4 ms·

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsl

by simonw 3mo ago

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsletter. I get to use Substack for email distribution (which would cost me hundreds of dollars a month using most other solutions, I have 66,000 subscribers now) but my own blog stays the original point of truth. Here's the tool I use for the copy-pasting: https://tools.simonwillison.net/blog-to-newsletter https://tools.simonwillison.net/blog-to-newsletter Substack doesn't have an API for composing a newsletter, but their rich text editor DOES accept copy-pasted data - and copy-paste is the universal API.

rsingel 3mo ago
You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.
- simonw 3mo ago
  Ghost would cost $288/month (or $241/month paid yearly).
  - rsingel 3mo ago
    With 66k subscribers you could cover that without even really trying by setting up a $5/month donation tier or putting a tip jar on the site. With a tiny bit of effort, you could make thousands a month. Substack lets you get away with sending that many emails without attempting to monetize because you pay them in clout and with your reader data. I think they are getting the better deal given how good your writing is and your reputation.
  - rsingel 3mo ago
    I'll put my money where my mouth is. We at Outpost will host your site on Ghost for a year for free and migrate all your substack subscribers, with the only caveats that 1) you put a tip jar link (either to Ghost's or Outpost's) at the end of every email with some text like support us being on an indie platform and 2) at the end of the year or earlier report how it went.
  - pembrook 3mo ago
    And substack is free because they use YOU as their growth engine. Your newsletter is plastered with their branding and links to their app, not yours. If someone subscribes to pay for your publication via their app, they own the subscription, not you. Ultimately, even if you own the email list, you’re sharecropping on their land. They will email your list with their own promotional offers and marketing whenever they feel like it. If we’ve proved anything in tech, it’s that consumers will fall for the trap of “free” every single time.
- willy_k 3mo ago
  I don’t know anything about the specific situation you’re referencing. That being said, getting mad at an organization, one that is built to be a “platform” for people to share their words, for not going out of its way to police which people share which words, seems to me to be unproductive at best, if not actively close minded and tribalistic.
  - pluto_modadic 3mo ago
    oh it's more than the org. IIRC, it's also the founder.
  - monknomo 3mo ago
    What about for going out of their way to find and pay despicable people for their words?
  - incompatible 3mo ago
    Sure, tolerate Nazis, give them a place to share their words, let them be part of the mainstream, let them take part in elections, play their dirty tricks and form paramilitaries and win control of government. It's a shame that that leads to certain groups, like Jews, LGBTQ, non-whites, or immigrants getting exterminated, but that's just the price you have to pay for free speech.
    - willy_k 3mo ago
      That’s backwards. Society does not move forward despite free speech, rather because of it. The only way to truly move past harmful ideas and ideologies is to show those who would otherwise subscribe how dumb they are. You can try to quell them, but that just lends to their appeal, and results in those that do subscribe being more extreme and doing more extreme things. For a real world example, take someone who thinks that Nick Fuentes is a reasonable, respectable guy, and then show them the recent discussion between him and Hunter Biden, and see if they don’t at least get uncomfortable, unsure.
      - dpkirchner 3mo ago
cosmicgadget 3mo ago
It's sort of disgusting that inbox clutter from a publishing service is the dominant delivery paradigm as opposed to browsers natively checking bookmarked RSS feeds.
- boplicity 3mo ago
  Email is so well designed, so resilient, and so ubiquitous that's very hard to displace it's use as a central check-in.
  - cosmicgadget 3mo ago
    Right which is why I'd only suggest the browser as an alternative. Imho a browser is something I open when I proactively am seeking information/entertainment and thereby fits blog reading better than email which is more like an interrupt.
    - boplicity 3mo ago
      Maybe the default "new tab" view for a browser could be an RSS reader? Is that something along the lines of what you're proposing?
  - wyclif 3mo ago
    I want very badly to use RSS to read everything, and I still use RSS a lot. But I have to admit that email won the resiliency battle a long time ago.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Or just opening the website once a day. (I subscribe to Cory Doctorow's list though)
drdexebtjl 3mo ago
At 66,000 messages/week, you’d actually be spending around $50-$80 monthly with SES and a VPS + database for handling bounces and unsubscribe requests.
- simonw 3mo ago
  ... right, and then I'm responsible for maintaining that infrastructure, and I have to think about email deliverability as well. Plus Substack discovery does carry some value - about 65% of my new subscribers come via the various Substack mechanisms, the rest are from my own site or "direct" (which I think means people landed on my substack directly and then chose to subscribe.)
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Amazon is always overpriced though. How is it at other providers?
pryelluw 3mo ago
This is super useful even if I just grab it as an idea to emulate. Have you used an agent to copy and paste for you ?
- simonw 3mo ago
  I've not tried that, honestly it's such a quick process already that waiting for some kind of browser automation to copy and paste would likely be slower.
sebastiennight 3mo ago
Hi Simon, I'm not sure I get it completely. If I get it, you're basically using Substack as an email platform. So the blog (the "original") can use Wordpress, Ghost, whatever ; and this is the canonical place that all articles go to. But then you duplicate the content onto Substack so it gets pushed out as emails. My understanding of what it means: - the blog doesn't have its own subscription system ; you link out to Substack for that. So you must be massively losing out on blog-driven subscriptions because of the much higher friction (vs having the pop-ups directly on the blog)? - all of your content is duplicated between the real blog and the Substack copy. How do you avoid Substack cannibalizing all of your blog's traffic, given that they are a bigger domain possibly better optimized for SEO?
- simonw 3mo ago
  I don't like subscription popups - see recent John Gruber rants on the subject: https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover I'm willing to take the hit to subscriber numbers for not having that kind of thing on my own site. From an SEO perspective, I think I might be beating Substack comfortably. My blog has a different page for each item, plus it ties them together with tags. The Substack email is a full week of content in one go. I don't think that's particularly SEO-optimal. Again though, I'm willing to take the risk. So far I've not seen any obvious downsides to this model, and I've been dual publishing in this way for a few years now.
  - sebastiennight 3mo ago
    Thank you! My coauthor Brad and I were subscribing to Ghost just yesterday ; we're going to adopt your model.
theowenyoung 3mo ago
I really like this approach. I make similar distinctions between posts meant for email, posts that should appear in RSS, posts that belong on the homepage, and posts that should live under /archive without appearing on the homepage. I use Substack for email distribution too. For the website side, I built an open-source blogging platform called Jant (https://jant.me https://jant.me) around these needs: posts appear on the homepage by default, posts marked as Featured are included in RSS, and posts can also be unlisted. It also syncs everything to GitHub as Markdown, in a repo that works as a complete Hugo site.

