to subscribe to newsletters. Even if you're my favorite writer, I don't want to receive an email version of your latest article. I just want to know that you wrote something new and then go read it wherever you published it. There is absolutely zero reason for your article to be in my inbox next to my utility bill.

Tagging and using different inboxes doesn't fix this. I read a lot and follow a lot of people who write interesting things online. If they show up in my primary inbox, inevitably I will miss a number of them. If they show up in a special folder or something I've created to collect them all -- inevitably, I'll end up ignoring it.

RSS is good for readers, but not necessarily for writers

RSS is a nice way to learn about and read new articles from your favorite writers, but it's not a great way for writers to reach new readers. Writers are not always good marketers, and with RSS, readers mostly need to know you exist already. Also, sadly, many more people have email inboxes than have RSS readers. For whatever reason, RSS isn't that popular.

One benefit newsletter services like Substack and Beehiiv offer is increased discoverability (even though they aren't great at this, it's at least a little boost). Also they provide a base-level of professional formatting for writers who aren't designers.

Stacker News fixes this

The idea is still in the rough, but use a little imagination and work with me here. Stacker News already has the bones to provide a way better substack experience.

Out of the box monetization

Substack makes money by facilitating newsletter monetization and taking a cut. The monetization model is annoying, though. You have to subscribe and do monthly or yearly payments. Not fun. It's always a bit of a crap-shoot when looking at a new substack whether it will be paywalled or not. And then there are substacks that only paywall some posts. I'd rather just pay for what I'm interested in.

Stacker News allows monetization on a very granular level. Your readers can zap the articles they like at whatever amount they like. As long as they have a lightning wallet, it's about the slickest payment experience ever.

Built-in comment zaps and moderation

A lot of newsletters have very active comment sections. I imagine these take quite a bit of effort to moderate and deal with. Doing so in your email client probably sucks. SN fixes this with zaps. Comments that are uninteresting or spammy don't rise to the top or get downzapped. Because SN is built as a forum, reply/comment functionality is way better than most blog comment functionality.

Access to an active, thoughtful community of Bitcoiners

This could be a really big draw for the Bitcoin newsletter writers. Sure, they all have their own channels over which they attract subscribers and grow, but wouldn't it be nice to start out with some amount of guaranteed visibility in a sizable group of engaged Bitcoiners?

Changes to SN that could make it work better

These are features that could make it easier for someone to use SN as a newsletter, but would probably only be worth it for the team to work on if there was a strong, clear demand for the use-case.

Email functionality - the biggest obstacle here is finding a way to get your posts on SN into the hands of non-stackers. Adding email functionality might be a way to achieve outreach. Despite my own feelings about email, there are apparently people who like email newsletters. Perhaps new posts in territories could also be sent as emails to subscriber inboxes.

RSS - SN already exposes RSS feeds for territories (eg. stacker.news/~<territory>/rss), so no change needed here.

Permissioned posting - it'd be nice to have a tool to limit who can post in your newsletter (your territory) other than posting cost. Ideally, post contributors could be invite only.

Post scheduling - (this may already exist, if it does: go SN team!) it'd be great to be able to schedule posts ahead of time. A lot of times I work on a piece over a couple weeks and I'd love to be able to schedule it for posting rather than tie myself to my laptop at the time I want to put it up.

Custom domains - this is probably the most difficult technically. But can you imagine how powerful it would be if you could have the whole thing at your own custom domain?

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102 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 18h

This is why I don't understand people's desire to subscribe to newsletters. Even if you're my favorite writer, I don't want to receive an email version of your latest article. I just want to know that you wrote something new and then go read it wherever you published it. There is absolutely zero reason for your article to be in my inbox next to my utility bill.

I don't understand this point. Isn't the mail with the article inside also letting you know that they wrote something wherever they publish it?

How else do you want to be notified? Email is the only thing everyone has to get notified about something next to visiting the platform yourself regularly.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 16h

Email is the only thing everyone has to get notified about something next to visiting the platform yourself regularly.

True, but that doesn't mean it's a good system. The effort required to open and delete the emailed newsletter is bad.

The problem with newsletter subscriptions is that they give me an endless flood of emails that serve the purpose of notifications. I'm sure I could configure my email client to send them all to a folder that auto deletes after 30 days, but like many people, I don't take the time to mess with my settings.

