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.
Nice! I totally agree that the vibe of Substack is just different. I don't feel like I'm publishing into a black box anymore and that's what made the biggest impact in my motivation to keep writing and publishing. Plus, finding a group of like-minded people has been such a wonderful experience. Thanks for your input Robert!
I second every single thing you just said. Including how motivating it is to get reactions from people, see new subscribers come in who found you through the network etc. And that is the goal, after all, to reach / inform / inspire people! Here is hoping we succeed in our writing journey!
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.
Brilliant! This is exactly what I grappled with on my WordPress site. If I wasn't traveling, I was like, "hmm... what should I write about"? I like the name of your Substack too!
And I'll have to spend some time exploring when I'm not supposed to be teaching. I self-published my first memoir piece (a series of thematic essays) back in January and I'm currently working on a camping memoir which I'm planning to self-publish as well. I really want to know more about Women in Publishing, because I just started following them on IG.
Thank you! It's a good thematic name that covers a lot of ground. And the sections allow me to give readers the opportunity to say "no thank you" if they aren't interested in something specific.
Yes, totally agree with creating the sections. I am wondering if I should start creating a labeling system for my newsletter since I have 3-4 general buckets, and marketing being one of them.
Women in Publishing is awesome! Sign up for their newsletter and join their Facebook group! They have free webinars and events going on all the time. I believe they also have a subscription that gives you more access to learning craft and connecting with others for $47 a month?
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.
Wow, I feel like our lives are sort of parallel here - I worked in marketing for a long time (still do, in a way). I agree with your sentiment about travel blogs... at one point I was like, "ok, it's the pandemic and I haven't gone anywhere... what do I write about, besides budget travel, solo travel, etc.?" and then I got busy and just sort of didn't update for a while.
I think the direction I'd like to try for ClairesHoliday on Substack is to broaden the scope of travel as it relates to me, in real time. I also want to reflect back on other places I've been when I was younger and never bothered to write about it. Places I went in my 20s and what I think about it now that I'm in my 40s.
I agree that traveling is exhausting and after a year of nearly straight travel and crazy itineraries and flights, etc., I appreciate being at home so much more.
I love your idea of "The sensory edit"! But question back to you - will you move your Squarespace site to Substack??
Thanks as always, for your great insight Amanda. :)
I think the conflicts I have around shutting down my Squarespace site mainly revolve around proof of what I’ve done with my professional life. (Same thing goes for LinkedIn, which I keep alive but haven’t used in years.) There’s proof of the architecture books I wrote; the ebooks I wrote / published. The teams I created. The recommendations and feedback. The self-publishing stint I went on with three different sets of authors. There’s a lot of visual documentation that I suppose I could just download into a file on my computer but even that feels incomplete. Even as I’m gearing up for a career pivot away from writing / editing in the next few years, there’s still proof in that work history that I put my best efforts toward new things. And putting all that stuff on Substack feels misplaced and shutting down my website feels “griefy” to me.
Well, totally makes sense why you're keeping it. I also have my professional site still around, but I often cross promote newsletters I write on Substack and (when they make sense) publish again on ClaireTak.com. I mostly keep ClaireTak b/c I don't want to build a professional site that has "substack" in the URL. (But who knows, I may change my mind later and just move it over too!)
Maybe one consideration could be to slowly migrate it over to Substack and build a following (if that is something you planned on doing? Although, sounds like it's not something you're looking to do.)
You could also put all of those same links from your portfolio and build out a Substack homepage with tabs that categorize your work (i.e., my tabs say "Home, Podcast, My Other Substack, About"). Just a thought... or maybe the move is to just sit and let it marinate some more. I often find myself doing that and then eventually figure it out. :)
I took a look at your website! I didn’t know you’re a finance writer. And you write about Nike stuff? That’s such a fun mix. Have you heard of something called the Virtual Externship?
