Is Substack The Place For Me?
What I think I know so far, thoughts on giving away pieces of me for free and paywalls.
This post might not be for you as a reader of my regular STUFF but it’s me explaining why I potentially need you here with me.
Am I in the right place here?
What I thought I was going to write last week when I arrived back here after a 7 month hiatus to my Substack has already changed.
It’s super easy and intuitive to write on this platform. You don’t have to worry about the optimisation and SEO skills required of a Wordpress blog post. Or the maintenance of a theme and plugins. Site speed was always something I was trying to improve on my blog. I don’t have to worry about that here.
It’s all done for you.
My SEO skills and I suppose some of my topics I wrote about ensured that at the optimum peak of writing, somewhere between 2018-2020 I sometimes had between 5-10k page views a month.
Fabulous figures for a hobby blogger.
I only ever blogged as a hobby, a sort of creative outlet but it was over really before I had chance to get properly into it. I left employment and co-founded a business in 2018 and so very quicklyI had less and less time to write. Mix in a few health problems and some family trauma and that time whittles down to zero.
I knew it had tons of potential but my business had to take precedence.
Writing is always something that pulls me back like the ebb and flow of the tide.
I came to Substack with nothing.
No subscribers, no big Instagram following, no book published or in the works.
I’d made the biggest mistake any writer on the internet can make, too.
I had never made much effort enticing subscribers to my old blog. Yes I had a lot of readers and commenting on my posts but I had put zero effort into capturing their email addresses.
It’s not that I didn’t know, either. I just didn’t do it.
The SEO aspect { Search Engine Optimisation or in plain English how stuff gets found on the web } is not great.
Sure there are some SEO options in the advanced setting section but it’s not exciting. I don’t see many Substack posts out on Google. I’ve done some random spot checks. Nothing scientific but it’s very much tumbleweed in SEO terms.
It’s all about community but it feels a bit sort of ring fenced. If they improved that I’d be a very happy bunny because apart from that I really cannot find fault.
And this time I’m collecting subscribers along the way .. properly .. that can come with me if I ever decide to move my virtual home again.
Imagine my whoops of delight when I reached my first 100 subs on here.
Substack’s whole business model is built on the subscription model.
And they positively encourage you to charge for your craft, too.
Right up to now I’ve struggled with turning on paid posts.
But when I really sat and gave this some deep thought again over this past week I’ve come to the decision that I’m going to give the paid model a try.
I think for too long on the web we’ve come to demand every little piece of everything for free. Especially content creation.
Creative people always bear the brunt of this.
Good stuff doesn’t randomly appear out of nowhere. Creatives put a lot of time and effort into creating entertaining and /or educational content.
Paywalling seems to be the latest big thing.
A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Wiki.
All of a sudden I’m finding paywalls everywhere. Wherever it seems I want to read something really informative there’s a paywall.
So how much paywalled content can you afford to subscribe to?
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
I haven’t personally paid to subscribe to anyone on here yet because how many can I afford?
There’s a few I’m very close to like joie de vivre by
..How do you stand out when everyone wants a fiver out of your bank account every month? 🤔
Then just last week while I was mulling all of this over Substack launched some more improvements to their tech stack.
and I was sold not gonna lie.
I made some of the changes myself to my theme. It’s so easy anyone can set themselves up here.
And another thing is I have the mother load of all Imposter Syndromes when I’m here.
Everyone seems to have been already successful when they set up shop.
There are tons of journalists, published authors and ex editors of many, many glossy magazines.
I particularly love Jo …
But I’ve got an itch I have to try and scratch so I just better get on with it and see where it takes me.
I need to be Mrs. Consistent this time because I have some ideas and the bones of a PLAN.
So please stick with me and let me try and give it my best shot.
Oh and please share with any friends just like you who might like what I write.
It all really helps.
Ciao for now,
Sharon x