bulaev.ai

Substack

CCCFreemium

Publishing · GTM & content

Newsletter plus blog plus paid subscriptions, with the audience list you own.

Open substack.com

What it is

Substack is a publishing platform where a newsletter, a public archive, podcasts, notes and paid subscriptions live under one publication. You write, it emails, and the archive doubles as a blog that search engines index. The subscriber list is exportable, which is the reason many founders choose it over a closed social platform: the relationship is yours even if you leave.

Publishing is free; Substack takes a percentage of paid subscription revenue and otherwise charges nothing. The network layer (recommendations between publications, Notes, the app) is where new readers come from without ads, and it rewards consistent cadence more than any single viral piece.

Where it fits in the AI OS

GTM & content, the long-form and owned-audience channel. Short posts go to LinkedIn and X for reach; the essay that explains the thinking behind them goes to the newsletter, and the newsletter is what a reader still receives when an algorithm changes. In an agent-run pipeline the draft comes from a skill, the human edits, and Substack is the last mile for email.

Insider notes

members

How Serge's stack uses it

Serge writes at bulaev.net, a Substack publication. The membership site's rules keep the two apart on purpose: bulaev.net stays a separate, additional stream, site posts are not duplicated to Substack and vice versa, cross-links and announcements are fine, and there are no redirects or migrations either way. The membership newsletter is the site's own, with blocks gated by tier.

Setup in 5 minutes

  1. Create a publication; pick a custom domain later, it is a paid add-on you do not need on day one.
  2. Import your existing list as CSV (subscribers arrive without a confirmation step).
  3. Write a short "who this is for" welcome post and pin it.
  4. Turn on a paid tier only once you have a month of free posts; the conversion comes from the archive, not the paywall.
  5. Cross-post the essay link to LinkedIn with a native summary, never a bare link.

Alternatives

  • beehiiv — stronger growth tooling (referrals, ad network), monthly fee instead of a revenue share.
  • Ghost — open-source, self-hostable, no revenue share; you run it.
  • Brevo / Mailchimp — email marketing tools if you do not need the public archive and network.
  • Your own site — see the bulaev.ai newsletter model: tier-gated blocks, full control, your engineering time.