No, having a Substack newsletter isn’t the same thing as owning your own platform

Anyone who says differently (Substack 👀) is selling you something.

I read with great interest the post I received from Substack yesterday morning titled “Now is the time for creators to build on their own land.” The TikTok kerfluffle “highlights the pressing need for creators to have control over their own destinies…You need to have your own corner of the internet, a place where you can build a home, on your own land, with assets you control.”

YES.

INDEED.

That place is not Substack. Substack might want you to believe it is, but it’s not.

Sure, on Substack you own your email list and IP…for now. How often do you download your email subscriber list? Are you sure this policy won’t change in the future? So many other things have changed on Substack over the last year, why not these things too?

Please don’t take this as me hating on Substack — I love it! I just don’t love this marketing message because it’s dishonest — my newsletter on Substack is not my property, I’m on rented land. I consider Substack an email delivery service provider with some extra bells and whistles email delivery services like Mailchimp and Constant Contact don’t offer. For that reason, this newsletter gets posted on my own website — the property I actually own — first.

Doing things this way adds a couple of extra steps to my workflow, but I rest easy knowing that should Substack go poof or make egregious policy changes which nudge me to jump ship, my creative efforts haven’t been lost. On top of this, I’m an artist! Substack is fine for a newsletter delivery service, but my newsletter is wrapped in Substack branding. I have a little control over the email container. It’s certainly not homemade wise lasagna, though, it’s the kind you make with no-cook noodles, pre-shredded cheese, and jarred sauce after a busy workday. It’s easy. In this stage of development, I like easy.

A lot of folks come into writing/blogging/creating content via Substack first. YAY! It’s amazing to find a creative outlet and an easy delivery vehicle! But it’s dangerous to call yourself a Substacker in the same way it’s dangerous for crafters and makers to identify as Etsy Sellers. In both cases you’re building someone else’s brand, not yours. This isn’t good business sense. If your intent is to use your creative talents to make money, it makes little sense to spend all that effort building someone else’s brand, not your own.

Generally speaking, the folks who are most successful using Substack (i.e. making that sweet sweet moolah) are those who’ve built their brand elsewhere and brought their subscribers with them. There’s a reason for this! It’s because when you build your own brand, you’re telling the world that you’re not an option, you’re the whole lasagna! You’re not nestling in amongst the various lasagna options - you’re demanding an endcap because you know you’re worthy of that spotlight! On Substack, you are an option among many, not the main feature. Substack certainly isn’t promoting you unless you’re already prestigious and doing big numbers.

Reframe how you think of yourself. You are a writer on Substack. You send a newsletter through Substack. You sell your crochet hats on Etsy. You are an artist and people can buy your work on Etsy or directly commission you. You are THE THING. The platform is THE VEHICLE.

What does this look like in practice?

Grab yourself a domain name, find a webhost, and build your own website. Use a basic theme and start posting your writing and art there FIRST. You can make your website pretty later if you don’t want to spend the time/money now. If you sell physical work, learn how to use ecommerce tools and start offering your work on your own website. Backup your Substack subscriber email list at least once a month.

This is a LOT of work - I’ve been working on my website/ecommerce situation off and on since this summer after I decided to walk away from Etsy and social media and every other platform I don’t own. I don’t recommend abandoning social media or sales channels that are working for you (like I did!) unless you’re prepared to start at zero. I do, however, recommend at least engaging in the thought exercise of what your creative career might look like when socials and the internet are rendered functionally irrelevant because they’ve become overrun with bots and AI generated nonsense. We’re starting to see this already - have you tried using Google to search for references lately? SHEESH 🤢

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole…you don’t really own your website, either, unless you’ve built one without relying on backend functionality and a webhost. Some people know how to do this! But most of us use Wordpress or Wix or Squarespace or something like that. If your webhost gets rugpulled or compromised…what are you left with?

(This is why I’m digging hard into IRL (specifically community, shows, zines, and hand-drawn stickers) this year. Stay tuned i.e. subscribe!)

The reason I’m doing things this way — in hard mode — is two-fold. First, I’m building my new website and Substack subscriber base in tandem. My intention is that my website will drive newsletter subscriptions, and my newsletter will encourage people to visit my website. IRL activities will direct people to my website, where my writing and portfolio are. Growing an audience in more than one place is smart. I own my email list on Substack so, while I can, I’m taking advantage of Substack’s referral network. Who knows how this will change over time? Second, I’m building all of this out here in public so you all can watch me faceplant my way to fame and glory, or at least to noisy obscurity. There aren’t many models for artists and writers abandoning social media and figuring out a creative career path without those tools.

THIS is how you own your own property. If you start now, you’re building yourself an off-ramp rather than having to scramble to build something during an unexpected turn of events.