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

151–160 of 373 posts

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#151

Post by Stratoscope »

throw0101d wrote: post #79
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…

> 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. I think that one should at least have one's own domain instead of example.substack.com. Substack allows for exporting posts (which would be good to do regularly just for backups in case of (account) compromise): * https://support.substack.co…

> I think that one should at least have one's own domain instead of example.substack.com.

I thought about this question when I recently started writing a few articles on Substack.

I chose not to use my own domain, even though I have a few.

Why? I want my writing to outlive me.

When I am no longer able to pay for domain renewals, my own domains will expire. Hopefully {my-hn-username}.substack.com will still be around.

Time will tell.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#152

Post by hnped »

moralestapia wrote: post #112
jdthedisciple wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How easy/difficult was it getting off the ground on substack? Did you get interactions right from your first post? Is there visibility for new writers?

Please x2. If you could write a small guide, that'd be phenomenal.

What is genuinely interesting is how Hacker News moderators will edit user posts, such that it looks as if the user replied to another post originally, without ever making that clear. What other lies and manipulation do they come with? Directly editing the content of posts silently, no sign of being edited?

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#153

Post by whalesalad »

My biggest grievance with Substack is that the font treatment (kerning is way off), coloring, spacing, etc of all of the posts is difficult to read. I can't read anything on Substack without a 3rd party reader tool. This is ironic because the core competency of a publishing tool is ensuring that your audience can read the content.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#154

Post by simonw »

pryelluw wrote: post #119
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…

This is super useful even if I just grab it as an idea to emulate. Have you used an agent to copy and paste for you ?

I've not tried that, honestly it's such a quick process already that waiting for some kind of browser automation to copy and paste would likely be slower.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#155

Post by rambambram »

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…

[flagged]

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#156

Post by throw0101d »

Stratoscope wrote: post #151
throw0101d wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think that one should at least have one's own domain instead of example.substack.com. Substack allows for exporting posts (which would be good to do regularly just for backups in case of (account) compromise): * https://support.substack.co…

> I think that one should at least have one's own domain instead of example.substack.com. I thought about this question when I recently started writing a few articles on Substack. I chose not to use my own domain, even though I have a few. Why? I want my writing to outlive me. When I am no longer able to pay for domain renewals, my own domains will expire. Hopefully {my-hn-username}.substack.com will still be around.…

> Why? I want my writing to outlive me.

Donate to archive.org.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#157

Post by sfRattan »

thataccount wrote: post #74
sfRattan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate sites like Substack because they are a single point of failure that rely on partners like Stripe for any kind of financial linkage. The real choke point is one step up the chain with payment processors, and since 9/11 and stricter KYC with banks, there's not a reliable, widely accepted path around those regulations. Cryptocurrency remains fringe. Running a self-hosted ghost or WordPress powered blog or newsl…

Most internet providers I've seen around lately have clauses against hosting your own website on residential providers. That provides two choke points. I used to be a Monero fan before its Blockchain became the size of Cyberpunk 2077.

> clauses against hosting your own website on residential providers

If their standard residential Internet packages don't offer truly static IP addresses, then it at least makes nominal sense to say: if you want to host your own website from your home, you pay some annual fee for a static IP that is not part of normal residential provision of service. But that can also quickly twist into charging exorbitant rates or pushing people hosting personal websites on their own hardware to pay for business plans they don't truly need.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#158

Post by BirAdam »

mertbio wrote: post #4

I recently started to write newsletters about Hamburg ( https://alsterrunde.com ). Before doing that I also considered Substack but seeing that I have to pay 50$ for just using my domain was a no-go. In the end, I ended up with my friend's hosted Ghost solution ( https://www.synapsmedia.com ). If you already have a Substack, you can also easily migrate to Ghost. Since it is open source, you can also host it on Hetzne…

This saved me when X killed Substack tweets. My Substack uses a custom domain and thus was fine. People tweeted it out with no blocking.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#159

Post by simonsarris »

jonahx wrote: post #144
simonsarris wrote: post #107

I just have website.com and my Substack is subdomain.website.com. If I ever wanted to move off (I definitely don't!) I could keep all the urls exactly the same with self-hosting. But substack solved distribution (and community, and bookkeeping, un-distribution etc) and it solved getting paid for my writing, which is not enough to live on but its definitely significant and well appreciated. It is worth much more than…

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-a…

> but because "everyone is there." That ubiquity is the only "genuine utilty" they are offering you.

Sure. So what? You nonetheless cannot deny the utility. The friends that I have made from social networks are no less real. I am very grateful they (the means to discover these people now in my life) exist.

Re: Substack writers, you need a website

#160

Post by eloisant »

IshKebab wrote: post #149
jonahx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-a…

It is wrong, but so are you. The truth is that social networks are big because they HAD genuine utility. The Facebook was amazing... at least until about 2010. I was at uni when it started and I vividly remember thinking "I wish there was a website or something that would help me know who everyone is" (we didn't have physical face books in the UK) and then a year later thefacebook turned up. Amazing for everyone's so…

Also because they closed all the gates of interoperability once they got big enough.

If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.

Post reply on HN