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I just have website.com and my Substack is subdomain.website.com. If I ever wanted to move off (I definitely don't!) I could keep all the urls exactly the same

I just have website.com and my Substack is subdomain.website.com. If I ever wanted to move off (I definitely don't!) I could keep all the urls exactly the same with self-hosting. But substack solved distribution (and community, and bookkeeping, un-distribution etc) and it solved getting paid for my writing, which is not enough to live on but its definitely significant and well appreciated. It is worth much more than its fees, because the counterfactual is that I don't have any of those things. I think it's a huge mistake to lump those together as "convenience", its a lot more than convenient! The only important thing to me about having a non-substack website is that its good to have a place for more permanent information, lists, contact, etc. But even for many writers, that kind of stuff becomes stale so quickly that the personal sites don't tend to matter much, or even make them look worse! The floating social network spaces are much more valuable. Even losing my x.com would be much worse to my day-to-day life than losing my domain, though I may wish it were otherwise. And I cannot replicate that elsewhere. The social networks are big because they have genuine utility.

jdthedisciple 2mo ago
How easy/difficult was it getting off the ground on substack? Did you get interactions right from your first post? Is there visibility for new writers?
- moralestapia 2mo ago
  Please x2. If you could write a small guide, that'd be phenomenal.
  - hnped 2mo ago
    What is genuinely interesting is how Hacker News moderators will edit user posts, such that it looks as if the user replied to another post originally, without ever making that clear. What other lies and manipulation do they come with? Directly editing the content of posts silently, no sign of being edited?
- brightball 2mo ago
  I started using it to run a conference 4 years ago with the intent that it was supposed to be a temporary solution until we built a "real" site. The experience was so good that we haven't moved off. Even if we did build a more formal conference site, we'd still keep the substack blog. The mailing list has grown from nothing to right at 1000 subs which isn't bad for something I do in my spare time. By far the most effective communication. Social media (all channels) are a fraction of the engagement that I get compared to substack. https://blog.carolina.codes/ https://blog.carolina.codes/
  - nativeit 2mo ago
    Cheers from Concord, NC. Nice to see a fellow techie in the South ‘round these parts.
    - brightball 2mo ago
      If you want a free ticket to come down this year, shoot me a note! We typically bring a bunch of folks from Concord. I came to speak at a meetup over at Flywheel Concord a couple of years ago to promote the conference.
smashah 2mo ago
Please also make sure to keep your wikidata and ISNI information up to date with your substack links. Services like pirate[dot]kred use that information to link your books to your payment pages (substack is supported).
jonahx 2mo ago
> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-able and dominate not because they offer the best service or have the best features but because "everyone is there." That ubiquity is the only "genuine utilty" they are offering you. I said "mostly" above because it seems like substack, e.g., as you said, has bundled payment, email, etc in a way that people really like. Even there, though, the network effect is probably the dominating factor.
- IshKebab 2mo ago
  It is wrong, but so are you. The truth is that social networks are big because they HAD genuine utility. The Facebook was amazing... at least until about 2010. I was at uni when it started and I vividly remember thinking "I wish there was a website or something that would help me know who everyone is" (we didn't have physical face books in the UK) and then a year later thefacebook turned up. Amazing for everyone's social lives. But after 2010 it just gradually got shitter. WhatsApp replaced it (in most ways; in some ways there is no replacement) and has so far been amazing but it feels like we're about at the "2010" of WhatsApp. Meta is starting to turn the screws. An AI button. Notifications about new features. Integration with Meta accounts. Eventually it will probably merge with Facebook Messaging or some bollocks and then we'll all have to move elsewhere. Anyway my point is, these things genuinely became big because they were great. They stayed big despite becoming shitter due to network effects.
  - eloisant 2mo ago
    Also because they closed all the gates of interoperability once they got big enough. If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.
    - akoboldfrying 2mo ago
Uehreka 2mo ago
> (I definitely don't!) I mean I wouldn't either if I'd managed to score website.com
tome 2mo ago
What is "un-distribution"?
- boccaff 2mo ago
  I don't know, but I imagine "unsubscribe" type of features.

jdthedisciple 2mo ago

How easy/difficult was it getting off the ground on substack? Did you get interactions right from your first post? Is there visibility for new writers?

moralestapia 2mo ago
Please x2. If you could write a small guide, that'd be phenomenal.
- hnped 2mo ago
  What is genuinely interesting is how Hacker News moderators will edit user posts, such that it looks as if the user replied to another post originally, without ever making that clear. What other lies and manipulation do they come with? Directly editing the content of posts silently, no sign of being edited?
brightball 2mo ago
I started using it to run a conference 4 years ago with the intent that it was supposed to be a temporary solution until we built a "real" site. The experience was so good that we haven't moved off. Even if we did build a more formal conference site, we'd still keep the substack blog. The mailing list has grown from nothing to right at 1000 subs which isn't bad for something I do in my spare time. By far the most effective communication. Social media (all channels) are a fraction of the engagement that I get compared to substack. https://blog.carolina.codes/ https://blog.carolina.codes/
- nativeit 2mo ago
  Cheers from Concord, NC. Nice to see a fellow techie in the South ‘round these parts.
  - brightball 2mo ago
    If you want a free ticket to come down this year, shoot me a note! We typically bring a bunch of folks from Concord. I came to speak at a meetup over at Flywheel Concord a couple of years ago to promote the conference.

smashah 2mo ago

Please also make sure to keep your wikidata and ISNI information up to date with your substack links. Services like pirate[dot]kred use that information to link your books to your payment pages (substack is supported).

jonahx 2mo ago

> The social networks are big because they have genuine utility. I think this is mostly wrong, and that the social networks are big primarily because they spent money at the right time to create entrenched network effects that allow them to rent-seek ever after. The quality and innovation of the services themselves (especially simple sites like twitter/X) is not the moat. At a technical level, most are easily clone-able and dominate not because they offer the best service or have the best features but because "everyone is there." That ubiquity is the only "genuine utilty" they are offering you. I said "mostly" above because it seems like substack, e.g., as you said, has bundled payment, email, etc in a way that people really like. Even there, though, the network effect is probably the dominating factor.

IshKebab 2mo ago
It is wrong, but so are you. The truth is that social networks are big because they HAD genuine utility. The Facebook was amazing... at least until about 2010. I was at uni when it started and I vividly remember thinking "I wish there was a website or something that would help me know who everyone is" (we didn't have physical face books in the UK) and then a year later thefacebook turned up. Amazing for everyone's social lives. But after 2010 it just gradually got shitter. WhatsApp replaced it (in most ways; in some ways there is no replacement) and has so far been amazing but it feels like we're about at the "2010" of WhatsApp. Meta is starting to turn the screws. An AI button. Notifications about new features. Integration with Meta accounts. Eventually it will probably merge with Facebook Messaging or some bollocks and then we'll all have to move elsewhere. Anyway my point is, these things genuinely became big because they were great. They stayed big despite becoming shitter due to network effects.
- eloisant 2mo ago
  Also because they closed all the gates of interoperability once they got big enough. If they didn't have the incentive to get a monopoly we would have kept a more decentralized web.
  - akoboldfrying 2mo ago

Uehreka 2mo ago

> (I definitely don't!) I mean I wouldn't either if I'd managed to score website.com

tome 2mo ago

What is "un-distribution"?

boccaff 2mo ago
I don't know, but I imagine "unsubscribe" type of features.