🧐 To Substack or Not to Substack?

Amelia [00:00:02] [Music begins to play, overlapping with the introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio.

Amelia [00:00:14] On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid [music jams and fades out].

Amelia [00:00:37] Hello and welcome to Season Two of Off the Grid. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and I am your fellow adventurer on this journey of doing business without social media or with not so much social media. I know many of our beloved listeners are still on social. That's okay. I love you. We love you. That's welcome here.

Amelia [00:00:59] I think what we all share is a desire for more creative, generous, generative marketing practices in our businesses, and preferably marketing practices that don't take up so much of our time and energy in the process of making some money and sharing our sacred work, right? Isn't that what we all want?

Amelia [00:01:18] Well, today's episode, I'm going to be honest, y'all [laughs]— it started out as a series of, like, gripe-y voice messages to one of my business BFFs. Shout out to Taylor Elyse Morrison, my beloved friend and co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League. I was all up in our Signal chat with these lengthy voice messages about why I was frustrated about some of the new Substack features. And Taylor very lovingly suggested that I should turn them into a podcast episode. So, here we are, friends. This week on Off the Grid— to Substack or not to Substack? That is my question [ding sounds].

Amelia [00:02:02] Before I dive into that, I bet you know what I'm going to say, which is that you should go download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit. It includes a five-step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 Ways to Share Your Work Without Social Media, and a very cool database for organizing creative marketing experiments. I think you're going to love it. Head to softersounds.studio/byeig. That's b-y-e-i-g to get the goods. Can I say again that it's free? Nothing's stopping you from grabbing it. All you gotta do is enter your name and email at that link. It's in the show notes. Go get it. Can't wait to be in your inbox shortly.

Amelia [00:02:44] Speaking of inboxes, let's talk about Substack. So, if you've never heard of Substack before [laughs], this may not be the episode for you. I'm going to say upfront; I think this episode is for folks who are either using Substack and feeling a certain kind of way about some of their recent changes or who are considering Substack but unsure of if it's the right platform for them or for folks like me who just really like to keep up with what's going on in email marketing in general and have a lot of feelings about it [laughs]. So, I'll give that disclaimer upfront.

Amelia [00:03:20] If you're new to Substack, I will also just say that Substack, from my perspective, is an email and podcasting platform and they bill themselves as primarily for writers, which is something that will come up throughout this conversation today.

Amelia [00:03:36] And I want to give ya'll my thesis upfront. I'm not going to make you listen to this whole episode to know what my take is. You'll have to listen to the whole episode for me to really break it down. But the overarching argument here is that if you're listening to Off the Grid, because you don't want to be on social media and you're moving your work, life, creative practice, business to Substack instead of social media, I'm worried that you're just setting yourself up to have the same problem somewhere else.

Amelia [00:04:06] And that's what we're going to unpack in today's episode. Like, is Substack a good alternative to social media? I don't really think it is, and I'm going to talk about why, and I want to be really clear from the jump that that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it. It doesn't even mean I think you shouldn't use it [chuckles softly].

Amelia [00:04:25] It just means I think you should be really clear with yourself and really intentional with your strategies on any platform that you're using, no matter what it is. That's what I want for all of us. And what's worried me about Substack so much, again, I'm going to talk about this in the next however long it takes me to explore, but I just see so many people adopting Substack as like, "I'm going to leave social media and go to Substack and it's going to solve all my problems," and I just don't think that's the case.

Amelia [00:04:51] There are a lot of similar problems on Substack, especially as it's evolved over the past honestly, like, six months. So, in this episode, I'm going to walk you through the pros of Substack. I see some very clear pros there. So, we're going to talk about those.

Amelia [00:05:08] We're going to talk about the promise of Substack, especially, like, what the promise initially was and what the promise is now.

Amelia [00:05:15] And then, I'm going to talk about this, kind of, question I have over whether or not Substack is social media. That's a kind of theoretical philosophical question I'm going to nerd out on for a while [laughs], but by the end of the episode, I'm going to take us back to, like, how Substack might be harming our businesses more than helping them and offer you some ways to evaluate if this is the right platform for you or not. So, that's what we're going to go through.