I'd love an app that shows a grid of icons for all the writers I want to read with little notification bubbles on them if there is something new. Then I could click on their icon and immediately go to their blog. This probably isn't the right solution either: who wants another app that basically sounds like a RSS reader?

Really, I'd be fine if the notifications about new articles showed up in my email client just as an ephemeral notification. But the current practice of mixing it in with all my other email is unpleasant.

138 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 9 Jul

I’m very excited for ~Scoresby.

I’ve had ideas similar to this and have been a little disappointed that none of the big names have done it.

You’re the perfect person to lead the way.

186 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined 10 Jul

It just occurred to me that this idea will also be highly complementary with cross-posting.

One of the things that prevented me from founding ~Undisciplined, was the existence of lots of territories that I liked supporting. Cross-posting, assuming they get the incentives properly calibrated, removes that tradeoff (to a degree).

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

Yes: it's true that one's own territory could reduce to some level one's support of other territories.

In my mind, the territory-as-newsletter idea would be used for long-form pieces while shorter thoughts or links would still get posted in subject territories.

The tension you describe, though, is true for the founder of any new territory: it competes a little with at a few other territories. The difference with a territory-as-newsletter is that it wouldn't attempt to draw other writers away (as a new subject territory might).

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 10 Jul

I was actually surprised that I felt the need to do a bit of a recalibration once I took over ~econ. I used to feel a bit of responsibility to help support everyone else's territories, since I wasn't running one.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

Territories don't exactly compete with each other, but in the very adjacent mental spaces that are popular on SN, they may end up eating each other's lunches.

I see this most with ~bitcoin. So many topics fit under that umbrella that could go in other places. But this is a bitcoin site and so they go there.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 10 Jul

It’ll be interesting to see how things reorganize once subterritories drop.

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102 sats \ 5 replies \ @supratic 9 Jul

SubStacker sound awful... let's keep the sub for the subTerritories!

I think the biggest mistake on this idea is to drive and promote SN as a unidirectional publishers' platform (like substack). I still seeing it as a valid alternative for Reddit more than substack... where anyone can contribute to a community. Or even better, just give the option to the territory founder to decide if guests posts are welcome or not. Selecting publishers for closed territories could be another option.

SN is a community hub, is a social space for everyone to be heard, it offers bidirectional conversations.

The newsletter could be a great tool for territory founders to drive insights in the inbox of people that don't have the time to come and visit so often. Receiving updates via email is a user retention tool for territory funders, but not a toll that you market or monetize on specifically.

Custom domains are already in the make, is a nice option to have, but not indispensable. I'd rather focus on providing a white label option, where territory funders can change logo and theme to reflect their brand would probably be appreciated.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

SN is a community hub, is a social space for everyone to be heard, it offers bidirectional conversations.

This is a really good point.

I sometimes wonder how much we can separate the community of stacker news from the platform. The community of people here is unique: weirdos from around the world who are excited by paying to post and getting zapped.

The platform is maybe more versatile. People have been hunting for an easy way to bring micro transactions into the internet for decades. SN is one of the smoothest implementations of this that I've ever seen.

It excels at bidirectional conversations, but could be effective with something that looks more like a broadcast, too.

I take your point, though, that territories may not be the best way to do this.

138 sats \ 3 replies \ @supratic 10 Jul

that territories may not be the best way to do this.

Not at all, they are if you provide the options. With SubStacker approach, looks' like you aimed to change what SN has been build for. A communities' hub. This does not mean that, provided with the right options, a territory funder could manage a territory as substack like, where the founder is the only one posting and sending our newsletters to the territory subscribers (that have an email attached t the account).

I'd not underevaluate the option to allow stackers t create new subterritories, or contribute to existing territories;

This newsletter option should be available in the same way to other territories managed as community and provide them the same option to its subscribers.

It's about priorities, and I'd always prioritize the community. Yes SN is a business and need ways to bring more users first, then monetize if the aims to remain sustainable and relevant for the long run. Play well and it will happen.

