On Blogging and Substack

Last week, Manu’s post on blogging, substacking (?), and owning digital real estate crossed my feed, and caught my attention for a few reasons: a) I read a lot of Manu’s posts, because I find his thoughts interesting, and b) because blogging and owning digital real estate is high on my priority list/topics of interest currently, for reasons that I don’t fully understand yet.

For myself, I looked briefly at Substack a few years ago, but didn’t feel like it offered anything for me based on the way that I run this website. I’m not a prolific enough writer that I need a newsletter, and I definitely have no plans to request compensation for anything I write (unless I choose to change careers, and that isn’t something I’m considering). Also, I’ve held the opinion for a while that if someone is going to go to all of the work to write a newsletter, they should ideally be in control of the domain and infrastructure it’s posted on, since platforms come and go. I will say that I followed Moly White’s migration from Substack to self-hosted Ghost with interest though, and on the off-chance I ever need a guide, I’ve bookmarked her post detailing her journey.

A few hours after I saw Manu’s post, Kev followed up with a post agreeing with Manu’s sentiments, and recommending that his readers go and read Manu’s post, which I will whole-heartedly second. And like Kev, I wanted to highlight one of Manu’s final comments:

[I]f you care about the web, get off social media platforms and get yourself your own piece of digital real estate. And if you don’t know where or how to start, reach out. There are plenty of people out there—including myself—who are more than happy to help you.

Kev and Manu are infinitely more capable than myself when it comes to web design, blogging, etc. But if I can in any way provide insight on how to get started, perhaps from a different perspective than theirs, please reach out!