Amelia [00:05:44] Let's start with the pros. What are the biggest pros of Substack? What are the reasons we love it?

Amelia [00:05:51] I think the biggest pros of Substack are free email and free podcasting. It has traditionally cost money to send emails to a large group of people, and it traditionally costs money to publish a podcast. Normally you're having to pay an email service provider and pay a podcast hosting platform, but on Substack, those things are free, which I love. It feels like a real win for financial accessibility, especially for folks who are just starting businesses or, you know, for artists, for writers— again, Substack calls itself a platform for writers. I love that these services are free. It can be a barrier to entry when you have to pay to send your emails or to publish your podcast. So, I love that.

Amelia [00:06:34] But [laughs]— ya'll knew there was a but coming, for the social media skeptics among us. There's also a red flag here, and it's something that folks often say about social media. You've probably heard it before, which is that when the service is free, you are the product. That has really been a description of social media platforms, of the attention economy, and I worry that it also applies here. For now, let's just, like, kind of, raise that red flag and keep going.

Amelia [00:07:01] So, if the Substack pros are free email and podcasting, what is the promise? So, like, on top of just giving us those free services, they're also making some big promises and I think the biggest Substack promise is money.

Amelia [00:07:15] Like, Substack's promise to creators who publish on the platform is monetization. Substack makes it easy for people to pay you for your content. You can charge for a newsletter or a podcast, and you can very easily segment an audience between free and paid. Anyone who's been on Substack is familiar with this. So, whether you are making a newsletter or a podcast or subscribing to one, the emphasis is on those free and paid editions of the content that you create.

Amelia [00:07:45] But if you listen to this podcast [laughs], you will also know that this raises a red flag for me as well, because as I explored in our, "Ten Things I Hate about Content Marketing," episode, we don't all need to be making paid content. And for many of us, paid content is actually a distraction from our business because for most of us, the revenue from paid content just isn't substantial enough.

Amelia [00:08:10] And I definitely say that from the perspective of someone who is full time self-employed and within my business, I am making the money to support my family, feed my dog, go on vacations with my partner [laughs], right?

Amelia [00:08:25] So, you may have a very different perspective on what, quote unquote, "substantial enough" is if maybe, you know, you have a job that pays all your bills and from your business, you're just looking for additional income of some sort, you know. So, just have that in mind as I make this critique.

Amelia [00:08:41] But, once again, I think that for many of us who are full-time self-employed, paid content is a distraction from offerings that can make us much more money in our businesses. And if your goal is to make enough money to support yourself, you have to be really careful about where you spend your energy, such that you're not giving all your energy to making content that is not bringing in very much revenue. If you want to hear me explore all that, go listen to, "The Ten Things I Hate about Content Marketing," episode but for now, let's get back to Substack.

Amelia [00:09:12] I think the main promise of Substack has been monetize your content, make money off of these things that you are writing. I think implicit in there is like, "Make money off of the newsletters you're already writing anyway," or, "Make money off of the things you used to put on Instagram but are now going to put in a newsletter and make people pay you for."

Amelia [00:09:32] Right. The promise is money. I think this is similar but different to social media, right? Social media was promising us audience growth and then an audience we can monetize. Substack is just promising us a much easier path to monetization of that audience. But the issue in both places is that you need a large audience to be making a substantial amount of money.

Amelia [00:09:54] So, let me get into the maths of it all for a second and run two scenarios here. We'll do the math on 100 subscribers on Substack and on 1000 subscribers on Substack.

Amelia [00:10:05] So, say you have 100 free subscribers on Substack. Substack says in their online materials that they, quote, "Tend to see five to 10% of free subscribers convert to paid, with 10% being a rate to aim for."

