Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax

All these companies want to make money eventually to justify their "technology company" valuations, show growth to keep expensive employees excited about stock options, etc. But the truth is that there just isn't any real reason for any of these companies to own text-based article hosting in the long term. There isn't enough of a network effect with blog posts like there is with traditional social media.

Medium started squeezing everyone, so everyone left for Substack. Now Substack is doing it, so everyone is leaving for the next thing.

Whoever owns the next thing may be the most benevolent people in the world, but given enough time and money, distant future owners will probably do the same thing.

The only long-term solution is to own your own site or pay sustainable (chunky) fees to a service that makes money from hosting you, not from being a 'social platform'.

Maybe it makes sense to start on one of these social platforms to grow an initial audience, but any platform will eventually need to juice you for it's own growth when the VC money runs out. It's just the economics of it.

None paywal link: https://archive.ph/bmX1d

I loved the open web quote: "The more important thing is that we have a home on the open web that we control, and whatever anti-creator changes Substack is forced to make in the future to live up to its valuation we won't be affected by."

To me, I always said to have your own website and domain. Because platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPress, etc. I wrote a little more about "Why I think to Have Your Website" at https://www.ssp.sh/brain/why-have-your-website/ (in case of interest)

Personally, I write to think out loud. And I am not looking to monetize my writing anytime soon. So, I am quite happy with Substack at this moment. I don't have to pay for any hosting or sending the newsletter, and my awesome 90ish subscribers get them!

But if you are a serious professional writer, then there are other better options. For sure. And as someone suggested, owning and hosting your content is absolutely the best way to go!

Writers are not "fleeing Substack" that's just legacy media trying to insinuate ways to hurt Substack's revenue by creating a false perception of "hm maybe I should consider switching" in classic divide and conquer.

A quick google search "substack site:theverge.com" will reveal that theverge hasn't written a single positive article about substack. Most posts are implying you should avoid substack.

The whole article is based on "this one guy switched to ghost" type of evidence ... no data, no stats.

Substack positioned itself as medium without the enshittification but it's enshittified just as much. I'll pass on it and on 'newsletters' hosted there too. It's beyond the level of annoyance I tolerate.