Perhaps you're conflating too many things? Ask first, what value do I add to the world? (Arguably loads.) Then ask: How do I (best) distribute this value? To this perhaps one of your answers is Substack, which may or may not be one of many tools you use for this purpose. Then the follow on question is what value do you get back from it?

Given HCR's numbers (especially in comparison with Twitter) and her time on the platform, I suspect she may have (or at this point had) some sort of special platform deal with Substack which isn't publicly known beyond the basics of what the typical person could get. It's probably the modern digital equivalent of the sort of deal a highly visible academic might get from a magazine like The Atlantic. The pay scale may be different but we can obviously see that the daily output is wildly different too. If you're not aware, when Substack started they reached out to a wide variety of famous/semi-famous people and helped them to build a quick audience that would have taken them far more time and effort than they would otherwise have ever invested. Part of this was providing initial payment/seed money which was really their early investment for getting lots of quality content on the platform as a means of drawing the masses to come to the platform to both read and create as well. Unless you're a massive name working with them directly, you're unlikely to get this sort of deal today, and this means a tougher up hill slog for the "rest of us" as the platform doesn't need to pay for this sort of scaling/network effect now. If nothing else, knowing these early economies of Substack (and really lots of other social platforms, Medium certainly followed this script as an example) will help you to have a broader perspective and better compare your apples to others' oranges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/business/media/evan-williams-leaving-medium.html

https://scribe.rip/

https://medium.com/kens-commonplace-book/about

An example of a digital commonplace on Medium.com

I would love to see you submit this to the new DigiSoc@VCU Medium.com page. You would need to strengthen the conclusions. You discuss is so very powerful up until the end. The it falls a bit flat. What are the implications of this new form of digital social capital? Are there other ways of mapping and measuring it? How can SNA advance this literature? What research questions come out of the alt-right study? These are the type of questions you should explore in your conclusions.