Amelia [00:10:20] So, let's say you're awesome and you convert 10% of your free subscribers to paid. That's ten paid subscribers, if you have 100 free subscribers. Most paid subscriptions I see cost $5 to $15. So, let's say yours is $10. So, now you've got 10 paid subscribers at $10 a month. That's $100 a month, which is pretty nice, right? I'd like an extra hundred dollars a month. Sure.

Amelia [00:10:40] Except it's not actually $100 a month that you're making. Substack takes 10%, so that's $10. And then Stripe takes their 2.9% plus $0.35 per transaction so roughly $3. So, from your ten subscribers, you make $100 minus $10 for Substack, minus $3 for Stripe, so it's $87 a month.

Amelia [00:11:03] And then, it's all processed through Stripe. So, they're going to report it to the government for taxes if you're in the US. So, let's assume then 15% of your $87 take-home is going to go to taxes. That's $13. So, this leaves you taking home $74 per month for your ten paid subscribers.

Amelia [00:11:22] Now, that isn't nothing, but I would bet it's also not a substantial addition to your monthly income. And when I think about that $74, you know, in this equation, I'm not even really taking into account all of the work that I'm doing to earn that $74.

Amelia [00:11:36] So, let's say that I've promised my paid subscribers one extra email a week, so that's four emails a month. So, $74 per month, 74 divided by four is 18.5. If it takes me an hour to write the email that I send to them, I have now— I'm paying myself $18.50 an hour, which is not nothing, but also not that much more than minimum wage in Chicago or other places I've lived and I would like all of us to be making a lot more than that in our businesses.

Amelia [00:12:08] And again, I'm still even not even taking into account all of the time you spent sending things to your freed subscribers or all of the time you spend trying to grow the audience to get more subscribers, right? So, I just think that the maths don't math on a small audience on Substack [wah wah wah sound].

Amelia [00:12:26] Now let's run this example real quick for a thousand subscribers. So, say you have a thousand free subscribers on Substack, 10% convert to paid. That's 100 paid subscribers. If they pay you $10 a month, that's $1,000 a month which like— hell yeah, I'd love to make an extra thousand dollars a month [laughs softly]. Of course, then we have to account for Substack takes its 10%, Stripe takes its 3%, then you've got 15% for taxes. So, that takes you down to $740 per month.

Amelia [00:12:54] Now, that number might actually be a substantial addition to your monthly income but unless you have a list of a thousand email subscribers already, you're not going to start there. And even if you do have a list that size that you transfer to Substack in the moving process, you're going to do a lot of work to convince your audience to go paid. So, I don't think you could expect 10% conversion immediately.

Amelia [00:13:17] Overall, what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that the promise of Substack is monetization, but it's still a monetization model that requires scale and so many folks I talked to through this podcast are leaving social media because they're not interested in scaling. They're realizing that they're happy with a smaller, more supportive audience and specific, well strategized offerings.

Amelia [00:13:39] So, if that's you, don't fall for the Substack promise. Monetizing content is hard work. So, unless growing an audience so you can sell them content is your goal, or you already have an audience that's excited to pay you for content— unless you're in one of those two groups, I just don't think Substack is the right fit for you. I just think you're going to have to work way too hard for that $74 a month.

Amelia [00:14:05] I'll also add in here that the Substack promise is shifting. So, originally, I think it was purely like, "Come to Substack. Monetize your audience." Now they're starting to focus on discovery. So, they're offering monetization and a network of writers and newsletters who are referring each other and a newsletter discovery platform for new readers to find you. So, I think that the discovery, the network, is really a big part of their sell at this point.

Amelia [00:14:38] And I based this off of [chuckles] one— reading the website a million times and—

Amelia [00:14:44] Two— an interview that the CEO of Substack, Chris Best, did on the Decoder podcast. So, I'm going to link that interview in the show notes because I'm going to quote it here a couple times, and I want you to be able to go listen to it or they've got a really great transcript you can just read. You'll see I pulled these quotes directly from there.

