Substack, Friction And The Paradox of Choice
Why I chose Substack and my initial experiences on the platform
Note: this is a post with some thoughts about Substack. As such it’s probably of much less interest to my subscribers than usual and so hasn't been emailed to subscribers. I wrote it mainly to share my experiences with other writers. I hope it’s useful.
tldr; Substack is working for me so far in removing friction and unnecessary choices.
Background
I started The Chip Letter on Substack on 28 August 2022. At the time I had almost no Twitter followers (well one to be precise - thanks Jono Bacon!) and no followers on any other social media platform.
I knew that I wanted to write about technology history. I’ve started, made progress on and abandoned a couple of books on the topic. There was still a burning desire to put pen to paper. But only if someone actually read the results.
So the obvious answer was to write on a blog or a newsletter.
The dividing line between the two has become somewhat blurred. Calling it a newsletter - even with no actual ‘news’ - implies a degree of regularity which would push me to write. So a newsletter it was.
I also wanted to write under a pseudonym. The material wouldn't be controversial in any way but I felt that using my real identity would create ‘baggage’ and I wanted the material to be judged on its own merits.
‘Babbage’ has been used before but I loved the photo of Charles Babbage from c1850. Focused and determined. So Babbage it was.
Choosing Substack
Before choosing to write here I looked at the alternatives. I already have a another professional blog and newsletter which is hosted on Ghost, so that was the natural place to start looking.
I love Ghost. It’s good looking. It’s open source. It has tons of flexibility.1 You can customise to your hearts content. Plus it integrates with lots of other services. I soon had so many cool ideas running though my head for ways to make the site look great and add functionality.
And that’s the problem.
After several days of looking at themes and analysing analytics providers I had written and published precisely ….. nothing.
So I turned to Substack.
Within a few hours I had my first post on the site and sent to my sole subscriber (yes that was me).
Early Days
With my first post out of the way I had precisely two things to do: write and think about writing.
Having removed the friction of tweaking my site there was then the friction of deciding what to write. More specifically, how often, on what topics, how long should the posts be, what style and so on.
Again too much choice! So I felt the need to narrow down the options again.
On frequency, it had to be 1. Sustainable, 2. Predictable, 3. Not clog inboxes, 4. Regular (no excuses for me), 5. Often enough to keep me engaged.
I decided that three posts a week felt about right: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
With these days fixed, deciding on the kind of content became easier.
For Wednesday, in the middle of the week when readers are busy, the content had to be lighter. I took inspiration from Adam Tooze’s Chartbook, who often has posts with a series of interesting links, tweets and images. So we have ‘Chip Letter Links’.
For Friday, something shorter which aims to get readers thinking over the weekend.
For Sunday, longer posts as readers are likely to have more time to absorb more in-depth articles.
Overall, this felt sustainable whilst pushing me to write regularly. It’s early days and this may change but it felt important to have a schedule that I, at least, could believe in.
One final point on writing. I try to impose a quality bar. I’ve written pieces that, in the end, I’m not happy with. If that’s the case then they don’t get published. Maybe they were OK, but if I’m not happy then that diminishes the site in my eyes. I’d rather adjust my writing schedule slightly or skip a post.
So at this point I feel that about as much friction has been removed from the writing process as possible. So far it’s working.
The Substack Brand
So how do I feel about Substack?
The functionality and look and feel of the site are in my view ‘good enough’. There are lots of areas where I’d like more refinement but generally it works, does what you need and gets out of the way.
There is no doubt that Substack has built itself a lot of name awareness. It has quickly become a noun: the ‘Post-it’ of platforms for posts. When I say I have a ‘Substack’ I find that people instantly have a feel for what it will be.
What is more the ‘substack’ in the URL immediately tells you its a Substack site. There is a degree of comfort about where that URL is taking you!
There is no doubt that the brand awareness is due to the efforts of the Substack team. Whether or not you agree with their stance on various topics - and I don’t always - it’s certainly got them noticed.
I guess it’s early days and we may see some ‘Subspam’ but I can’t see it so far. Maybe the Substack team weed out any sites that are obviously problematic?
Growth And Recommendations
So how has it worked from the perspective of subscriber numbers.
I’m not going to share numbers but lets just say that in less than four weeks it’s more than my high school year but less than my total high school. The numbers are tiny compared to other writers on Substack but many, many more than I expected at this stage.
That’s from a standing start with no social media following and without promoting through friends and family (to the best of my knowledge I don’t know anyone on my subscriber list).
There has been quite a lot of commentary on the impact of recommendations. I have two words: ‘Rocket Fuel’.
I’ve seen a number of prominent writers comment on how recommendations have turbocharged their growth. Well it’s true.
The biggest single contributor to my subscriber growth has been the kind decision by Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis to feature me in his recommendations (thanks so much Dylan!). In turn I have recommended and generated quite a few subscriptions for other technology newsletters.
To be clear, without this my subscriber numbers would still have exceeded my wildest expectations. Recommendations though, have pushed those numbers to another level.
My second biggest source of new subscribers has been a couple of appearances on the front page of Hacker News (thanks I believe to the moderators). These have driven lots of web traffic but far fewer new subscribers than recommendations.
I worry about whether these subscribers are getting what they expect if they are ticking a box based on a recommendation. I’ve had only one cancellation so far (it hurt a bit, but I’ll have to get used to it!) but it’s too early to say.
So to summarise. I’d be happy with two subscribers who enjoy my posts. Any more is a huge bonus. I do look at my subscriber numbers though and I’m more than happy with how things are going.
Going Forward
The one thing that is certain is that I’ll continue to write The Chip Letter for as long as I’m able to and I have (however small) an audience. I love researching and writing about technology history. I also think that there is value in contemplating ‘how we got here’. Some of the best technology writers (say Benedict Evans as one example) look for historical patterns and use this to inform their views of how technology is likely to develop.
Whether this particular publication is of value though, I’ll leave others to judge.
Going back to Ghost for a moment. I still love them! I still hanker after the elegant themes, the better analytics, the multiple integrations. Most of all I regret not supporting Open Source. But I know that if I were writing on Ghost2 I’d be spending time tweaking. And that means time spent not writing.
Do I have any worries? Writing content that is designed to be ‘timeless’ means that having readers able to find older posts will become more important as time goes on. By all accounts Substack’s Search Engine Optimisation is not the best. If I enter the title of my first - and quite popular - post into Google verbatim then it doesn’t appear on the first two pages of search results. Plus there are no ‘tags’ so that readers can find related content, or pointers to related content on each post. And so on.
So maybe there will come a point when access to that historic content will become more important. At that time I might need to look again.
For now though, Substack has solved the biggest problems. It’s got me online and consistently writing, which feels like 80% of the battle. And removing friction and unnecessary choices have been key to achieving that.
I have to end with thanks to everyone who has subscribed, recommended or even just read one of my posts. If you have a moment please say hello and leave any feedback in the comments or on Twitter3. Now to do some more writing!
That flexibility comes at a cost though. I’ve tweaked Ghost themes before only to find that the modified theme has to be updated to keep pace with the latest functionality. Not a huge issue but big enough to put one off changing base themes.
Or on Wordpress or similar site.
Jono is no longer on his own but he could fit along with my other followers in a camper van!
I wish Substack allowed tags per post too.