Substack Is Not For Everyone

An app that began as a noble experiment has devolved into just more social media slop, and not even efficient slop. 

When I joined Substack initially, my intent was to use it to deliver my author newsletter. The interface was not intuitive, but I thought I managed to figure out the basics---importing my subscriber list, formatting, sending (which was kind of the most important part). Well, sometimes Substack sent to only a percentage of my subscribers, and sometimes it sent the same edition to my subscribers twice. The outcome was so embarrassing, I gave up.

So, my account sat dormant for a long time.

Then a couple of months ago I hit on the idea of publishing articles, ones that might garner more views than this blog. I love this blog, but it's apparently undiscoverable, even with my rudimentary SEO "tricks". My pie in the sky notion was to publish my "My Career" series on Substack, get tons of views and maybe even some paid subscribers. 

 

I began by culling this blog for interesting posts, you know, so people could get to know me before I dove into a 13-part series and before I composed something original.

Well, the articles I posted were good, but they got as much engagement as they do here. I understood of course, that I was an unknown entity and that things would take time to build. I subsequently learned how to tag my posts and how a post's title can convert to a Google listing, so I made sure to choose titles that were specific, not ambiguous.

I thought I gave Substack a fair shot.

Later I learned that "notes" were really important, so I did that. Then I began scrolling Substack's timeline and commenting on others' notes. What viewing the timeline did was show me how spammy the app is. There are tons of notes saying, "Give me the people with fewer than 10 subscribers!", which idiot newbies are supposed to respond to, in a pitiful attempt to get the (either) foreign or AI note writers to subscribe to our accounts. There are so many notes like that in a given day that they overpower the timeline.

The timeline was the biggest turnoff for me. If I wanted spam, I'd still be on Instagram.

You don't need to remind me that it takes time to build a following. I get that. But I also know that Substack is now so overrun with accounts, most of them clickbait, that I could have posted regularly for a year and still end up with a total of 4 or 5 subscribers.

"Well, what about this blog?" you ask. "Your blog has no subscribers!"

Completely true, but the difference is, I like this blog. I hate Substack. Simply formatting an article required a degree in computer science. Here, when I want to add an image to the top of a post, I position my cursor on the top line and upload the image. With Substack the image could land anywhere, top, bottom, middle; and good luck trying to fix that.

So now, all I have for my trouble is a bunch of Substack subscriptions I'm not the least bit interested in. There are probably three accounts that are worthwhile reading. Some seemed like they'd be interesting, but they turned out to be hopelessly dull. And you know me; I hate hurting anyone's feelings, so I'd feel mean unsubscribing. Thus, I just mark the emails as "read", then delete them. Kind of a pain, though. 

And let's look at the overall picture. I'm a big X user, and I notice that practically every independent journalist or now-unemployed journalist lists their Substack in their bio. How successful can all these Substacks be if everyone is doing it? The app has become so overrun that it's self-defeating. Especially, I might add, if the account holder is relying on paid subscriptions. How many paid subscriptions can/does the average person want to commit to? 

Bottom line, unless you can really wow people with your content or you're a popular celebrity, Substack is not going to be the pot of gold we hope for. And already, alternatives exist. Two that are often mentioned are Ghost and Beehiiv. Ghost is open source, which I always prefer, but it offers no assistance in attracting subscribers. Beehiiv (hate the spelling) appears to be a Substack copycat, hardly surprising.

I'm not, of course, interested in any alternatives. My alternative is right here, and that's where I want it to be. If you've ever been in the market for a home, you end up touring a lot of them. Many don't have the right vibe, but one or maybe two just "feel right". For me, Substack never felt right. It was like visiting a foreign country and not speaking the language. Using it felt uncomfortable. 

I said before that I won't delete my account. There's no harm in keeping it---it's not as if I'll be penalized for not using it. One should never say never anyway. Circumstances could change, or the app could change (i.e., get better). But I won't be posting there anymore.

Now if I could only figure out a diplomatic way to deal with all those Substack subscriptions I don't want.