Amelia [00:15:02] So, Chris Best, CEO of Substack, in that interview, he says, "I think the power of the network that we're building is a big part of the value that we can create for writers. And so, we don't want to say you can just go off and use our publishing in a box software to start your own business. It's great that you can do that. That's a necessary step one, but you want the power of a network. You don't want to be totally Off the Grid having to figure everything else out yourself. You want to be able to plug into this. You want to have the benefit of independence, of owning your work, and owning your list, and also the benefit of being part of a network that helps you grow and interact with other people, that helps bring all of that value. And I think we've shown now that we can do both of those things and that together the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

Amelia [00:15:48] So, when he says both of those things there, what he means is the email software and the discovery mechanism. And he's saying that like, "We're bringing you both."

Amelia [00:15:58] And honestly, it sounds great, right? Like, folks don't want to go off the grid—calling this podcast Off the Grid was tongue-in-cheek. I often say like, "We're not going fully off grid. I'm going off the Instagram grid."

Amelia [00:16:09] But I think this gets to the heart of why so many folks are shifting from social media to Substack. They want the content creation and networking capabilities of social media without the ads and the algorithmic bias. I mean, that's a great promise, isn't it? Like, it sounds awesome.

Amelia [00:16:31] Let me pause here to say, as I often do on this show [chuckles], that I have no judgment about whether or not you use Substack. You make the choices you want to make. But I'm recording this episode because I see Substack holding itself up as a service that's wholly different than social media. And I want to call bullshit on that.

Amelia [00:16:51] My skepticism started when I noticed this thing happening where all the influencers I used to follow on Instagram, are now on Substack. But, like, they seem to have a lot of the exact same problems.

Amelia [00:17:04] So, they used to make Instagram posts about, like, the challenges of sharing publicly and the challenges of getting people to actually buy their books and the challenges of, you know, trying to be a writer and a public figure at the same time. And now, they write Substack newsletters about the challenges of sharing publicly and the challenges of getting people to go from free to paid subscribers and the challenges of being a public figure and a writer at the same time [laughs softly].

Amelia [00:17:29] And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's because even though you're on Substack and not Instagram or more on Substack and less on Instagram, like you're still trapped in this influencer business model." And, like, that's the problem [laughs softly]. The problem is the influencer business model and how it's become so intertwined with the creator and artist business models.

Amelia [00:17:52] And that's not Substack's fault. I don't think Substack did that, and I'm not blaming Substack for that. But [chuckles]— I need, like, a “but” sound effect in this episode [laughs].

Amelia [00:18:03] But I do think Substack is stepping into this space to capitalize on folks' frustration with social media. And then, they're kind of just serving a slightly different form of social media back to us, in my opinion.

Amelia [00:18:18] So, let's move into unpacking this question I have. Like, is Substack just social media or is Substack a form of social media?

Amelia [00:18:26] Substack started as a newsletter platform for writers and to be honest, I loved that— nice essays, easy-to-read formatting. Then they added podcasts and when they added comments, I would kind of love that too. It felt like they were really capturing a sort of old school blog post vibe and I was really into it.

Amelia [00:18:46] But Substack clearly thinks they're doing something much bigger than, like, giving me back the internet I used to love [laughs].

Amelia [00:18:52] So, to quote their CEO, Chris Best, on this, from that same Decoder interview there, he says, "We're building a new part of the Internet that's based on different laws of physics, like a different business model. Subscription instead of ads. It's a different way of relating to people where you subscribe directly to the people you trust rather than signing up for the platform as a whole."

Amelia [00:19:15] Okay. First of all, I don't think that you can equate a different business model with different laws of physics, like [laughs] that feels like a gross over exaggeration. And just, like, such founder talk, like it's just— it really rubs me the wrong way. But I take his point that the business model is based on subscriptions, not ads, and that that is novel in this space.

Amelia [00:19:37] The part I want to call bullshit on is that you're subscribing directly to people rather than the platform as a whole. You certainly do sign up for individual newsletters. You subscribe to people. That is true. And I think in the past that has been all that Substack was.

