Outlive social media with a website and an email list
Outlive social media with a website and an email list
We leave together
I got a few questions from
via Substack Notes, and figured I’d share my answers with everyone. Enjoy.Q. What made you choose this platform above all others?
Honestly, I started all of this using Circle, under the name HEAVY METAL EMAIL.
I wanted an online space for musicians to come together and talk about reaching their fans with an old-fashioned email newsletter. This was back in mid-2021 or so. I Tweeted about this little project and got about 19 people to click and sign up.
But things felt off.
I wasn’t using a newsletter to talk about newsletters, so I started looking for at Ghost, Beehiv, and of course Substack.
I picked Substack because I didn’t want to mess with designs and themes and settings, I just wanted to import my subscriber list of 19 people and send them an email.
Oh, and it was free.
With any new platform, the “Is this tool for me?” phase can get cloudy with just a 30-day trial to determine whether it’s a proper fit.
But then Substack rolled out Recommendations, which led to 2,000 new subscribers (remember, I started with 19).
Substack rolled out Notes, which feels like the early Twitter days. That’s led to making friends, paid clients, and plenty of fun interactions. It feels like I’m not just shoveling my “content” into a social media platform and hoping for a click.
Substack has let you upload video for the last few years, embed audio, and set up paid subscriptions, all for just a 10% cut.
For me, Substack is the place to be right now, and it’s built around the concept of having an email list. Call it social media if you want, but my email list will serve me for the next several years, even if this place goes out of business.
Q. Are there any other web spaces you recommend for creators?
This question always leads me to its deeper meaning, which sounds something like, “Where are some good places I can set up where MORE PEOPLE can see my stuff?”
Being “a regular” at 10 different coffee shops in town takes a lot of time and energy, so I’m always wary of going on that journey.
I recommend focusing on one or two places at most, intentionally driving the interest and clicks back to a place (Substack or your website) where people who want to become bigger fans of your work can subscribe to an email list.
When you spend all your time on social media platforms, you’re building an audience you can’t reach.
The long game is building an email list to reach people who want to hear from you.
Q. Would you recommend Substack over a personal webpage or is this better?
Substack is a platform like any other, and it can disappear tomorrow (that’s a reminder to export your email list).
Right now (9/24/2024), I recommend setting up Substack to give people an easy way to subscribe to your email list and to read your work online.
That said, I will always recommend you set up a website/blog to have a running archive of your work, a space on the internet that is wholly yours, where you control the branding, the vibes, the images, the typeface - everything.
I have a blog I’ve been updating since 2018 (sethw.xyz), and I’ve been adding and archiving my work from all over the internet, which dates back to 2004.
does this exceptionally well - he has a blog with posts dating back to 2015. He started posting on Substack on Jan 1, 2021 (here), and has been linking between the two ever since.
Austin is also on Tumblr, too (thanks
for the heads up). I haven’t seen a post that links back to his work, but as you can see, right below his name, he links back to his site with three links, and his Substack.Final thoughts:
Don’t leave your fans and readers to bounce around between different platforms like a pinball machine.
Have a website, provide a way for people to sign up for a newsletter, and then send them a damn good newsletter on occasion, telling them about the cool things you’re doing.
Then we get back to work.
Further reading:
This isn’t the first time I wrote about this subject:
I’m Seth Werkheiser, and you should hire me to help reboot (or start) your email list (and we can do the same with your website).
First, we’ll talk for an hour about your project, your goals, and dreams.
I’ll load your Social Media Escape Plan into a private Basecamp project (it’s cool, I promise).
You start working on the tasks I assign to reach your goals, and I’ll be there to assit!
We’ll wrap up with another one hour call.
This whole process usually lasts 2-3 weeks. Got questions? hey@sethw.xyz
Join the 30+ folks directly supporting this publication by becoming a paid subscriber.
Ditch Gmail and give Fastmail a try (affiliate link)
With the website/blog, do you take what you publish on Substack and essentially copy it to the blog space as well???
Thanks for the reminder that I need to move everything over to here… and stop with the Pinballing!!