by simonw 3mo ago

rsingel 3mo ago

You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.

simonw 3mo ago
Ghost would cost $288/month (or $241/month paid yearly).
- rsingel 3mo ago
  With 66k subscribers you could cover that without even really trying by setting up a $5/month donation tier or putting a tip jar on the site. With a tiny bit of effort, you could make thousands a month. Substack lets you get away with sending that many emails without attempting to monetize because you pay them in clout and with your reader data. I think they are getting the better deal given how good your writing is and your reputation.
- rsingel 3mo ago
  I'll put my money where my mouth is. We at Outpost will host your site on Ghost for a year for free and migrate all your substack subscribers, with the only caveats that 1) you put a tip jar link (either to Ghost's or Outpost's) at the end of every email with some text like support us being on an indie platform and 2) at the end of the year or earlier report how it went.
- pembrook 3mo ago
  And substack is free because they use YOU as their growth engine. Your newsletter is plastered with their branding and links to their app, not yours. If someone subscribes to pay for your publication via their app, they own the subscription, not you. Ultimately, even if you own the email list, you’re sharecropping on their land. They will email your list with their own promotional offers and marketing whenever they feel like it. If we’ve proved anything in tech, it’s that consumers will fall for the trap of “free” every single time.
willy_k 3mo ago
I don’t know anything about the specific situation you’re referencing. That being said, getting mad at an organization, one that is built to be a “platform” for people to share their words, for not going out of its way to police which people share which words, seems to me to be unproductive at best, if not actively close minded and tribalistic.
- pluto_modadic 3mo ago
  oh it's more than the org. IIRC, it's also the founder.
- monknomo 3mo ago
  What about for going out of their way to find and pay despicable people for their words?
- incompatible 3mo ago
  Sure, tolerate Nazis, give them a place to share their words, let them be part of the mainstream, let them take part in elections, play their dirty tricks and form paramilitaries and win control of government. It's a shame that that leads to certain groups, like Jews, LGBTQ, non-whites, or immigrants getting exterminated, but that's just the price you have to pay for free speech.
  - willy_k 3mo ago
    That’s backwards. Society does not move forward despite free speech, rather because of it. The only way to truly move past harmful ideas and ideologies is to show those who would otherwise subscribe how dumb they are. You can try to quell them, but that just lends to their appeal, and results in those that do subscribe being more extreme and doing more extreme things. For a real world example, take someone who thinks that Nick Fuentes is a reasonable, respectable guy, and then show them the recent discussion between him and Hunter Biden, and see if they don’t at least get uncomfortable, unsure.
    - dpkirchner 3mo ago