Amelia [00:19:54] But now Substack is building a huge engine around that act of subscribing to people that feels to me like it's coercing us onto their platform as a whole. First, they made an app, then they created Threads, which at first were only in app, then they introduced Notes. And with Notes you're seeing all sorts of people's notes, not just the folks you subscribe to. They really push recommendations. They really push restacking newsletters.

Amelia [00:20:24] So, as a user, you are not simply signing up for the people whose emails you've subscribed to if you are using their app, which they really push, if you're using that app, you are getting way more than just the people that you've said yes to. And I have to say it really feels like they are sucking us into a platform as a whole— exactly the thing that they said they weren't doing.

Amelia [00:20:46] Now, does that make it social media? Maybe. I don't know. The biggest difference between Substack and other social media platforms for business owners, I think, is that you quote unquote, "own your audience" on Substack, meaning you can export a list of the names and emails of everyone who signed up for your Substack and take that audience elsewhere if you so choose. And I don't want to downplay that. That is so important for business owners. It's one of the primary reasons that I say that we need to get ourselves off of social media or that it should not be our primary channel because without the platform we have no access to our audience.

Amelia [00:21:21] And on Substack, you do. You can choose to leave the platform with your audience. So, I think that that is one difference between Substack and traditional social media platforms, but I also hear folks, kind of, sharing this idea that maybe Substack isn't like social media because there aren't algorithms or maybe Substack can be social media without the algorithms.

Amelia [00:21:41] But Substack does use algorithms. Like, their CEO says that in this interview, to quote him again, he says, "It's algorithmic, but it's algorithmic in service of the user instead of the users having to serve the algorithm, by which I mean it's based off of the choices people are making. It's based off of, 'I subscribe to you. You recommend somebody.' We're sort of building this trust graph in the network and everything that goes into the feed is sort of in service of that."

Amelia [00:22:06] So, basically what he's trying to emphasize is that Substack is really focused on recommendations and it is [laughs]. You subscribe to any Substack newsletter, you likely have gotten many emails about subscribing to more Substacks. And they do have nice features where you can tag folks and embed other newsletters.

Amelia [00:22:22] But also everything he says about the algorithm in that quote is basically the same stuff that Meta would say about their algorithm, right? Like, they always say that algorithms are based off human behavior. They're based on recommendations. They're based off of what people are doing on the apps.

Amelia [00:22:37] But, like, what does it mean at the algorithm-level to be oriented toward subscribers and content creators rather than toward ads? I don't think he gave us any meaningful information about that so we'll have to see how it plays out.

Amelia [00:22:51] What does it mean when an algorithm caters to users over advertisers? And will that be any different than other social media platforms? And honestly, like, this isn't even bringing up the major issues around moderation that are popping up with this new Notes feature, or the fact that Substack is VC-funded, which means, yeah, they say now that they're focused on users, but at the end of the day they have to be focused on returns for investors. So, even though they say no ads is this foundational piece of their model, like, I don't know if I trust them on that, right?

Amelia [00:23:23] Like, Instagram didn't have ads for years and years and years and then, it did. So, it's all about who you trust, babes. I guess that's what it comes down to [laughs]. Okay, I digress.

Amelia [00:23:33] Whether or not Substack is social media is, like, a fun philosophical question for me, and I think it does play into the values alignment for ourselves and in our businesses. Like, does Substack align with the values that we're trying to bring to our work and how we share our work? I can't answer that question for you. I've just tried to provide some perspective around like how it is and isn't similar to social media and maybe some of the values-based decisions we've all made around social media use.

Amelia [00:23:58] But I think that, like, there's something else I want to get into before I wrap this up, because at the end of the day, this is a podcast for business owners and creatives who want to make money off of their work. And it's, like, nice for us to figure out if Substack is social media, but what's the impact going to be for our businesses? So, that's where I want to take us before we wrap up [ding sounds].

Amelia [00:24:20] Whether or not Substack is social media, I still think Substack is blurring the lines between social media and email, and I think that is a problem for small business owners, like many of us, who want to move away from social media to email and who need email to help us make sales.