Summarized: territories could have the options to:

Enable subterritories creation¹
Allow posting to --> select @stacker(s) / everyone / justMe
Send Newsletter via Email² --> Weekly / biweekly / Montly / Custom (ie. 21 days)

#389003 ↩
Newsletter automatically select the top posts, summarized and categorized (with the help of Ai maybe? similar to what has been done here #1026677) ↩

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 10 Jul

Re: note 2. I do not use AI in the curation of AI posts :-)

98 sats \ 1 reply \ @supratic 10 Jul

I know :) was just saying that it could be useful to categorize posts under different subsections. True is that it should be responsibility of the territory founder to curate the contents, however I recognize that automating it could be beneficial

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 10 Jul

I know how to automate it with AI, but, it'd be one or two weeks work because you'd want NLP combined with inverse chatbot and then work the word distance math, not chatbot spitting out bs. I'm not ready to spend that kind of time on the process yet.

Right now, I yolo'd a script to parse text from the index (where I just c&p the index entries I like), then I look up the post ID and i throw it all in a spreadsheet. Because of this manual process I get to read/bookmark every SN post I like other than the AI ones too, because I look at every title of every post of the entire week right now. So I get personal added value from doing it manually; besides that it keeps me sane to have something to not automate.

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183 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 9 Jul

Very good idea. I think I have posted a few times in the past about using SN as a substack substitute, but I never considered the idea of using territories as a newsletter. I think there is an individual territory domain update in the works.

I look forward to reading ~Scoresby.

101 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheWildHustle 9 Jul

Individual territory domains would be pretty cool

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 9 Jul

I think they're close

36 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

I have a feeling it gets pretty complicated tech-wise, especially because sats are involved--i imagine there are some thorny man in the middle problems. Makes me wish I knew more about the architecture of the internet.

187 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 9 Jul

I like it for now. Eventually if newsletters take off they should have their own section.

40 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

A very real problem that several others have pointed out is that this flirts with mission creep.

If you had to distill it down to one thing, what is it that SN does best?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 10 Jul

I don’t think this flirts with mission creep. SN as a platform that allows value for value transacting using Bitcoin is still evolving. I don’t see newsletters any different than I saw the addition of territories which I was the loudest cheerleader for. I think hosting newsletters and giving writers the ability to monetize their writing with Bitcoin would also be a great way to promote and grow SN.

102 sats \ 2 replies \ @softglitter2d 9 Jul

I'm not a big fan of using territories as my own backyard, seems to me that I would be doing some missuse. On the other hand, I would like to make something like that so I would move here my newsletter.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

I didn't know you had a newsletter. Though my Spanish is bad, the wonders of our modern age will let me look at it. Thanks for sharing.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @softglitter2d 10 Jul

I put sometimes translations at NOSTR but yeah, my native language is español and it's funny to come here par hablar dos idiomas. Latinoamerica presente.

122 sats \ 0 replies \ @deSign_r 9 Jul

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @chaoticalHeavy 9 Jul

Stacker News is open source.

You can fork it and run your own instance.

You can add the features you want.

Maybe those features can find their way into the main branch of Stacker News.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

You are right. What I am describing may very well work better as a fork.

102 sats \ 1 reply \ @plebpoet 9 Jul

YES 1000X

Even if you're my favorite writer, I don't want to receive an email version of your latest article. I just want to know that you wrote something new and then go read it wherever you published it. There is absolutely zero reason for your article to be in my inbox next to my utility bill.

completely agree

Stacker News already has the bones to provide a way better substack experience.

already has for me in a HUGE way

I love how you're thinking about it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 10 Jul

I'm glad to heat that someone resonates with my dislike of newsletters. Until recently, I had never subscribed to one.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 9 Jul

These are features that could make it easier for someone to use SN as a newsletter, but would probably only be worth it for the team to work on if there was a strong, clear demand for the use-case.

It seems like good ideas to me, but you nail it in this paragraph. From the numbers available, the SN is really small (it'd be interesting to know the views though). I think right now it'd be a massive development cost for the current demand.

46 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 9 Jul

Honestly, it’s an excellent idea at first, but thinking about it, individual profiles already work pretty much like you described.

There’s definitely the issue of keeping all the zaps within that territory and having access to data about the numbers — in that sense, yes, it’s a great idea.

Maybe a few changes to the profile — the one we see when visiting someone’s page — could already help a bit for those who can’t manage a territory.

Footnotes