notessamuele onelia

Patreon Quit, Substack Paid Won

The Story

Before Substack paid subscriptions, Jesse had tried fan-funded support via Patreon. It didn’t work. “I had that problem with Patreon where some people were paying me money — which I was super thankful for and I wanted to provide good content/bonuses/etc for them! But ultimately, there weren’t that many patrons so the total amount of money coming in was small enough that it was hard to justify spending much time there. I ultimately decided to cancel my Patreon because of this.” (Source 1).

When he moved Extra Focus back to Substack in January 2023, he wasn’t planning to monetize at all. “When I switched back to Substack in January I wasn’t even planning to do paid subscriptions at all! I was excited about the recommendation network and chat features, it just felt like they were innovating in the space and building more community-focused features which I was excited about. It didn’t hurt that it was free.” (Source 1).

The activation was casual. He tried Substack’s pledge feature, found the UX confusing, and pivoted: “I figured ‘let’s just turn on paid plans and see what happens.‘” (Source 1).

He skipped the recommended launch playbook and it still worked. “It maybe wasn’t the best plan because I didn’t really do any sort of big launch or anything (which Substack recommends), but enough people signed up initially that got me excited about the potential. And then I started building the plane as it was flying, figuring out what I could do to make the paid plan worth it for those people that were already started paying.” (Source 1).

The minimum-viable tier on day one was small: “I basically said subscribers would get full access to the archive of old issues, and an occasional extra issue for paid supporters only. Thankfully, it’s been much more successful than the Patreon ever was so I’ve been able to dedicate more time to doing additional content for them.” (Source 1).

By May 2023 the paid output had ramped: “Roughly 3 times a month I do an additional newsletter for paid supporters, usually this is a Reader Q&A, Community Thread (aka discussion prompt), or Resource Roundup (collection of ADHD resources). The Reader Q&As are usually pay-walled so that half the questions are free for anyone, and half are for paid supporters only.” (Source 1).

He was still iterating: “I’ve also just recently started experimenting with adding a small ‘Shiny Objects’ section (aka links to interesting videos, articles, etc that I find interesting) to the end of the main newsletter, and having just that section paywalled for paid supporters only.” (Source 1).

His framing of the experiment: “My guess is that this will all look very different 6 months from now as I continue to learn what my subscribers and supporters find to be most valuable!” (Source 1).

Lesson for Creators

Two patterns sit in the same story. First: the same “support me” intent failed on Patreon and worked on Substack — not because Jesse changed, but because the platform put the buy button next to where readers already were. Patreon required a destination visit. Substack made the upgrade an inline click in the inbox. The lesson: monetization friction is mostly platform shape, not audience shape. Second: he flipped the toggle without a launch and built the paid offer afterward, which is the inverse of the standard advice. It worked because the bar he set on day one was “you don’t lose anything by paying” — full archive access plus the occasional bonus — so subscribers self-selected on goodwill, and the offer thickened around them. If you have an audience that already wants to support you, you don’t have to perfect the offer first. You have to give them a button and then earn the money in arrears.

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