Amelia [00:24:39] Let me unpack that. Something the founder of Substack says a lot is that Substack is for writers, which is great. I love to write [laughs softly]. I've published a book. I am a writer. Lots of business owners I know are writers too. Many of you listening are probably writers or want to publish a book someday, but something I want to clarify, kind of, inside of that is that I think Substack is for newsletters not for email marketing.

Amelia [00:25:04] And while the writers in us may want to write our newsletters, like as a business owners, we also have to do some email marketing. And let me tell you, Substack is so poorly equipped for email marketing. It is not an email marketing platform. To me, an email marketing platform would have automation features. It would have much more robust stats and information. It would allow much more segmentation of your audience. And there just— Substack doesn't have any of that because it's not an email marketing platform and that's not a problem if you're just a writer who wants to write to your readers, that's great.

Amelia [00:25:41] But if you're a business owner [laughs softly], that's a problem when we want to sell things. Again, Substack doesn't have those automations. Their stats are very minimal. They're supporting you in converting free subscribers to paid subscribers, but not in converting subscribers to customers or clients.

Amelia [00:25:58] Sure, you can mention offerings in your newsletter. You can link to a sales page, but you can't see who clicked that link. You can't segment those folks out and send an email just to them. You need a different email service provider for that. So, I think that in that sense, Substack is just not useful for small business owners or for people who want to sell via email.

Amelia [00:26:17] And going back to Substack, blurring the lines between email and social media, one of my favorite things about social media used to be that it wasn't in my inbox. Like, my email was a separate space. And Substack is really collapsing that.

Amelia [00:26:31] Now, on the Substack model, the email inbox is for everything. It's for newsletters, it's for podcast, it's for notes. You know, I don't know if that's a net positive or a net negative long-term, but I can tell you anecdotally that myself and many of my friends now joke that some weeks our inboxes, like, overflow and we just delete every single email that comes up through Substack because it's too much. Like, I use Proton Mail and I can see all of the Substack logos on the one side. And some weeks when I'm overwhelmed by content, like I just am like, "Oh, this is an easy filter. I'm going to get rid of all the Substacks. Goodbye. Sorry friends."

Amelia [00:27:07] I can also say that I've unsubscribed from plenty of folks I'd like to hear from sometimes, but I unsubscribe from them because I was tired of getting their free email, their podcast episode, their paid email in my inbox every week. Like I wanted just a basic email update and then Substack churned them into this type of content creator that now I just don't hear from them at all because it was too much content [laughs] as a subscriber.

Amelia [00:27:29] Let alone that's not even getting me to the dozens of fragments of paid emails that I get each week trying to entice me to subscribe to paid content. Like, I understand the Substack argument that we should be paid for the content that we create, but I stand by my claim that not all business owners are content creators or not all business owners need to be paid for our content.

Amelia [00:27:54] Even if we're content marketing, our content can be in service of other offerings. And there are so many wonderful people that I want to support. I want to take your class, I want to buy your book, I want to do your things, but I don't want to pay for more emails. Like, it's just a really hard thing for me to want to pay for more content. I consume so much. It's overflowing. I don't want to pay for more.

Amelia [00:28:16] And with too many people now I'm realizing that means that I don't get to hear from them at all. And I would be a great customer or client, it's just that I don't want to pay for the email. I'd like to pay you for other things, and I've gotten a little bit into my own personal feelings here, but I don't think I'm the only person [laughs lightly] who feels this way. I know I'm not because I talk to plenty of other business owners who feel this way.

Amelia [00:28:36] It all comes back to this collapse of the inbox, and I feel a little skeptical that we should be integrating all content into one primary place, and that it should be our email inbox. And actually, I don't think that Substack's endgame, they're trying to integrate all our content into the Substack app, right? That's why Notes is there. Like, they really want us in the app to go for all of our content and to be spending money to subscribe to people there. And again, that doesn't have to be a bad thing. In fact, like, I've enjoyed scrolling the Substack app from time to time, but got to say it feels a lot like social media again, and especially when they are using algorithms to organize and serve content in app. Like, how long before what's in the app— like your email that's going to your subscriber is really flooded by an— even just other emails being served up algorithmically.

