Recently, I looked into Substack, a platform that is free for writers of all genres to post their works.
There is a small, but growing, genealogy community, which is what caught my interest. Ultimately, I decided that the platform isn’t for me and I’ll share my reasons.
First, there are definite positives:
- Substack is free.
- The writing tools are similar to WordPress.
- There is a genealogy community that is active.
- The platform can handle both text and video/podcast formats.
- RSS like feedly can follow posts in Substack.
- it seems to be a good platform for vloggers. I really enjoy Mission:Genealogy.
Free always sounds attractive, but it is necessary to understand what is being offered and how that might change.
Since I blog for fun and don’t run any kind of business, I didn’t spend any time checking out business requirements. I did notice that Substack charges 10% of each money transaction. On the other hand, if the website is otherwise free and the business owner doesn’t have to self host, with the accompanying costs, a small business might come out economically ahead only paying 10%.
What did concern me is that if my blog was totally hosted on Substack and, say, it changed owners who decided to charge fees, would it be difficult to move my posts elsewhere? I’m not a very techy person so that is a huge question for me.
Next, I found the website a bit frustrating to navigate. I actually deleted my “publication” twice and started over a third time before I got two posts up and live.
I also noticed that it took feedly hours and hours to find my posts – even though I did notice that the publish button indicated a 24-hour delay and I changed it each time to publish immediately.
Empty Branches doesn’t have a mailing list for subscribers. My readers either use feedly or some other aggregator to follow my blog or they visit daily. I could have announced that I was blogging on Substack, but otherwise, I had no list of subscribers to let know of the change. I definitely had the feeling of playing in a private, hidden playground.
What really turned me off, though, was the email bombardment. I followed several genealogy websites and links to new posts were emailed to me. I could have handled new genealogy posts, but announcements included posts from an Uber engineer, some cooking person and a political pundit, none of which interested me.
There are a handful of genealogy bloggers who have totally switched over to Substack. Now that I know feedly can find them, I have just updated their links and unsubscribed from the emails, which is an easy option.
Having said that, NOT all the genealogy people there seem to have a set up that allows feedly to find them. I can only link to a particular article to then read in feedly. So, it’s something that I found while browsing, not a new post with a feedly notification.
I’m also not sure if Substack can be browsed without an account (even though it doesn’t require the account holder to actually publish anything). When I deleted my publication, I thought my account would also be deleted, but that hasn’t been the case.
What I do really like is that, for whatever reason, there are very, very few genealogy bloggers who I recognize on Substack. That means lots of excellent new content to follow!
If you are looking for a new platform to begin or continue creating genealogy content, Substack is definitely worth checking it. It wasn’t my cup of tea – I like keeping control of my blog on my self-hosted website – but the genealogy community is active and fun and you’ll have the opportunity to meet new content creators.
THANK YOU!
I’m not a fan of emailed ‘newsletters’. They just tend to sit in my inbox until I delete them.
I am a fan of Feedly. I browse thru my list of new posts, read some and share some. It allows me to choose what to read , stay up to date with the genealogy community AND not fill up my inbox.
Thank you again for this post.
Gosh, Linda, I’m deeply grateful that you took the plunge to explore Substack. If you hadn’t, I’m not sure I would have gotten to know you. Seriously.
After a career in tech and two failed startups, I brought my nascent community to the platform from an alternative in 2023. Though I have a pretty technical background, I, too, was completely stumped by the counterintuitive interface. In time, though, I’ve figured it out. It’s the price commonly paid at this stage in technological growth. In time, I’ve come to appreciate many aspects of it, particularly its exportability, advanced media features, and differentiated business model. The 10% on payments approach aligns their interests with mine and simplifies many of the integrations in a delightful way. I think their deployment of livestreaming is an example.
Unlike many, my mission on the platform is less about telling my own family history stories and more about encouraging families generally to get their stories told. Not necessarily shared publicly, told, captured, or preserved. (I use a private Substack for sharing the context with my family archive with my cousins.)
As I see it, family historians and genealogists are the advance guard on my mission. They’re the ones helping their family members share their stories, so in my view, it was essential to help more of them get comfortable with the platform. I say was, because I take a broader view now.
I can offer counterpoints to your issues, but those are details that are continually changing. What’s much more important to me is the way you have transformed my view of the Substack platform.
I’d been defensive about the platform for so long that I’d forgotten my key principle of platform independence. Feedly, Jetpack, and other syndication platforms have now made it much easier for me to increase the number of non-Substack posts in my diet and to build more bridges between platforms. You’ll see at Projectkin that’s my new mantra.
Our family history and genealogy work is way more important than any one platform, and we should always be ready to take it to an alternative in a heartbeat. (And yes, you can export everything, including your email lists. That was a game-changer for me.)
Thanks for this – like you, I’ve been investigating Substack as a possible place to post, and had similar results. I follow and read quite a few bloggers there, but also find the bombardment of email frustrating and the fact some have hidden their writing behind a paywall, annoying.
Like you I don’t have a subscriber list, nor am I interested in maintaining one.
That said, I do like the posting interface a little more, given that using the Blocks editor on WP, while flexible (and likely will be made mandatory at some point), is fiddly, while the editor on Substack seems less so.
I might try double-posting and seeing how it goes. The worry always is that WP could disappear as well and I’d like to have a back-up, but not one that requires too much of a learning curve.
I find it interesting that many people are following me on Substack but I have zero content there. What do they think they are following? It confuses me, too. I’m happy at Blogger and am too old to change.
It might be that you are on the list of blogs I follow, which I shared on Substack.
I’m glad you posted this! I checked it out and didn’t like it either. I adore Feedly though! As a reader, I’d rather skip Substack posts entirely than deal with the extra email.
I certainly understand the desire to monetize, but I wonder if creators realize subscriptions are taxable in many states/countries (including my home state). Substack apparently collects the appropriate tax automatically, but they DO NOT remit it on behalf of the creator. Creators are responsible to register and remit sales tax to each state/country themselves. It could be a hassle for those who manage to achieve a large subscription base. And collecting but not remitting tax (no matter how little it may be) is a potential liability I certainly wouldn’t want to risk. Of course, this only affects monetized sites.
That’s an interesting angle…Not sure if the same would apply for those of us outside the US? I can’t imagine having to deal with that paperwork, nor, frankly, would I be comfortable charging people for my content.
I appreciate all the points you made, Linda, and the points made by commenters here. Being on Blogger since 2008, I’m not going to change unless this platform goes away or requires payment. I particularly like that Blogger is owned by Google and blog posts are quickly and openly searchable.
When I first signed up for Substack I was overwhelmed my emails too. I had to go change my account settings.