Also, I appreciate the nudge about slowly moving some pieces over. I definitely have a growing list of posts I’d like to edit or rework when the time is right. Maybe that’s the best plan for now ... the slow migration. 🤗
I’m so with you on websites being a tonne of work - I used to get so frustrated and it really hampered my creative voice. I’m so happy I found Substack!
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?! ✨🗝️🙌🏻
Thanks Claire! Building community has been slow and steady. I wish it could go faster sometimes. But I know this isn't an overnight thing and I am really enjoying the process of writing and knowing my newsletters are reaching folks!
I think the way you feel about Insta is the same way I feel about WordPress... putting my stuff out there and "hoping for the best" wasn't working! After 6 years I finally was like, "ok... time for something new." Lol.
Yes so I think it took around 6 months and then something just started working here about month 8... my husband calls it a snowball but I’m not sure whether it might pause and start again and that’s all ok. All for it being a conscious connection rather than through vanity metrics you know?
Wow, your Substack is impressive! Just the sheer amount of engagement and comments! I agree with your husband's sentiment and I also think Substack probably has some nifty algorithm that they use to increase visibility based on engagement and publishing frequency?? I also find that sometimes there are lulls (crickets) where nothing happens, and then other times when I randomly get a lot of subscribers...
I also meant to say that the quality of your work and what you are putting out there is also a huge determinant of how much engagement and interest you get! So kudos!
Yea so I taught a Masterclass on what I’d learnt back in March and the big shift for me seemed to be around increased recommendations - are you using that function? It’s desktop only. ✨🗝️📖
I saw something around that and tried it... but it didn't seem to work for me. :/ Oddly, when I shared with my writing groups on Facebook, my subscribers spiked. But good to know it worked for you. :)
Ah ok yeah I think it’s prob a mix of different things isn’t it? Facebook doesn’t work for me but I don’t have an engaged audience there. I recommend around 40 others I think...
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.
Right? I struggled for so long about whether to keep it or leave it because it had lived in WordPress for so long. But I agree that connecting with others on Substack is the way to go. I'm learning so much from everyone here. It's truly inspiring and motivating.
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.
I was updating my site as in blog posts, but as you say it felt like shouting into the void. It varied recently as in 3 posts one month then 1 post the next, I no longer felt compelled to be regular as I wasn't getting feedback. I used to get loads of comments in "the good old days" pre Instagram era. Once I realised the power of this platform I started to think about how to use it. I've been here as a writer for almost a couple of months. I started kind of in secret, I haven't told anyone on any of my socials or blog yet but I plan to over the coming couple of weeks. I wanted to make sure it was what I thought it was y'know? And build up a small body of work before I started directing people here. Very long answer (!)
Ah got it. So, slow migration and testing out the waters a bit. That's smart. I moved my travel site over but have yet to update it on Substack, so it's sort of on hold for now, but I"m going to do 1 more blog post on my WordPress site just to let very few followers know that I moved over to Substack, and then cancel it before it renews again in Sept!
Sounds like a plan. I may do one more on mine too, that's a good idea. All the content is still there it's just not on show. So it's still searchable and I still get Pinterest traffic, for example
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. 😻
Hi Alexx, thank you for your thoughtful comment! That's so funny how our backgrounds align. There was nothing on Wix about being able to download your website as an XML file? You should reach out to Substack and ask. They are very good about responding, even though it may take a few days to get a response.
And, yes, I get it, I often wonder why anyone would care about my stories... but there is an audience for everyone, you just have to find it (sounds so easy). I hope you come to a resolution about our memoirs! :)
Yes I asked them a couple days ago. Just waiting to see. That would make it so much easier. Audience for everyone--you know, they say that. Each of the projects I’ve ever put into the world gets about 3 readers who devour it rabidly. Wut? That’s an audience. 🤣🤣🤣🤓
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.
Nice! I totally agree that the vibe of Substack is just different. I don't feel like I'm publishing into a black box anymore and that's what made the biggest impact in my motivation to keep writing and publishing. Plus, finding a group of like-minded people has been such a wonderful experience. Thanks for your input Robert!
