Hey Atty, I've seen a few creators starting to use Substack for their stories. I was wondering if you'd heard anything/have any opinions on it since i usually find your take on this sort of stuff interesting
I actually wrote a huge, long, rambling review --
-- VERY POSITIVE REVIEW UNTIL--
via SUBSTACK SUPPORT
...what. I'm sorry. What?
"Note: Substack charges a one-time $50 USD fee to use a custom domain for your publication."
Without exception: If you are creating content, you need to own your domain.
The gears behind-the-scenes will almost certainly belong to someone else, but you need to own the address.
To market it, be it on one social app or many, in print or in t-shirts or in skywriting, you need to say "Find my stuff at My Website Dot Whatever. Sign up!"
This domain needs to belong to you and cannot be tied to a service you cannot get away from.
What if you decide Substack sucks?
What if they say "hey we are doubling our rates"?
What if they go out of business?
What if you want to branch out into other things beyond newsletters?
To be fair. You are not being locked into Substack's system.
You can pay them $50 USD, then walk away in 3 years and point your domain somewhere else, the cost being this one-time fee.
But I want to talk about something.
When you get a domain, from Google Domains or any other the other billion companies that sell them, the registrar says "okay where does this thing point to?" -- as in -- Substack is not doing the work. The registrar is. That's part of the roughly $12/year fee you pay them for.
I have never seen a company charge you to point a domain to their service before. I am suspicious.
Notice how Tumblr is not charging to use a custom domain?
At this point, I am admittedly guessing, but the only reason I can think of a charge is to make authors second-guess if they leave the platform.
Evil Supply Co. closed in the summer of 2019, I am writing this in February 2023, I still get traffic on the old domain. It diminishes month-by-month and yet it is still a valuable "I am rebranding!" tool.
I plan on keeping the domain forever. It costs me very little per year because no one has charged me to point it at the address of the new project. I can change gears once a week and point it somewhere else without fee.
I have never seen a site charge to have a domain pointed at them.
Prior to writing this answer, I had never looked into Substack's business model.
Having found this point, I would never recommend them to anyone for any reason, even if their newsletter is going to be free forever.
In contempt and anger at this bullshit, I offer a non-affiliate link to MailChimp's blog on launching a paid newsletter.
I'm not so much saying "you should use MailChimp" as "there are other solutions that won't charge you."
I have used MC in the past to great enjoyment and success.
I've used other services too. They won't charge you for pointing a domain to them.
Because this is Tumblr which is owned by Automattic which owns WordPress and because I am super fucking mad at this Substack bullshit I will close with saying WordPress.com also has the ability to launch a newsletter and they won't charge you for a domain to be pointed at it.
I hope this is helpful.
It has been an illuminating experience to research for you.
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