I've been watching this slow exodus for months now. Creators I follow, journalists I respect, random people I've never heard of who somehow managed to build these incredible loyal audiences. They're all doing the same thing: packing up their content, their ideas, their entire digital presence and moving to Substack like it's some kind of creative witness protection program; and the more I see it happen, the more I get it.

Because what we've been doing on social media for the past decade? That's not building. That's renting. We've all been tenants in someone else's house, decorating the walls, inviting friends over, making it feel like home, while the landlord (read: the algorithm) keeps changing the locks whenever they feel like it.

One day you're reaching 10,000 people with a single post, and the next you're screaming into the void because some engineer in Menlo Park decided your content isn't "engaging" enough for the timeline.

According to Backlinko's analysis, Substack just hit 5 million paid subscriptions. Not free subscribers. PAID. People who looked at someone's writing and said "yes, I will give you my actual money to keep doing this." The platform grew by about 1 million paid subscriptions per quarter in early 2025 alone. The top 10 writers on the platform are collectively making $40 million a year.

That's not a side hustle. That's an entire media empire built one newsletter at a time.

What's actually driving this migration it's not just vibes, it's math. According to creator economy analysts, only about 5% of your followers on social media actually see your posts. FIVE PERCENT. You could have 50,000 followers and be reaching 2,500 people on a good day.

Meanwhile, newsletter writers are regularly seeing 60% open rates. That means if you have 2,000 email subscribers, you're reaching more people than someone with ten times your social media following.

I've seen creators report losing 80% of their engagement overnight because of a single algorithm update they had no control over. Imagine going to work one day and finding out your salary got cut by four-fifths because your boss decided to rearrange the furniture. That's what we've been tolerating for years in the name of "building a following."

The thing about Substack (and really any email list) is that when someone subscribes, you get their email address. That's direct access that no tech company can take away. It's yours. You're not renting attention anymore, you're building an asset, and in a world where platforms can change their rules, ban your account, or simply decide to deprioritize your content because it doesn't generate enough ad revenue, that ownership matters more than ever.

Nobody wants to admit out loud that social media platforms don't actually want you to succeed; they want you to stay. There's a huge difference. Their business model is built on keeping people ON the platform, scrolling endlessly, consuming ads, generating data.

Your success? That's incidental. If you happen to make money or build a career while giving them free content, that's great for you, but it was never the point.

Substack flips that model entirely. They make money when you make money. They take 10% of your subscription revenue plus payment processing fees, and their entire business model is aligned with creators actually succeeding.

This is where it gets interesting from a business perspective: according to Substack's 2025 trend report, the platform has a 91% retention rate after 90 days. People who subscribe to newsletters stay subscribed. Compare that to social media followers who might unfollow you after one post that didn't resonate, or who never see your content again because the algorithm decided to ghost you. The relationship quality is completely different.

What's fascinating is watching who's making this shift. It's not just unknown writers hoping to find an audience. According to Dazed, this year alone we've seen Lena Dunham, Lily Allen, Rosalía, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt join Substack.

Charli XCX posted a photo of her laptop to Instagram captioning it "I wrote on Substack" and her first post got over 11 thousand likes. Lizzo recently wrote a think piece on cancel culture, saying "I'm having too much fun on Substack yall."

Even literary heavyweights are making the move. Esquire reported on how novelists like George Saunders, Salman Rushdie, and Chuck Palahniuk have migrated to Substack. Saunders launched his newsletter expecting to "just write 80 posts and then take a vacation" but found himself completely hooked by the comments section, with thousands of readers from Scotland to India to Australia chiming in. He described it as solving "a longstanding problem for the literary world" where great novels make readers feel changed but there was never a real way to speak back.

These aren't people who need Substack for exposure. They already have it. What they want is connection, ownership, and a direct line to the people who actually care about their work.

If you want to understand why Substack is working, look at who's winning on the platform. Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American" has over 2.7 million subscribers. She's a Boston College history professor who started writing daily essays putting current events in historical context during Trump's first impeachment.

Growth in Reverse's analysis reported she's estimated to be pulling in over $1 million per month, all without accepting sponsorships or brand partnerships. Her secret? Consistency and treating her readers like friends she's catching up with, not an audience she's performing for.

Then there's Emily Sundberg, whose newsletter "Feed Me" has become required reading for anyone who cares about business and culture. According to Semafor, she's built a cult following with over 50,000 subscribers, landing her in the sixth spot on Substack's paid leaderboard. Axios reported that Feed Me now reaches more than 150,000 readers and is projected to bring in seven-figure revenue this year.

She started it while working at Meta, went all-in after getting laid off in 2022, and built it by being "obsessed with the media industry and especially women's attention spans." Ankler Media CEO Janice Min described her as "almost like a Carrie Bradshaw of her generation."

In the product and tech space, Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter has become the gold standard. With 1.1 million subscribers and the #1 spot in Substack's Business category, Lenny (a former Airbnb PM) turned his expertise into deeply researched guides on product management, growth, and career advice.

He's expanded into a podcast, a 30,000+ member Slack community, and now offers premium tools bundled with subscriptions. It's the blueprint for how a newsletter can become an entire ecosystem.

What do all these people have in common? They're not just writing newsletters. They're building media companies where they own everything: the audience, the content, the relationship, the revenue. No algorithm can take that away.

If you're a creator, consultant, coach, or anyone with expertise to share, this shift should be on your radar. Not because Substack is perfect (no platform is, and some writers are already exploring competitors like Beehiiv and Ghost that charge flat fees instead of taking a cut). It's because the underlying behavior change matters more than any single platform.

People are increasingly willing to pay for content they value from voices they trust. The newsletter subscription isn't replacing social media entirely; it's becoming the foundation that social media supports. Think of it like this: social media is where you get discovered, your newsletter is where you build the relationship, and that relationship is what becomes the real asset.

This isn't a trend anymore. It's a structural shift in how media works, and we're all part of it whether we realize it or not.

I'm not going to pretend newsletters are some magic solution to the creator economy's problems. Building an audience anywhere takes time, consistency, and actual value. Most Substacks are inactive within six months. The ones that succeed are the ones where someone showed up and gave their readers something worth opening. That hasn't changed and probably never will.

What's different now is that you can actually own the thing you're building. You can download your subscriber list and take it somewhere else if you need to. You can reach people who actively chose to hear from you. You can build something sustainable instead of constantly chasing the next viral moment that might never come.

We've spent years playing someone else's game by someone else's rules. The rise of Substack (and the broader newsletter renaissance) is really just people realizing they can build their own game instead. It's slower. It's harder in some ways. It requires you to actually be good at what you do and not just good at performing for an algorithm.

For what it's worth, I'm figuring this out in real time too. I started my own Substack, because I needed a place to put the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else. The thought noodles that are too half-baked for my professional blog but too interesting (at least to me) to let disappear into a notes app.

A thirty-something living in New York, trying to make sense of work and culture and whatever chaos is happening in my inbox that week. It's what didn't make the group chat. If you're into that sort of thing, come sit with us.