Amelia [00:29:28] And that's not to mention that when you're in the app, Substack prompts you to turn on a feature where, like, if you look at something in the app, it won't go to your inbox or vice versa. And I think that that means that this precious interaction, right, that we've really treasured as business owners, we've treasured that act of getting into someone's inbox consensually, please, like that'll go away if Substack gets everybody into the app.

Amelia [00:29:52] Again, these are just my thoughts. These are things I'm worried about. I'm doing a little bit of future predicting and that can be, I will say, like I'm not— I don't want to fear monger. So, I'm not saying like, "If you're on Substack, get off because it's all going to get bad." I don't think that's true. I think Substack is still a great place for certain types of creators, specifically writers. But as business owners, these are reasons I think we need to be wary.

Amelia [00:30:15] And I've got one more reason for business owners that I think we should be concerned about Substack collapsing the distinction between email and social media. Something people say a lot about Instagram is that Instagram is where you nurture your audience, but then you sell to them in email. Like, I've said this [chuckles] in the past, people say to me all the time like, "On Instagram, I'm just like growing an audience, building relationships, and then I'm getting them onto my email list where I can sell to them and convert them into customers or clients." Here's the problem in the context of Substack, if you replace Instagram in that sentence with Substack.

Amelia [00:30:50] So, if Substack is where you nurture your audience, but then you go to email to sell to them, the problem is a Substack is already email [chuckles softly] so where do you go to sell to your audience? And as much as Substack is a direct connection to your audience such that maybe you just sell to them on Substack too and now instead of being two places, you're only one. That'd be great.

Amelia [00:31:12] But I don't think Substack is a great place to sell for many of the reasons I mentioned before. You don't get the analytics you need to be clear about who you're talking to. You know, they're not foregrounding that kind of interaction. Substack's entire purpose is to convert free subscribers to paid subscribers because they make their money by taking that 10% of your subscriber fees.

Amelia [00:31:32] And so, I just think, especially when we're starting out as business owners, I think it can be so much easier to be like, "I'm just going to write to my audience and I'm not going to sell them anything yet, and I'm going to build all this trust," and that's beautiful. Like, I support that interaction. But as business owners, eventually we got to sell, babes. Like, we just— we have to, otherwise it's not a business. If you're not selling anything, it's not a business. It's okay to not be a business. Not everything or everyone needs to be a business.

Amelia [00:31:57] But if you want to support yourself with your work, you have to sell it. And I don't think that Substack is a good place for that.

Amelia [00:32:06] Now, the good news once again is that the key difference between Substack and social media is you can export your audience so there is nothing stopping you from downloading your subscribers' emails when you want to sell something, putting them in another email platform, using that for sales, or inviting folks to opt in to another email list from you where you will be talking about your courses— your whatever.

Amelia [00:32:28] Like, shout out to Marley Grace, a friend and listener of the podcast. Hi Marley [laughs], who has a Substack for writing a newsletter and uses Flodesk to send emails for sales. We're talking about courses for doing some free lead magnet stuff. Like, I think you could have that approach. I don't really see anything wrong with that approach in terms of, like, kind of solving this dilemma of how do I deal with the fact that Substack's not great for selling, but, you know, not all of us want to run two email lists— also very fair [chuckles]. So, I think it's just another data point in this conversation I'm trying to raise around like— to Substack or not to Substack.

Amelia [00:33:07] I just want to be out here reminding us that maybe Substack is morphing into social media or maybe not, but either way, it's definitely blurring the lines between email and social media. It's definitely still wrapped up in the creator, artist, influencer economy driven by content marketing. That is still content marketing, which means it's still a numbers game, it's still an economy of scale. The Substack's that get featured on the front page of substack.com have tens of thousands of paid subscribers.

