Substack is boosting a feature that serves as a significant revenue stream for some creators. The newsletter platform has made it easier to include videos in its Notes format.
Notes posts are the backbone of Substack’s home feed. Though the platform is known for newsletters and other pieces of subscription-based content, it introduced Notes a year ago to encourage the creation of shorter, snackable Substack updates.
Tl;dr: Notes is Substack’s version of a tweet or a Snap. To match those products, Substack’s social format can now be shared “widely across the web.” In an update celebrating Notes’ first birthday, Substack Co-Founder Hamish McKenzie revealed that Notes can now be embedded on external websites. “We hope that these external embeds will help writers’ notes get more reach and recognition outside of the Substack network,” McKenzie wrote.
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Substack’s upgrades to notes won’t just affect the format’s distribution. Those posts are now compatible with Substack’s two-year-old native video player. The ability to add multimedia to Notes will — in theory — make them more engaging and add to a revenue stream that already provides solid support for a handful of Substackers. The first-birthday post includes testimonials from a few creators. Writer and entrepreneur David McIlroy generated $8,000 of subscription revenue with a Notes post that was only a few words long.
Over the past year, Substack has built more cohesion into its monetization options. Updates to its video player have made Substack paywalls more flexible and efficient. The new Notes features will make Substack’s posts more valuable as they move across the web.
Spotify is one potential destination for those Notes. The audio platform recently partnered with Substack on a distribution deal aimed at podcasters.
