11 Comments

Thanks for recording and posting this - liked to see the nuances of the the buttons on the Publish page - no I actually know what they do! 🤣

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many thanks Simon - v useful, as usual

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Learning about Early Access switched on a light for me, as it's the only way I can see of attempting to monetize my history posts; I certainly couldn't add extras - what readers see is what readers get!

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I've really struggled with this, as making my fiction paywalled just meant that nobody read it, and I didn't really want to hide my writing tips so that only paying people could see them. I don't think these early access features existed quite so neatly back when I started - I'd be really interested to hear from someone using them about how effective they are.

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Good point. Unfortunately, like so much, I suspect being a "name" would turn the key.

No hope of that - LOL!

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Ah yes, the old "Substack is really easy! Just bring over 200,000 Instagram followers and off you go!" technique. :P

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>keep writing<

yes, sir

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I didn't know about early access for paid subscribers. I might do some rethinking of how to run my newsletter going forward. That's very interesting.

With early access, who do you set up who to send to in the top section? Do you still send it to everyone?

(I'm sorry if this is a really silly question...my metal bandwidth is not at full capacity at the moment)

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It would need to be set to paid subscribers. So the post starts off as paid-only, and then at the specified date switches to 'everyone' and is sent out again. That's my understanding anyway - I haven't used it directly.

I'm not sure how it interacts with the 'send free preview' option, though. You might not want to send a free preview AND then the full thing at a later date. That could be confusing for subscribers.

Messaging would also be a bit of a challenge, potentially: within the single body of the post, how would you make it clear that it's early access, without it being confusing to one or other of the cohorts?

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Thank you. I might have a play with this, it was something I was considering when going paid, but missed that it was an option when looking at the ways of going paid.

I suppose you could send it out with an initial note that says something along the lines of 'As a paid subscriber, you get early access to this issue of [insert newsletter name]. It will be released for general consumption on xxx'

Then after sending it, go straight back into the post and edit it to say 'This was released early to paid subscribers. Subscribe here to get an early release of issues' (or something more elegant). Perhaps not a perfect solution, but a workable one I think.

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