Monetizing Writing on Substack: The Payment Challenges Faced by Indian Writers
As I get older, I feel pleasure in being alone! Yes, I am on a hedonist treadmill. My guilty pleasure is being alone and thinking because the mind won’t stop thinking. I see the ROI of writing is that one begins to read a lot and starts connecting many dots. A person who isn’t well-read is not capable of 2nd-order or 3rd-order thinking. Writing to me is a tool for deep thinking.
Now as long as daddy pays your bills you can indulge in hedonistic pleasures. My Dad (RIP) left in 1999. I am now trying to fund this pleasure with writing assignments by Writewave, which is where I write email newsletters for clients, and Prime Leads, where I create 5k word Lead magnet solutions for businesses.
However, the above solutions for indulging in my passion for writing are narrowly focused. I can write on subjects other than trying to sell to other people or businesses. I want people from diverse perspectives to read my thoughts. It might be an exhibitionist impulse to show my naked mind. But then it is much more than that. It is about status signalling, content is a form of leverage, it is displaying the power of thinking (hey, I know more words than you), it is a dare, to say the unthought. Writing for me means saying what I want without getting into an upfront confrontation. People get offended if you tell them you have dreams, they think you a means to their ends, period.
Hedonist pleasure, exhibitionist tendencies, status display, saying to the world without offending anyone that I have dreams, and using the anonymous pen behind the writing medium to urge people to think deeper.
I don’t like to have a purpose or meaning to life, I ideally want to be innocent and wild like an animal. But if there ever was an option for a purpose, I would say, for me it is all about improving the aesthetics of society, to find the true beauty and innocence, which is lost in desires and goals.
Crowd Funding my Writing
Now that I have defined to you that I need to write for pleasure and fund it, let me tell you why I need to crowd-fund my writing.
Every writer has to go through various stages. I am at that stage where my writing must be raw ( for lack of time to look at a more fitting synonym). I have no formal training except reading a few books on writing here and there. I wish I had a literary style like that of Susan Sontag, or I could write colloquially like Jerry Pinto. But I feel to get there, I need to take steps, I can’t leapfrog to how they write. I don’t even know what the next step is. The only validation I can think of is more and more people reading me. In case you know there are more ways to get validated as a writer, let me know.
Publishers nowadays see how good your personal brand is and then they give you an advance based on how much you can sell, rather than how well you can write. Selling is more difficult than writing, they can get a copy editor and enhance your shitty manuscript. I am trying to get the numbers, I want enough people to fund me so I can discover the next step to improve my writing skills.
Quest to find a Writing Platform
There are primarily two writing platforms popular for writing. Substack is the more popular one, followed by Medium.
The beauty of Substack is that it doesn’t charge anything upfront, it lets you set your subscription rates, and if you get a paid subscriber, you pay 10 per cent of the same. I waited in 2023 for Substack and Medium to allow Indian writers to monetize, but for them, India was not an important market.
Substack had announced in 2020 that it supported paid subscriptions for writers based in India, but Stripe, which is the only payment gateway integrated for recurring payments, works for INR for individuals, which means only people in India can pay you as an individual if you need to accept USD a writer will have to register as a business, which means getting a gumasta licence to open a bank account, can you imagine the pain of an individual writer to go through this?. As knowledge workers, are not able to capitalize on the exchange rate differences. Substack won’t even allow you to sell subscriptions below 5 USD if you choose to set your subscriptions in USD. But for INR, I have set my monthly subscription to INR 99/-.
Screenshot by Dropbox Capture.png
Medium, on the other hand, started supporting writers from India with their Medium Partner Program in September 2023, as per this news report. But there is a catch, you need to be a paid member, which costs 5 USD, to get paid when someone reads you. This means there is an entry cost, which made me choose Substack over Medium. Medium closed Ecosystem which gives the privilege of reading to only medium members felt inferior to that of Substack. I might be wrong, cause for 5 USD, one can read any amount of content you want. But Substack is more enticing as it feels more ego-gratifying and rewarding, you can feel like a rockstar if people pay to read your content exclusively, this is the biggest lure of substack, and it is more aspirational than Medium.
RBI(Reserve Bank of India) and its policies led Stripe out of India
The problem is not Substack, Medium, or another popular CMS called Ghost. The problem is RBI which has mandated the extensive KYC requirements that nimble-footed startups like Stripe would rather focus their energies on a friendlier country than India, red tape Babu’s. Stripe, no longer lets Indian users create an account. Account creation is now by invite only and Stripe does selective onboarding. If you allow me some conspiracy theory, I feel that the Indian Government has made life difficult for Stripe, and I am sure there is politics here, as they might want UPI to not be overshadowed, as the success of UPI is the crowning glory on Modi 1.0. It shows the inefficiencies of the government, which is directly stopping me from making money.
This Personal Substack was forced on me.
I run another newsletter where 98 per cent of my subscribers are from outside India, and because Stripe does not support USD payments, I cannot monetize this community which has higher PPP (purchasing power parity). I planned to get Rs 2500 (30 USD) x 10 subscriptions from my international readers every month, which would mean an income of 25k/month.
Not able to monetize my international community, I decided to monetize for Indian readers. I am now writing for an Indian audience.
I have to map out the landscape of Indian readers. A deep search tells me there are about 10 crore Indians on the internet who are proficient in reading English. This big number of 10 crore Indians on the internet who are proficient in English is a huge market size. How difficult would it be to monetize? I once met a senior from a big internet first news portal 5 years back and he was telling me they would get hits in millions on an article but not one would do a paid subscription. This is the scary reality for aspiring writers trying to make a buck. The silver lining is that writing itself is a reward as it gives you clarity of thought and makes the path ahead a bit clearer.
I would love your feedback in kind or subscription, it is only 99 Rs per month 😉.In case any writer reading this, wants to discuss Substack or setup help on Substack, Ghost, or Medium, get get in touch with me.
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Glossary
Ghost
Ghost CMS is a modern, open-source platform for professional publishing, focusing on simplicity and speed, ideal for bloggers, journalists, and content creators to build and manage websites efficiently.
hedonist
A hedonist is someone who pursues pleasure and self-indulgence as the highest good, often prioritizing enjoyment and sensory gratification over other life goals or moral considerations.
Jerry Pinto
Jerry Pinto is an Indian author, poet, and journalist known for Em and the Big Hoom and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, winning multiple literary awards.
Medium
Medium is a digital platform for sharing articles and stories, known for its clean design and focus on long-form content. It allows writers to publish and monetize their work, while readers can explore diverse topics and follow their favorite authors.
Stripe
Stripe is a leading payment processing platform offering APIs and tools for seamless online transactions, serving businesses of all sizes globally, facilitating e-commerce, subscriptions, and more.
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual known for works like On Photography and Against Interpretation, exploring culture, art, and politics.
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
PPP is an economic concept that compares the relative value of currencies by measuring the cost of a standardized basket of goods and services in different countries. It adjusts exchange rates to reflect equal purchasing power, enabling more accurate comparisons of living standards and economic productivity across nations.