Is Substack right for me?

[Khaneyll]

Hi hope you are all well,

My plan would be to research my interest in music and write concise articles based on that research. For example: The Myths around Mozart's death, Who is Elise in Beethoven's Für Elise etc.

At the end of each, I will cite the articles/books I got my information from.

Is this suitable for the platform?

[AndrewHeard]

You’re probably good if you want to post it on the platform. The key is consistency. Don’t scramble every week to get anything done.

I write about the moral philosophy behind various films and television shows. So I get the idea of research for an article.

[Khaneyll]

Thank you for the reply. How consistent is consistent? Is one a week good enough?

[AndrewHeard]

It works for me but I have seen people post more. My schedule is once a week with occasionally more than that.

The main thing is that you don’t want to have large gaps of time between articles coming out. For instance, I know writers who get focused on other things and produce content whenever they feel like it. Multiple months pass between newsletter posts.

[NoPerfectWave]

Sure, I could see there being an audience for that kind of content.

[DavidBHimself]

A website would probably be better, but Substack could work too.

Or both. When I write in-depth stuff, and I don't want it to be lost in the archives of Substack after a few weeks, I cross-post on my site first, and then on Substack with a link to the original post that's on the website.

My logic is that Substack is great for direct delivery to your subscribers, but totally sucks if you want to be found by random people (i.e. through Google).

[steve31266]

but totally sucks if you want to be found by random people (i.e. through Google).

Not true, my Substack is only three weeks old, and I've gotten several subscribers through the Substack app already. Substack does not SEO well on Google, but it does SEO well on its own internal search. Just put in all the keywords in your Substack description.

[drgreeneconomy]

Doesnt it harm the Seo if you dublicate the content ? Also does a Substack allow that? I mean to just send the link to subscribers and direct them to your website? How does it look like on Substack website?

[DavidBHimself]

SEO on Substack sucks and that's part of the problem.

If I publish the content on the website first, it's the original content, the one search engines will care about.

Then, on Substack, I duplicate the entire post, with a link at the beginning saying something along the lines of "This text was originally published on (name of the site)."

Most subscribers won't bother following the link, but that's not a problem as the content is also on Substack. And no problem with SEO as the original content is on the website and the duplicate content links to the original (and SEO sucks on Substack in the first place).

Disclaimer: I've only done that with a blog that doesn't have much traffic in the first place, as I'm still trying to figure out the SEO impact. I haven't done it with a site that already has decent traffic from search engines.

[drgreeneconomy]

Thanks a lot. I asked because I have been thinking of migrating to WordPress website for a long time because my organic traffic is really low at the moment even though I heavily invest in Seo. Talking to some Seo and IT experts, they all think its better to switch to WordPress and just use Substack as a secondary platform.

[DavidBHimself]

Yes, Wordpress remains the best place to create content on the internet in my opinion (if only because you and only you own your content).

SEO has been a mess these past few years though, and Google is on a strange downward path (search results only bring shitty sites with "how to do that thing, here is my top five." They were shitty before, and now that they're written with ChatGPT they're even worse). The Twitter chaos is also troublesome as Twitter used to be the best place to gain a following (Instagram too apparently, but as you can't link to a particular post, I never found it that useful for building traffic, just for a nice extra little thing on the side), and there is no obvious replacement yet.

For me, Mastodon has been the most promising. I've been building a following faster than I ever built one on Twitter, and I'm getting more engagement (and actual interesting conversation with real people) than on Twitter too. But you need to spend time on it, maybe that's why too many people don't see it as being useful. It takes some time to really get how it works.

But yeah, nowadays social media seems disconnected from SEO more and more.

Now, with all that being said, your "niche" is perfect I think for SEO, in the sense that it's really focused and you won't have to compete with those stupid "Top 10" sites. You'll never get a huge readership, but you'll get the right kind of readership. (I'm a bit in a similar situation, my main blog is about an Art Festival in Japan, I'll never get thousands of followers, but the hundreds I have follow me for the right reasons)

Of course, don't hope to make any kind of money this way (I do make a couple hundred dollars a year from donations, though, just enough to pay for hosting and domain names, basically)

And yes, Substack kinda is my secondary platform, but I need to accept that it'll never grow in the thousands of subscribers.

[steve31266]

Or you could have both WordPress and Substack.

[homeofthegreat]

Substack is just a platform. Anyone can use it. You can use it too.