I second every single thing you just said. Including how motivating it is to get reactions from people, see new subscribers come in who found you through the network etc. And that is the goal, after all, to reach / inform / inspire people! Here is hoping we succeed in our writing journey!
Cheers to that! :)
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.
Brilliant! This is exactly what I grappled with on my WordPress site. If I wasn't traveling, I was like, "hmm... what should I write about"? I like the name of your Substack too!
And I'll have to spend some time exploring when I'm not supposed to be teaching. I self-published my first memoir piece (a series of thematic essays) back in January and I'm currently working on a camping memoir which I'm planning to self-publish as well. I really want to know more about Women in Publishing, because I just started following them on IG.
Thank you! It's a good thematic name that covers a lot of ground. And the sections allow me to give readers the opportunity to say "no thank you" if they aren't interested in something specific.
Yes, totally agree with creating the sections. I am wondering if I should start creating a labeling system for my newsletter since I have 3-4 general buckets, and marketing being one of them.
Women in Publishing is awesome! Sign up for their newsletter and join their Facebook group! They have free webinars and events going on all the time. I believe they also have a subscription that gives you more access to learning craft and connecting with others for $47 a month?
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.
Wow, I feel like our lives are sort of parallel here - I worked in marketing for a long time (still do, in a way). I agree with your sentiment about travel blogs... at one point I was like, "ok, it's the pandemic and I haven't gone anywhere... what do I write about, besides budget travel, solo travel, etc.?" and then I got busy and just sort of didn't update for a while.
I think the direction I'd like to try for ClairesHoliday on Substack is to broaden the scope of travel as it relates to me, in real time. I also want to reflect back on other places I've been when I was younger and never bothered to write about it. Places I went in my 20s and what I think about it now that I'm in my 40s.
I agree that traveling is exhausting and after a year of nearly straight travel and crazy itineraries and flights, etc., I appreciate being at home so much more.
I love your idea of "The sensory edit"! But question back to you - will you move your Squarespace site to Substack??
Thanks as always, for your great insight Amanda. :)
I think the conflicts I have around shutting down my Squarespace site mainly revolve around proof of what I’ve done with my professional life. (Same thing goes for LinkedIn, which I keep alive but haven’t used in years.) There’s proof of the architecture books I wrote; the ebooks I wrote / published. The teams I created. The recommendations and feedback. The self-publishing stint I went on with three different sets of authors. There’s a lot of visual documentation that I suppose I could just download into a file on my computer but even that feels incomplete. Even as I’m gearing up for a career pivot away from writing / editing in the next few years, there’s still proof in that work history that I put my best efforts toward new things. And putting all that stuff on Substack feels misplaced and shutting down my website feels “griefy” to me.
Thus, conflicted I remain.
Well, totally makes sense why you're keeping it. I also have my professional site still around, but I often cross promote newsletters I write on Substack and (when they make sense) publish again on ClaireTak.com. I mostly keep ClaireTak b/c I don't want to build a professional site that has "substack" in the URL. (But who knows, I may change my mind later and just move it over too!)
Maybe one consideration could be to slowly migrate it over to Substack and build a following (if that is something you planned on doing? Although, sounds like it's not something you're looking to do.)
You could also put all of those same links from your portfolio and build out a Substack homepage with tabs that categorize your work (i.e., my tabs say "Home, Podcast, My Other Substack, About"). Just a thought... or maybe the move is to just sit and let it marinate some more. I often find myself doing that and then eventually figure it out. :)
I took a look at your website! I didn’t know you’re a finance writer. And you write about Nike stuff? That’s such a fun mix. Have you heard of something called the Virtual Externship?
Also, I appreciate the nudge about slowly moving some pieces over. I definitely have a growing list of posts I’d like to edit or rework when the time is right. Maybe that’s the best plan for now ... the slow migration. 🤗
Oo, I'm looking up Virtual Externship now, thank you for that!
