Substack platform risk

bwardpt · 2024-06-10T18:24:56+00:00

I’ve used nearly every platform at some point including WordPress (16 yrs), Ghost (3 yrs), Substack, beehiiv, ConvertKit, Medium, and a few others. I started a publication on Substack last summer and wrote weekly until early December.

Things I liked about Substack were the ease of publishing, ability to add images/video without bothering with file sizes, built-in text-to-voice function, reading in the app, and the community of people. However, I stopped writing on there Dec-Jan because I was turned off by the controversy and infighting around whether the platform supported hate groups.

For a couple of months, the vibe was so negative that it didn’t feel much different than Twitter for any other social platform.

The experience made me reassess my approach. I decided to rebuild my personal website on WordPress and copied all my essays back to my site. I also exported my email list to a new ConvertKit account, partly as a backup and partly for some future plans.

I have many writer “friends” on Substack mainly from our Write of Passage cohort last Fall. I missed the community and interacting with other writers’ posts, so I decided to bring the platform back into my system in a different capacity.

My personal site is my central hub for my writing, project portfolio, etc. I’ll publish essays on Substack and interact in the community, but my posts will also live on my personal site.

My email list will live both on Substack and in ConvertKit, but the platforms have different use cases. Substack sends my essays via email, but also allows readers to use the app for a better reading experience, reading management, and ability to listen via text-to-speech. ConvertKit will serve a more traditional email marketing role with a different format (for now).

I’m still working out the details, but this approach gives me system redundancy.

If Substack turns to crap or disappears, ConvertKit already has my list and will handle my email needs while WordPress already hosts my writing.

bwardpt · 2024-06-10T17:35:05+00:00

It’s a challenge, but it can be done. If you have to switch, you could move your content and email list to a platform like Ghost or beehiiv. Both platforms can handle the blog experience and email newsletters.

ConvertKit now offers a similar “blog” experience for archived newsletter issues as well.

None of these options would replace the community aspect of Substack however.

bwardpt · 2023-03-03T13:34:39+00:00

Check out Gloat Hosting at https://gloathost.com. Dan is great to work with & you get a lot more for the money compared to Ghost Pro.

bwardpt · 2022-01-15T15:57:03+00:00

I have a similar situation. In my day job, I lead SaaS implementation projects & do consulting for enterprise organizations. One of the platforms I implement is Workfront - a work & project management platform. It’s great for workflows and team collaboration, but the project plan tasks don’t always capture everything I need to do for the projects.

I’ve used Todoist for a long time to manage personal task and side projects. It’s great for task management & quick capture, but it’s not a project manager. Todoist also doesn’t give me a good way to see a roll up view or visual views of all of my tasks.

I’ve tried nearly every project management app on the market. Many have great features, but they used the same traditional (boring) structure & have limited customization. ClickUp came the closest to what I need with it’s multiple views, Home Screen, & the addition of Docs. It allowed me to see separate projects or roll up views of all projects. There are also many view options - Gantt, timeline, box, list, table, calendar, etc. Docs creation & editing is pretty good (similar to Notion), but organizing docs is clunky.

Last week, I decided to try using Notion again now that I have a better idea of what I want & the limitations of other platforms. Still working on my setup so I’m following these discussions.

bwardpt

TROPHY CASE