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Substack writers, you need a website

elizabethtai.com

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Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#121

Post by jmmv »

I've been blogging for 22 years now. At the beginning I could tell I had a relatively steady audience based on frequent comments (when comments on blogs were a thing). These died off over the years. Then, in 2020, I implemented my own unobtrusive subscription mechanism and email distribution to try to regain such an audience. And... it's pretty disappointing. I've gotten less than 200 subscribers that way; conversions just don't happy.

Then I "switched" to Substack 3 years ago and the audience growth is real. I'm approaching 2000 subscribers (some of which are paid, which always surprises me and I appreciate), and these keep growing organically although I'm sure a large portion of which are fake. It's hard to say it doesn't work or isn't worth it.

Now... spoiler: I never "switched" to Substack. I continue to write all of my content on my website _first_, with all of the features it had before, but now I copy/paste the content into Substack and distribute it that way. It's painful, but I have scars from when I moved off of Medium and want to ensure I "own" the originals.

If you are curious, I had written more about this 2 years ago in https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/20-years-of-blogging

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#122

Post by InsideOutSanta »

peteforde wrote: post #114

Everyone's experience will be different, but I will say that I have not received significant network effects traffic on Substack nor have I ever been tempted to click on suggested posts to others' content. In short, I think that for the vast majority of casual posters, the aspirational upsides of joining a network are going to fall flat. Like with most aggregators, the popular things tend to be promoted more. So, for…

Same, every time I end up on a substack post, it's from an external source. Maybe there is a network effect on substack that makes it easier to get these external links, but I doubt most actual readers are coming from inside the substack ecosystem.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#124

Post by hungryhobbit »

nickthegreek wrote: post #118
hungryhobbit wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick Medium, it's great ... if you want a paywall to turn away half your visitors!

The author has the option to enable that or not.

And (judging by the number of Medium articles I've been turned away from) 95% of all authors leave it on.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#125

Post by 4ndrewl »

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…

It's not really a counterpoint when it's addressed in the article.

"The biggest pushback I hear from writers is: “But my website doesn’t have an audience! Substack does.”

But you don’t have to completely abandon social media or platforms like Substack to protect your autonomy (personally, I prefer the word sovereignty but it does sound a tad dramatic)."

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#126

Post by cosmicgadget »

boplicity wrote: post #103
cosmicgadget wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of disgusting that inbox clutter from a publishing service is the dominant delivery paradigm as opposed to browsers natively checking bookmarked RSS feeds.

Email is so well designed, so resilient, and so ubiquitous that's very hard to displace it's use as a central check-in.

Right which is why I'd only suggest the browser as an alternative. Imho a browser is something I open when I proactively am seeking information/entertainment and thereby fits blog reading better than email which is more like an interrupt.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#127

Post by dlcarrier »

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.

There's enough demand for the feature that if they stop supporting it, they won't be able to compete against anyone offering the feature.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#128

Post by interstingstuff »

jmmv wrote: post #121

I've been blogging for 22 years now. At the beginning I could tell I had a relatively steady audience based on frequent comments (when comments on blogs were a thing). These died off over the years. Then, in 2020, I implemented my own unobtrusive subscription mechanism and email distribution to try to regain such an audience. And... it's pretty disappointing. I've gotten less than 200 subscribers that way; conversion…

[dead]

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#129

Post by Swizec »

6510 wrote: post #91
wofo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My blog used to be RSS only, because I thought email subscriptions were a plot of "content creators" and not something readers actually wanted... until one of my readers told me he really recommended adding email as an option. I did, and a surprising number of people subscribed since then.

For a decade or~so I subscribe to newsletters and had skip inbox rules that archived them in a folder about the subject. Eventually I never really looked at the folders but it never bothered me as I don't really see them. Not sure if that means it works or not.

> Eventually I never really looked at the folders but it never bothered me as I don't really see them

Most people don't read most newsletters. Some people read some.

This Saturday I sent an email. It has since been opened by 26% of my subscribers, that's 4,600 people. 780 people clicked on a link.

I tweeted the same email as a link and got pretty good engagement! 20 likes, 2 retweets – that's decent for me these days. It was seen 1400 times. 78 people clicked on a link.

I have roughly the same number of followers as I do email subscribers.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#130

Post by ninjahawk1 »

If you can generate traffic to your website while having a deep email list as well of people who are alerted when you write, you essentially make yourself unable to be censored or deplatformed. Large companies want you there so they make money from your content, make your own platform and get your own users and you have the keys to the kingdom.
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