I wrote about Monetizing Writing on Substack: The Payment Challenges Faced by Indian Writers, which is my most widely read article on medium. The article on the problems of monetising on Substack articulates the frustration of writers from India and other countries where Stripe has no support.
I had successfully connected my 2017 created Stripe with Substack and I was under the impression everything was going fine. Until one day a subscriber complained she was trying to become the founder member and her credit and debit card wouldn’t process.
I thought perhaps it was the extra verification needed for Indian payments, so I tweaked the setting and added the 3D secure stuff. Then I informed my patron again, that she could try again. She again said the payment won’t get through.
I was frustrated and decided to find alternative ways I could monetise my writing. Meanwhile, now Substack displayed a notice saying that there was a problem with my Stripe account and that I might need to do some extra verification. I also got an email from Stripe to verify.
I tried to verify, but nothing seemed to work, so I wrote an email to Stripe. A few days later I got a reply, saying that since my account had been dormant for a long time, they had discontinued my account and If I wanted to get on Stripe, I would need to request an invite from someone who has an existing Stripe Business account.
I am not a startup and don’t see any need for a Business account. The reply from Stripe was rather generic and it felt that they had no interest to service Indian prospects.
Scrollstack to the rescue
I first heard about Scroll Stack in 2021. It is founded by Ritesh Mehta and they are seemed to be based out of New Jersey as per this perplexity search result.. What I like about Scroll Stack is that they support Indian users with UPI and I had no problem receiving payments.
Scroll Stack is not free like Substack
Substack and Stripe have shown the least interest in helping Indian writers monetise. I had my back against the wall and went for a paid account on ScrollStack, it is slightly more expensive than the Medium Partnership Program, but I feel my readers are not on Medium and Medium is crowded with a stereotype of users who are not my TG audience. Scrollstack charges Rs 4999/- per year + a hefty commission of 10 per cent for Pro users and 25% for free users. Read more here.
Features meant for a different audience than that of Substack.
I have gone for the Pro plan, as I feel there is a lot of flexibility on the types of content. Medium is plain vanilla, but ScrollStack is a strong competitor to Substack. It doesn’t seem to have podcast features and automatic asset creation for posting on social media accounts. Instead, it has some AI features like selecting some text and it auto-generates some graphics for you.
Pro-Users can add a custom domain and import up to 10000 email subscribers. I have imported my 1600-odd subscribers from Substack and have not gone for a custom domain and I am not sure, I can afford a paid account. I had some beginner’s luck and have earned about 5000 INR so far.
I have been posting articles have started one fiction novel project and have written one chapter. In case you want to follow my writing on Scrollstack, check my Scrollstack account here.
Conclusion
I would have loved to stick to Substack, but I don’t see Stripe support working and I don’t see Substack keen on helping the average Indian writer. Scrollstack will benefit from this market gap but I don’t see them aggressively marketing. If you are stuck with monetising your writing, ScrollStack lets you have tighter control of your content and helps you paywall.
If you are an Indian writer and have the same problems, do let me know, if there are other platforms for monetising.