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Substack writers, you need a website
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Re: Substack writers, you need a website
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
you said: "...from someone who's been publishing on the internet for decades: no one will visit your website" This is false. It's more accurate to say that "no one will visit your website if you do not properly setup a distribution ecosystem". It's hard work. But it works. All of my companies have been built by writing online --> distribution --> people finding my/our stuff. Your experience of 'doing it for decades'…
I write 1-2 hours a day but I dont spend anywhere near that much time on distribution so this is a learning opportunity... would be great if you could help me understand the activities/tasks you undertake? What do you do to spend the 2 - 4 hours on distribution? Is this daily? Or per task/article??
sure, well there are two categories of activity: (1) no-money distribution and (2) with money distribution
* No Money *
You have to invest time. On all new projects I start here, even if I have a budget. That is because you can learn a lot more by "being on the ground" so to speak.
Here are some activities you can do:
- post on news aggregator sites like hacker news (there are lots of different ones that are niche specific)
- post on social media. This will require you to build up your social media in the first place. This takes a lot of time if you are starting.
- guest content for other peoples platform
- finding similar, non competing people in your niche and create for them, link back to you.
- Spend time writing and re-writing really helpful stuff. This helps with word of mouth.
- hardest one - actually making friends. I have made many online friends over the years by taking an interest in them. Some of them are now massive. They sometimes distribute the things they like of mine
- CRITICAL: a lot of people will read the above and think "okay, but he has a network...that is why it works", and they would be correct. But, and this is key, building a network is a skill. Learn it.
When I said I spend 2-4 hours per day sometimes, these are the things I'm doing above.
* With Money *
- SEO - seo is very expensive. backlinks, promoted content, optimization
- paid traffic to content - can start the budget low but need to be skilled in paid ads to make this work.
- Paid media buys - for example paying for your content to be featured in someone else's newsletter. If they have a list of 50,000, as an example, you might pay $1,000 for that placement. If that same list was in the finance space, you might pay $30,000. It's contextual.
Even though these paid strategies are paid, they still take time.
Re: Substack writers, you need a website
#373Counterpoint 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…
> no one will visit your website... RSS could be it
I thought it too, then I broke the RSS feed on my blog and someone complained immediately.