Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I think your estimate is wrong, and many subscribers do so because they want to read the private pieces. Just intuitively, you'll want to see pieces from an author you like that you can't see, and that'll push you to subscribe. My general impression from web content creators is that support from the goodness of consumers' hearts pays much less well than tangible benefits for paying. I guess if you're thinking about ACX, there are't that many ACX private pieces and they're not particularly important, and scott still makes money. But he's kind of an outlier there - most (eg freddie) have significant parts of their output private, and some (e.g. matthew yglesias) have most posts private. Some business/finance substacks are entirely private. Sure, failures of whole marketplaces to do obvious things aren't unprecedented, but I think the simple explanation is better.
It's likely that your best content shouldn't be paywalled, so people can share it and bring you new readers (and the company agrees). But I'm pretty confident having some posts paywalled is good for subscription numbers - intuitively, based on substack's promotion of the paywall, and based on how many creators use the paywall.
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