Substack writers, you need a website • Hacker News Board

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#11

Post by dghlsakjg » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #3

josefritzishere wrote: post #2

TLDR: POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Is there a guide for how to do the “syndicate elsewhere” part? For the HN audience, the first part is trivially easy (getting a domain, publishing on it) but the second probably isn’t obvious.

Depending on how often you write copy and paste to “elsewhere” is the easy answer.

Substack really wants you to use them as a primary publisher so they don’t make it easy to programmatically put content up. Other platforms have varying levels of ease around this.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#12

Post by rusk » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

skippyfish wrote: post #6

Counterpoint from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website. It's as simple as that. You need a push mechanism to reach readers. RSS could be it, but it's too niche. Social media is kinda it, but algorithmic feeds reward political clickbait and just because someone clicks "follow" or "subscribe" is not a guarantee that they will ever see your posts. Substack gives you a…

I actively skip stuff that’s on substack just like I do medium and blogger. Maybe there’s good stuff on there but it’s usually a by-word for slop. I figure if anyone has anything that interesting to say they’d make the effort and put it up on something more serious looking.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#13

Post by doublepg23 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

I've always understood platforms like Substack or Patreon to really be a solution to the payment processing problem first and foremost.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#14

Post by raincole » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

Did we really learn nothing from Medium's situation?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#15

Post by billyp-rva » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

skippyfish wrote: post #6

Counterpoint from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website. It's as simple as that. You need a push mechanism to reach readers. RSS could be it, but it's too niche. Social media is kinda it, but algorithmic feeds reward political clickbait and just because someone clicks "follow" or "subscribe" is not a guarantee that they will ever see your posts. Substack gives you a…

> Substack gives you a way to push content to your subscribers without an intermediary deciding what they get to read.

How do we know they won't start limiting your reach in the future? That's the path basically every other platform has gone down.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#16

Post by elgolem89 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

who reads websites these days?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#17

Post by spelk » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

acmnrs wrote: post #8

Alternatively, use an open platform that doesn't lock you in: * Leaflet * Offprint * Pckt

I think from a technical perspective, newsletters are a solved problems with lots of options as you've mentioned.

Substack thrives because it's built a reputation for having well-reasoned or engaging voices in a newsletter format. They pushed a big campaign to onboard writers like Bill Bishop (Sinocism) onto the platform early on. Because of that, newer writers are likely seeking to tap into the network effects/discovery systems that comes with having big names on the platform.

People log onto Instagram, Tik Tok, X, etc. because the people they're interested are already on the platform, and the platform provides a recommendation system that allows newer "creators" to tap into an existing audience for others in their niche.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#18

Post by cosmicgadget » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

skippyfish wrote: post #6

Counterpoint from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website. It's as simple as that. You need a push mechanism to reach readers. RSS could be it, but it's too niche. Social media is kinda it, but algorithmic feeds reward political clickbait and just because someone clicks "follow" or "subscribe" is not a guarantee that they will ever see your posts. Substack gives you a…

I mean, can't you accomplish the same thing with "enter your email/social handle to be notified when I post something"?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#19

Post by t-writescode » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

doublepg23 wrote: post #13

I've always understood platforms like Substack or Patreon to really be a solution to the payment processing problem first and foremost.

That’s exactly right. Finding ways to get paid for your work, and all the very complicated way taxes interact with it all, unless you’re going all-in on ads, is a messy problem that people will happily centralize for.

And for the less technical people, we have 30+ years of solving this problem with different websites that each went in and out of vogue, from groceries and MySpace, through Facebook and now Medium and Substack.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#20

Post by f311a » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

Substack gives a really nice exposure though, unlike medium and other platforms.

It's very hard to gain readers now on independent websites. Google search is dead (very few people now search for tech content), social media platforms penalize you for posting links and so on.

You can get a few thousand subscribers on Substack just by being consistent and interacting with other people. Now try gaining 1000 subscribers to an e-mail newsletter or RSS from your personal blog. People who tried it know that 5,000 views on your blog can convert to a few subscribers, and you need to get those 5000 somehow first.

A lot of people just repost their articles to substack for a reason. It's not forbidden. You can repost them from your personal blog.