Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Substack writers, you need a website

elizabethtai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 373 posts

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#51

Post by goostavos »

zahlman wrote: post #43
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…

What if I want people to read me without needing a subscription or email disclosure? What's the email for anyway? So that you can get sent notifications of new posts? ... People read those kinds of emails? I always curse myself for finding a way to get them sent to myself, and file them away somewhere until I can figure out how to turn them off.

...I use email notifications. I follow very few people (fewer than 10), so I'm always happy when an email pops up letting me know they've written something.

I don't pay attention to my RSS reader, and barely use social media. For whatever reason, email works for me.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#52

Post by wizzwizz4 »

zahlman wrote: post #45
dpkirchner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

https://web.archive.org/web/20251221230655/https://www.userm...

> Substack sent a push alert encouraging users to subscribe to a Nazi newsletter that claimed Jewish people are a sickness and that we must eradicate minorities to build a “White homeland.” […] The newsletter's logo is a swastika and it has pushed Holocaust denialism along with news and opinion content for the 'White Nationalist Community.' […] Substack is primarily funded by Andreessen Horowitz, a firm whose founders have pushed extreme far right rhetoric.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#53

Post by pitchlatte »

firasd wrote: post #34

I think just the $5/mo or so for hosting a WordPress blog and then the $20/yr for a domain name is prohibitive for many people—-not necessarily financially but like ‘oh great now I gotta deal with this’. So that’s why Medium in the past and now Substack etc end up as fallbacks

given that wordpress.com is just managed hosting i wonder if other providers can bring that cost down. installing it yourself is trivial though because of Softaculous, and web hosting is much cheaper.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#54

Post by cosmicgadget »

CM30 wrote: post #38

Yeah, even if the website itself gets less traffic than the places you syndicate the content to, it's at least a stable home base that's there if those platforms fall apart. Are you posting something that corporations or celebrities don't like/want to see shared? Then posting it on your own site means that the buck stops with you, and they'll have to force you to take it down in court rather than relying on advertise…

And HN is kind of like the HOA of websites, giving you notices about color choice, pets, and under construction gifs.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#55

Post by throw1234567891 »

billyp-rva wrote: post #15
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.

When they will, you’ll be free to take action.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#56

Post by simonw »

rsingel wrote: post #39
simonw wrote: post #30

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsletter. I get to use Substack for email distribution (which would cost me hundreds of dollars a month using most other solutions, I have 66,000 subscribers now) but my own blog stays the original point of truth. Here's the tool I use for the copy-pasting: https…

You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.

Ghost would cost $288/month (or $241/month paid yearly).

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#57

Post by nickthegreek »

zahlman wrote: post #43
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…

What if I want people to read me without needing a subscription or email disclosure? What's the email for anyway? So that you can get sent notifications of new posts? ... People read those kinds of emails? I always curse myself for finding a way to get them sent to myself, and file them away somewhere until I can figure out how to turn them off.

> What if I want people to read me without needing a subscription or email disclosure?

Medium is where you can post and get a bit of what substack offers while giving you the ability to make your post freely available via the web.

> What's the email for anyway? So that you can get sent notifications of new posts?

On substack, you get the whole newsletter in the email. you dont need to go to a website. I use https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ to put them in my rss though.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#58

Post by carlosjobim »

firasd wrote: post #34

I think just the $5/mo or so for hosting a WordPress blog and then the $20/yr for a domain name is prohibitive for many people—-not necessarily financially but like ‘oh great now I gotta deal with this’. So that’s why Medium in the past and now Substack etc end up as fallbacks

Yes, that's what it is. Even worse if you want to get paid through subscriptions. Although Ghost blog might be a good middle option.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#59

Post by drdexebtjl »

simonw wrote: post #30

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsletter. I get to use Substack for email distribution (which would cost me hundreds of dollars a month using most other solutions, I have 66,000 subscribers now) but my own blog stays the original point of truth. Here's the tool I use for the copy-pasting: https…

At 66,000 messages/week, you’d actually be spending around $50-$80 monthly with SES and a VPS + database for handling bounces and unsubscribe requests.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#60

Post by wxw »

I think https://indieweb.org/POSSE is generally a good compromise.

Frankly, if writing is becoming a serious business for you, it's probably better to work across ALL of Substack/personal site/X/etc. They're all worthwhile distribution and monetization channels and can serve different purposes.

Post reply on HN