cosmicgadget 3mo ago

It's sort of disgusting that inbox clutter from a publishing service is the dominant delivery paradigm as opposed to browsers natively checking bookmarked RSS feeds.

boplicity 3mo ago
Email is so well designed, so resilient, and so ubiquitous that's very hard to displace it's use as a central check-in.
- cosmicgadget 3mo ago
  Right which is why I'd only suggest the browser as an alternative. Imho a browser is something I open when I proactively am seeking information/entertainment and thereby fits blog reading better than email which is more like an interrupt.
  - boplicity 3mo ago
    Maybe the default "new tab" view for a browser could be an RSS reader? Is that something along the lines of what you're proposing?
- wyclif 3mo ago
  I want very badly to use RSS to read everything, and I still use RSS a lot. But I have to admit that email won the resiliency battle a long time ago.
inigyou 3mo ago
Or just opening the website once a day. (I subscribe to Cory Doctorow's list though)

drdexebtjl 3mo ago

At 66,000 messages/week, you’d actually be spending around $50-$80 monthly with SES and a VPS + database for handling bounces and unsubscribe requests.

simonw 3mo ago
... right, and then I'm responsible for maintaining that infrastructure, and I have to think about email deliverability as well. Plus Substack discovery does carry some value - about 65% of my new subscribers come via the various Substack mechanisms, the rest are from my own site or "direct" (which I think means people landed on my substack directly and then chose to subscribe.)
inigyou 3mo ago
Amazon is always overpriced though. How is it at other providers?

pryelluw 3mo ago

This is super useful even if I just grab it as an idea to emulate. Have you used an agent to copy and paste for you ?

simonw 3mo ago
I've not tried that, honestly it's such a quick process already that waiting for some kind of browser automation to copy and paste would likely be slower.

sebastiennight 3mo ago

Hi Simon, I'm not sure I get it completely. If I get it, you're basically using Substack as an email platform. So the blog (the "original") can use Wordpress, Ghost, whatever ; and this is the canonical place that all articles go to. But then you duplicate the content onto Substack so it gets pushed out as emails. My understanding of what it means: - the blog doesn't have its own subscription system ; you link out to Substack for that. So you must be massively losing out on blog-driven subscriptions because of the much higher friction (vs having the pop-ups directly on the blog)? - all of your content is duplicated between the real blog and the Substack copy. How do you avoid Substack cannibalizing all of your blog's traffic, given that they are a bigger domain possibly better optimized for SEO?

simonw 3mo ago
I don't like subscription popups - see recent John Gruber rants on the subject: https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover I'm willing to take the hit to subscriber numbers for not having that kind of thing on my own site. From an SEO perspective, I think I might be beating Substack comfortably. My blog has a different page for each item, plus it ties them together with tags. The Substack email is a full week of content in one go. I don't think that's particularly SEO-optimal. Again though, I'm willing to take the risk. So far I've not seen any obvious downsides to this model, and I've been dual publishing in this way for a few years now.
- sebastiennight 3mo ago
  Thank you! My coauthor Brad and I were subscribing to Ghost just yesterday ; we're going to adopt your model.

theowenyoung 3mo ago

I really like this approach. I make similar distinctions between posts meant for email, posts that should appear in RSS, posts that belong on the homepage, and posts that should live under /archive without appearing on the homepage. I use Substack for email distribution too. For the website side, I built an open-source blogging platform called Jant (https://jant.me https://jant.me) around these needs: posts appear on the homepage by default, posts marked as Featured are included in RSS, and posts can also be unlisted. It also syncs everything to GitHub as Markdown, in a repo that works as a complete Hugo site.