Haha, I like that... the slow migration. Maybe do a Substack on that! :)
I’m so with you on websites being a tonne of work - I used to get so frustrated and it really hampered my creative voice. I’m so happy I found Substack!
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?! ✨🗝️🙌🏻
Thanks Claire! Building community has been slow and steady. I wish it could go faster sometimes. But I know this isn't an overnight thing and I am really enjoying the process of writing and knowing my newsletters are reaching folks!
I think the way you feel about Insta is the same way I feel about WordPress... putting my stuff out there and "hoping for the best" wasn't working! After 6 years I finally was like, "ok... time for something new." Lol.
Yes so I think it took around 6 months and then something just started working here about month 8... my husband calls it a snowball but I’m not sure whether it might pause and start again and that’s all ok. All for it being a conscious connection rather than through vanity metrics you know?
Wow, your Substack is impressive! Just the sheer amount of engagement and comments! I agree with your husband's sentiment and I also think Substack probably has some nifty algorithm that they use to increase visibility based on engagement and publishing frequency?? I also find that sometimes there are lulls (crickets) where nothing happens, and then other times when I randomly get a lot of subscribers...
I also meant to say that the quality of your work and what you are putting out there is also a huge determinant of how much engagement and interest you get! So kudos!
Oh thanks so much Claire! 💛
Yea so I taught a Masterclass on what I’d learnt back in March and the big shift for me seemed to be around increased recommendations - are you using that function? It’s desktop only. ✨🗝️📖
I saw something around that and tried it... but it didn't seem to work for me. :/ Oddly, when I shared with my writing groups on Facebook, my subscribers spiked. But good to know it worked for you. :)
Ah ok yeah I think it’s prob a mix of different things isn’t it? Facebook doesn’t work for me but I don’t have an engaged audience there. I recommend around 40 others I think...
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.
Right? I struggled for so long about whether to keep it or leave it because it had lived in WordPress for so long. But I agree that connecting with others on Substack is the way to go. I'm learning so much from everyone here. It's truly inspiring and motivating.
I really appreciate your insight. I can always start a new website if I don’t renew Squarespace. I know they’ll be happy to take my $$$$. 🤣
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.
Thank you for your comment Susan. Curious if you still update your WordPress from time to time or do you only focus on your Substack now?
I was updating my site as in blog posts, but as you say it felt like shouting into the void. It varied recently as in 3 posts one month then 1 post the next, I no longer felt compelled to be regular as I wasn't getting feedback. I used to get loads of comments in "the good old days" pre Instagram era. Once I realised the power of this platform I started to think about how to use it. I've been here as a writer for almost a couple of months. I started kind of in secret, I haven't told anyone on any of my socials or blog yet but I plan to over the coming couple of weeks. I wanted to make sure it was what I thought it was y'know? And build up a small body of work before I started directing people here. Very long answer (!)
Ah got it. So, slow migration and testing out the waters a bit. That's smart. I moved my travel site over but have yet to update it on Substack, so it's sort of on hold for now, but I"m going to do 1 more blog post on my WordPress site just to let very few followers know that I moved over to Substack, and then cancel it before it renews again in Sept!
Sounds like a plan. I may do one more on mine too, that's a good idea. All the content is still there it's just not on show. So it's still searchable and I still get Pinterest traffic, for example
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. 😻
Hi Alexx, thank you for your thoughtful comment! That's so funny how our backgrounds align. There was nothing on Wix about being able to download your website as an XML file? You should reach out to Substack and ask. They are very good about responding, even though it may take a few days to get a response.
And, yes, I get it, I often wonder why anyone would care about my stories... but there is an audience for everyone, you just have to find it (sounds so easy). I hope you come to a resolution about our memoirs! :)
Yes I asked them a couple days ago. Just waiting to see. That would make it so much easier. Audience for everyone--you know, they say that. Each of the projects I’ve ever put into the world gets about 3 readers who devour it rabidly. Wut? That’s an audience. 🤣🤣🤣🤓