Amelia [00:33:39] The top ten Substack creators apparently make a collective $25 million per year.

Amelia [00:33:43] [Long pause] Did you hear those numbers and want to chase that kind of success? I mean, I did. I was like, "Hell, yeah. I would love tens of thousands of paid subscribers. Cool." But [laughs]— again insert my “but” sound effect here.

Amelia [00:33:58] I also recognize that that is the exact same urge I felt when I used to see Instagram profiles with 100,000 followers. It's the same feeling and that feeling now is a huge red flag for me. I don't chase that feeling anymore. I can't. It was too harmful for me on social media. I'm not about to jump over to Substack and be in the same cycle.

Amelia [00:34:20] So, to Substack or not to Substack? That is the goddamn question [laughs heartily].

Amelia [00:34:31] I can't make that decision for you, but I hope listening to this episode helped you consider if Substack is right for you. And I guess to put all my cards on the table at the end, I think Substack is great for writers who are bringing a mid- to big-size audience from Instagram to another platform because they desire to make money off of their writing. And if that is your primary goal, I think Substack is literally built for that. And so, I urge you onward and upward to the stacks [laughs].

Amelia [00:35:05] But for folks who are stepping away from social media because they want to step out of this content marketing trap of needing a big audience and who want to develop some offerings that are really aligned with your smaller, supportive audience. I just don't think Substack is what you need. I think you need a different type of email platform.

Amelia [00:35:29] Obviously know— we know I'm on Flodesk [laughs]. I have a lot of gripes about Flodesk too. But regardless, I just think that Substack is not for everyone. And I'm seeing too many business owners that I love and admire get really distracted by stepping on to Substack and suddenly being in this marketplace of writers who were doing something really different than what they're doing.

Amelia [00:35:50] And I also still worry about my writer babes [laughs lightly], who I do see moving from social media to Substack and not realizing they're signing up for the same type of writer/influencer economy. And again, Substack didn't create that. Publishing houses are a huge part of it [laughs], right? Their emphasis on having a large following is a lot of what's driving that demand. And I have a lot of feelings about that too. This is my gripe episode of the season, apparently [laughs heartily].

Amelia [00:36:21] But I think that if you want out of that cycle, I don't think Substack is the answer. You have to build a business ecosystem that has a lot more going on than just selling content. That's what will allow you to step further and further away from that writer or artist as influencer model.

Amelia [00:36:39] And I would love to help with that, of course [laughs]. So, if you are one of those people out there who is feeling unsatisfied with social media or with your Substack, come hang. Send me a voice message, sign up for a business coaching session, come to this year's edition of The Refresh, which I'm going to announce soon.

Amelia [00:36:57] There are a lot of ways that we can support each other in growing our businesses and marketing in ways that just feel fun and awesome to us. And if you're on Substack and all of the recent stuff with Notes and all of the backlash with Twitter and all of that started giving you the ick, I hope that this episode has helped. I hope it's given you some food for thought.

Amelia [00:37:20] I welcome you into my voice message inbox. Send me a message, whether you are a staunch defender of Substack or somebody who just wants to gripe about it like I do, obviously [laughs]. You can go to speakpipe.com/offthegrid or find the link in the show notes and send me a voice memo about it. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to continue this convo.

Amelia [00:37:40] In the meantime, you can find me on Flodesk and full disclosure, you still might see me in the comments of a Substack that I love [laughs heartily]. I'll be there hanging out, subscribing to my friends, supporting their work, and getting a feel for my continued question of if Substack is social media. We're all living in the in-between, my friends. [Outro music begins to play] There isn't a writer wrong in this question of to Substack or not to Substack. All we can do is ask the question. Until next time I will see you, beautiful, brilliant business babes off the grid.

Amelia [00:38:16] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's softersounds dot studio slash b-y-e-i-g.

Amelia [00:38:33] This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Purple Planet and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

Amelia [00:38:40] If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid [music fades out].