In 1999 there were only 23 blogs on the entire Internet. Soon after, they had grown to millions, and their influence was so great that the entire body of content was given its own name, the Blogosphere. Even the U.S. government and military ended up using it to win the battle of public opinion. It promoted thousands of warblogs, blogs written by military personnel who defended the intervention in the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq promoted by George W. Bush. But that blogosphere had a more positive aspect, the millions of people who wrote spreading ideas and knowledge in different languages, all over the planet. Culture, science, technology, political and international situations, repair manuals, shopping, everything. With some cases as unique as that of Beppe Grillo, the comedian who took advantage of the popularity of his blog, the most read in Italian, to create and promote his own political party, the Five Star Movement. Or that of the blog Dooce, which turned its creator, nicknamed the mommy blogger, into someone who gathered 8.5 million readers a month telling something as simple as her daily life.
The revolution had been technological, driven by applications such as Blogger and the like, but also historical. The 9/11 attacks, with the planes destroying the Twin Towers in New York, marked a change in communication at the beginning of the new century. For the first time, it was individuals, not the media, who dominated the discourse on the Internet. It was a strange time, newspapers still believed in paper and newsstand, doubting the importance of their digital editions. Leaving a gaping hole in the digital realm that bloggers filled, to the point of competing with them. And not only in the U.S., where the phenomenon had started, but all over the world, including our country. In 2007, the two most read blogs in Spain were Darkville, dedicated exclusively to telling news and curiosities about TV series in the era of Perdidos or Prison Break; and Antonio Martínez Ron‘s Fogonazos, with 95,000 unique users who read… about science! By comparison, the same year the digital edition of El País reached 1,876,000 unique visitors, which means that a blogger, writing alone from home, got 5% of the audience of the most read newspaper on the Internet. A phenomenon, and a feat. It disappeared almost as quickly as it had emerged.
Because the next milestone on the Internet was the social networks, and the media’s conviction that if they did not take care of digital, they would disappear. Media and journalists using the networks reduced the visibility of blogs, and the figure of the individual creator did not resurface again… until 2017. At that time, Substack was launched, a platform that, like the old blogger, allowed easy publishing. But marking a fundamental difference: it allowed creators to charge for their content. Giving you control over your subscriber list, the intellectual property of your files, and a lot of complementary tools until then reserved for newspapers and media. Today Substack is one of the most widely used tools for creating newsletters, and in this case the reason is also historical. Advertising, which had always financed the media, is no longer their main source of income, and once again they have arrived too late to take care of their other source of income, payment by subscription. Now they are dragging a loss of credibility, income and content, the consequence of which is that many people believe less in newspapers and more in those who write with honesty and independence from Substack. Or simply, in the people who tell things that interest them, and that the media omit.
The majority of substacks deal with technology, 18.3%, followed by cultural content, music, cinema, video games and comics, with 17.1%, politics and finance share 10% and literature and business exceed or come close to 7%. The last significant area is sports, almost 5%, with the rest of the topics very fragmented, below 1%. We will not find such a distribution in any newspaper headline, radio program, or TV program. Perhaps because those who make the bulletins are not journalists, or not the majority of them. Almost 40% of Substack’s creators are non-professional writers, that is to say, they do not make a living from it. Another 20% do, and make a living from their newsletter, and another 20% are journalists who either supplement their income, promote themselves with it, or choose an alternative channel where they can tell things that the media will not admit or publish.
This is precisely why those who succeed the most at Substack, i.e. those who generate large revenues with their newsletters, are the niche creators. Like the two investigative journalists who created Gotham City to talk about international tax crimes, never covered by the press because they consider them too specific. They generate around 400,000 euros a year with just over a thousand subscribers. Their exclusive on Monica Bellucci‘s tax evasion, which they uncovered, jumped from their substack to the international press. Another similar one is Geneva Health Files, this one in English, emerged in the middle of the pandemic, 2020, to talk about political connections, lobbies and interests of pharmaceutical companies. Its creator achieves a 50% opening rate of its newsletters, which is a very high figure.
But Substack is not dominated solely by English and French newsletters. Also with a remarkable 50% open rate, Roger Senserrich‘s Four Freedoms, brings its subscribers up to date in a clear, entertaining and entertaining way on U.S. politics, and sometimes trains. He has 3,740 free subscribers, and 295 paying subscribers who generate $14,000 a year, less expenses. With an average of 60K to 75K visits per month. Roger was well known in the blogosphere by Politikon, a blog that became a reference where Kiko Llaneras (today in El País) or Pablo Simón (political analyst very present in various talk shows) were present. Another example of Spanish substack is Uriondo, by Miguel Ángel Uriondo, a veteran journalist with a long career. His figures are more modest, but so is his subscription price, €3 per year as opposed to $60 (€56.5), and the commercial approach. Rather than generating income, he uses it to “let off steam as an expert journalist”, and devotes the proceeds to his nephew’s education, as his brother recently passed away. This is not to say that his articles on mobility, media and technology are irrelevant: his subscribers include Ibex CEOs, senior officials, executives, entrepreneurs and prominent journalists. The latest and most significant example is the Causas y Azares newsletter by Antonio Ortiz, which brings together on Sundays relevant articles on the week’s current affairs. Significant because Antonio was one of the founders of the Webedia blog, which at the time of the blogosphere reached 96 million unique users. His substack has 4,800 subscribers, an open rate of around 50%, and an irregular income of between 1,500 and 2,500 euros per year. He has never oriented it to generate income but to express personal concerns, so he considers subscription income a bonus.
However, Substack also has its shadows. Mauricio Cabrera, journalist and content creator focused on media analysis and the creator economy with The Muffin, makes an interesting reflection on the platform for the future. It is good to start but not to consolidate a project, because it focuses on a single source of income, the subscription. Without being ideal, the most natural way to grow is to mix several, advertising and subscriptions, in addition to paid content, like most media. That may be its weak point, but, he adds, if Substack doesn’t cover it, its creators will go elsewhere. What is not foreseeable is that the phenomenon of individual authors creating relevant content on a par with the mainstream media will disappear. The new blogosphere has a long way to go for the time being.
It is estimated that the number of content creators on the Internet reaches 50 million, of which only 2 make a professional living from it. Included in that number are youtubers, influencers, and substack newsletter writers.
