I recognise a lot of this. First had a Squarespace site for a few years, until I decided to make the shift to Substack. What. A. Difference. The community that you get here, the interactions and collaborations, plus the finding great stuff to read yourself. It definitely makes it easier for people to find you, and for those people you were finding / telling yourself, it does not matter much to them where they can find your content.
I can so relate to this. I've felt far more motivated to write now I can directly connect with my readers and am inspired daily by the wonderful writers on here :)
This is what I did. I have all the things on my Substack, including travel, and I just decided to make this my one-stop shop. I can write about travel when I have new stuff to write about, and other stuff when I don't.
How did you know that I’ve been noodling on whether or not to keep my Squarespace site? ;-) I’ve had one since circa 2013 or so, maybe? It has undergone many makeovers, but the reality is that managing a website is tons of work. (I knew this even working at a marketing agency and I still thought I could figure out a way to automate it or something like that.) Anyways, it is an expensive business card to keep open, as you point to. I’ll need to make some decisions soon I think.
Also, re: the travel blog. That seems like the exact thing Substack is made for. Kind of like the sidebar story to your main memoir work? I follow one travel Substack only because their personal stories resonate with me and I don’t want to miss them. I would probably follow more travel blogs if they had places that were friendly to neurodiverse or had ideas on how to travel without burning out. It’s something I love to dream about but the reality is I haven’t found a way to travel that doesn’t require 2-3 weeks of foggy exhaustion and recovery. Have you heard of any travel blogs that explore this? In my mind I feel like “The Sensory Edit” would be a really helpful sidebar to the main posts and would be wildly helpful to a segment of our community that only seems to be growing.
I agree with you, Substack is the best platform where you can post your articles and still not pay to post them. It has a very good and friendly audience, and I like it a lot.
Love this piece! 🪺 How are you finding building community? It’s been brilliant for me - intentional and the like minded folks keep coming over. I don’t know why they never found me on insta? It’s perhaps just too much of a distracting platform?! ✨🗝️🙌🏻
I agree with you. Thank you for bringing more clarity to all I’ve been thinking about when it comes to maintaining and even continuing with a website where I blogged. I have seen more response to my writing here than I ever had on a website. It is motivating to write on Substack. And I love the community vibe.
Really relate to this. I've decided to make my 10 years of WordPress into more of an archive and import my mailing list over here. But keep my WP site as a biz card as you describe, it'll be a place to get to know my books too. Great to hear alternative versions of similar things.
Wow. What a parallel journey--down to splitting up your Stack topics, writing memoir, traveling, and 6 years of writing on an expensive paid website and getting nowhere on developing a following--yes, for those exact reasons you listed.
Alas, I can’t seem to find anything about one-click migration from WIx, but if I can’t migrate like you did, maybe that’s a sign that I’m really supposed to take my time and do it post by post. (I am delivering all my memoirs and fiction online, because I lost my traditional publishing shot to a Traumatic Brain Injury and have decided that world won’t work with my health and rhythm needs.)
I’ve been over here all clutching my pearls about if I even want to migrate my old memoirs anywhere--honestly, because they’re memoirs. So...you know. “Self-indulgent, not REEEEAL writing, why would anybody care about my stupid, disabled, weirdo life because if after 6 years of obsessively puking out words about it I still can’t find where my audience lives, why should I bother with the Herculean project of migration because obviously nobody wants to...” blah blah blah. 🙄
In this series of posts and your guest spot, you’ve helped me get some claws back on the ledge I was about to slip off and just chuck the whole project in the trash. 400 posts?!?!?!
Blink. Oh. Welllll sheesh. That’s relieving. So is 6-8 months of Just Keep Posting on Substack (because that theory didn’t work on Wix). So thank you for sharing your journey! I look forward to seeing more of it as it unfolds. 😻
I recognise a lot of this. First had a Squarespace site for a few years, until I decided to make the shift to Substack. What. A. Difference. The community that you get here, the interactions and collaborations, plus the finding great stuff to read yourself. It definitely makes it easier for people to find you, and for those people you were finding / telling yourself, it does not matter much to them where they can find your content.
I can so relate to this. I've felt far more motivated to write now I can directly connect with my readers and am inspired daily by the wonderful writers on here :)
This is what I did. I have all the things on my Substack, including travel, and I just decided to make this my one-stop shop. I can write about travel when I have new stuff to write about, and other stuff when I don't.
How did you know that I’ve been noodling on whether or not to keep my Squarespace site? ;-) I’ve had one since circa 2013 or so, maybe? It has undergone many makeovers, but the reality is that managing a website is tons of work. (I knew this even working at a marketing agency and I still thought I could figure out a way to automate it or something like that.) Anyways, it is an expensive business card to keep open, as you point to. I’ll need to make some decisions soon I think.
Also, re: the travel blog. That seems like the exact thing Substack is made for. Kind of like the sidebar story to your main memoir work? I follow one travel Substack only because their personal stories resonate with me and I don’t want to miss them. I would probably follow more travel blogs if they had places that were friendly to neurodiverse or had ideas on how to travel without burning out. It’s something I love to dream about but the reality is I haven’t found a way to travel that doesn’t require 2-3 weeks of foggy exhaustion and recovery. Have you heard of any travel blogs that explore this? In my mind I feel like “The Sensory Edit” would be a really helpful sidebar to the main posts and would be wildly helpful to a segment of our community that only seems to be growing.
I agree with you, Substack is the best platform where you can post your articles and still not pay to post them. It has a very good and friendly audience, and I like it a lot.
Love this piece! 🪺 How are you finding building community? It’s been brilliant for me - intentional and the like minded folks keep coming over. I don’t know why they never found me on insta? It’s perhaps just too much of a distracting platform?! ✨🗝️🙌🏻
I agree with you. Thank you for bringing more clarity to all I’ve been thinking about when it comes to maintaining and even continuing with a website where I blogged. I have seen more response to my writing here than I ever had on a website. It is motivating to write on Substack. And I love the community vibe.
Really relate to this. I've decided to make my 10 years of WordPress into more of an archive and import my mailing list over here. But keep my WP site as a biz card as you describe, it'll be a place to get to know my books too. Great to hear alternative versions of similar things.
Wow. What a parallel journey--down to splitting up your Stack topics, writing memoir, traveling, and 6 years of writing on an expensive paid website and getting nowhere on developing a following--yes, for those exact reasons you listed.
Alas, I can’t seem to find anything about one-click migration from WIx, but if I can’t migrate like you did, maybe that’s a sign that I’m really supposed to take my time and do it post by post. (I am delivering all my memoirs and fiction online, because I lost my traditional publishing shot to a Traumatic Brain Injury and have decided that world won’t work with my health and rhythm needs.)
I’ve been over here all clutching my pearls about if I even want to migrate my old memoirs anywhere--honestly, because they’re memoirs. So...you know. “Self-indulgent, not REEEEAL writing, why would anybody care about my stupid, disabled, weirdo life because if after 6 years of obsessively puking out words about it I still can’t find where my audience lives, why should I bother with the Herculean project of migration because obviously nobody wants to...” blah blah blah. 🙄
In this series of posts and your guest spot, you’ve helped me get some claws back on the ledge I was about to slip off and just chuck the whole project in the trash. 400 posts?!?!?!
Blink. Oh. Welllll sheesh. That’s relieving. So is 6-8 months of Just Keep Posting on Substack (because that theory didn’t work on Wix). So thank you for sharing your journey! I look forward to seeing more of it as it unfolds. 😻