Why I'm Moving From Substack
Practicing The Write Stuff Issue #63
Back in Issue 42 I talked about:
And though PTWS is a free newseltter, and not paid, I’ve made the decision to start moving my content off Substack and put it onto my own website. This is a personal decision…and if you run your own newsletter then my reasons might not align with yours. And you should only make decisions based on your needs, goals and desires.
So let’s dive in.
Reason #1 - The Quid Pro Quo Of Putting My Content On Substack Doesn’t Pay Off….
There were two reasons I started publishing on Substack. These were:
To start working on my ‘Paul T Wolfe’ stuff - which is focused on writing and deliberate practice - to move away from my ‘Paul Wolfe’ (music instruction) stuff. With the longer term goal of carving two hours a day out for writing fiction.
To leverage the Substack platform to build an audience. To that end I’ve published a range of content and always aimed to write helpful and useful content. (Although sometimes I’ve written stuff that also was for me.)
Now maybe I was being a little naive…but I assumed that as I published regularly (and with a modicum of promotion) that my audience would grow. And I wasn’t looking for a huge audience - not interested in that game - but I was looking for a small audience of interested readers.
And weirdly enough I got that.
Only it was much smaller than I anticipated. And writing a detailed newsletter a week in return for the odd weeks of picking up one or two new subscribers….the ROI of that isn’t really worth it.
Sidebar: there’s an argument to be made that I could be more aggressive in promoting to get more subscribers. But if I’m going to be aggressive in promoting anything, I’d much rather be aggressive about promoting my new book. (See below for more on that.) And Substack now has for me the feel of what Medium had in the early 2020s….lots of articles on how to get subscribers on Substack. I don’t read any of those articles and have no inclination to write articles like that in order to get subscribers who won’t be ideal subscribers anyway.
So Strike 1.
Reason #2 - Potential Book Buyers - And If They Do ‘Due Diligance’
I’ve made no secret of the fact that this year I’ll be releasing books to do with writing and deliberate practice (and ancillary topics). Currently, if someone comes across my book and thinks: who is this Paul T Wolfe geezer? and they go to my website…it’s pretty sparse. There are a few articles of various sorts….a bit of other stuff…and that’s it.
Whereas: if I port my Substack archive over to that website then suddenly I add 63 articles and create an archive. And as I’m porting them over, I can add in more cross links and the like to help drive consumption of other content. Plus there will be a detailed Index of content linked from every page.
So the goal is:
Someone sees one of my books (even though it’s only one at time of writing) at Amazon.
Asks the question: who is the Paul T Wolfe guy?
See the link to the website on my Author Page. Or googles Paul T Wolfe and deliberate practice. Or whatever.
Goes to the website. Reads some content.
Likes it.
Goes back to Amazon.
Buys one of my books.
Then gets on my buyers list by emailing me a copy of their invoice.
Having the detailed newsletters ported over to my website makes for a much better flow than sending people from my website to Substack and back - or vice versa.
So Strike 2 for Substack.
Reason #3 - Playing The Long Game With The AI Version Of SEO
Following on from the second point above - about people discovering me and finding a body of content from which they can decide if what I write about meets their goals - the field of SEO is changing.
If you use Google and search for something….for most searches the top result is no longer a website, instead it’s Google AI Generated overview. For the search term ‘deliberate practice for beginner writers’ here’s what the results looks like for me:
Along with the AI Summary are links to places on the web where you can find more about this. Here’s the answers you get if you ask the question in Perplexity.AI:
And again, as well as the answers you also get links. With Perplexity, if you click on those links you get taken straight to the website where the answer is drawn from.
So the whole concept of Search is changing. And I think more AIs will go down this route, with live internet access, and linking to websites for deeper info.
I’ve no idea how you ‘rank’ your articles in AI - I’m sure there will be ‘teachers’ creating courses on that in the near future - but if someone is searching via AI, and follows linked to an article I’ve written on the topic…I’d much rather they read that article on my website, with the option of reading more, than getting them directed to Substack.
Case in point: back in the day when I was writing on Medium, one of the articles I’d written used to get 200 to 300 views a month from SEO. All of those views were outside of Medium, so I didn’t earn more than a few cents from those reads. And never included any way to direct those readers to similar content. (That article is now part of Book #3 to be released in the next few weeks).
So Strike 3.
Reason #4 The Future Of Substack?
I’ve no idea of what the future of Substack is.
But there’s been a noticable increase in the number of ‘notes’ and posts about marketing on substack. For sure there is content on other topics….and there are paid publications that are probably worth joining (George Saunders and Michael Simmons are the two I’d be thinking about ponying up for if I had the time to actually read that content!). But the direction of travel I’m seeing- which happened to Medium three years or so ago - is: how to make money from Substack. And there’s also an influx of writers from Medium (who used to write about making money on Medium) setting their stalls out on Substack (and writing about making money on Substack).
If that trend continues, Substack wouldn’t meet my goals. Even as it currently stands…if I’m being honest (and not taking a path of least resistance) then Substack doesn’t meet my goals.
Strike 4. And out. (Yeah I know it should be 3….but I had 4 reasons.)
#5 The Only Way I’d Stay (Or Come Back) To Substack As A Writer
Creating content for social media in order to try and get free subscribers is a game that works for the platforms more than the content creators. IMO. Which is no longer a game I want to play
I will experiment some more with Twitter….but I’ve seen stories that may (or may not) be true that people with six figure follower counts are only getting a few thousand impressions on their tweets and threads.
The one reason why I’ll continue with twitter: I wrote a half decent prompt for AI that converts existing content into tweets that can be edited and posted with a minimum of effort. (Plus you can create several different tweets from the same piece of content and schedule them to go out over a period of time.)
If - and this will never happen! - but if Substack’s algorithm worked like YouTube used to work (back in 2010) then I’d think about coming back to Substack. Because there was a ‘golden period’ when you could post videos and they would drive subscribers. That period started to diminish around 2014 to 15 due to a change in the algorithm and saturation of the platform.
For me, I’ve got different games to play. And while I will publish three or four more issues here on Substack, everything will be ported to my website and I’ll let you know how you can follow me there when that’s ready. If of course, you choose to.
A Reminder About My First “Paul T Wolfe” Book For Writers
My first book for writers is published - it’s about using your iPhone with the Notes App to dictate in your dead time. Here’s two equations for you to think about:
10MinD +DT = 500 DW
500DW/356 = 180K AW
Translated:
10 minutes of dictation in your dead time = 500 dail words.
500 daily words, 365 days of the year - 180,000 annual words.
What writer doesn’t want that?
Here’s an image of the book on Amazon:
You don’t seem to be able to add a link to the image. So here’s the link on Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1739514602
If you buy the book by the 9th Feb - and send me a copy of your Amazon Invoice as proof - then as a bonus you’ll get a workshop/program I’m creating this week showing you how to model the WAR OF ART to outline your own book. Or preferably books.