Great feedback, Barbara — thanks! What I especially appreciate about your comment is how it shows that you’ve been thoughtful about the process. You’ve become educated about your options, and made the right decision for YOU and your goals. I have to admit I worry about the authors who told me they’re using Substack because “everyone else is.”

Thanks for weighing in!

Sandy

My time is limited. I’m not going to do a substack that doesn’t do what I need it to do. I’d rather pay a bit extra for that website and then the domain name that someone can’t take from me unless I forget to pay for it.

You’re the best, Pauline! Thanks!

Sandy

To be safe, I would always set the canonical link. It sounds scary (and I’ve no idea how it got the name!), but it should involve just a few click.

Here is info direct from Medium:
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033930293-Set-a-canonical-link

and a nice introductory guide from my go-to source for SEO expertise:
https://loveatfirstsearch.com/canonical-links/

Thanks so much, Ruby! I appreciate that vote of confidence. I subscribe to a couple of Substack newsletters, too, and some are great while others are just navel-gazing. One thing I’ve noticed on most, though, is that they don’t take advantage of (1) paragraph breaks and (2) subheads. There are just gigantic blocks of text that are hard to read. That alone is enough to make me unsubscribe, even if the content is interesting.

Sandy

Thanks for sharing that, Pauline. Your opinion carries a lot of weight with me. I knew I’d get pushback on this, and I have, so I appreciate that you took the time to validate my perspective. Regarding duplicate content, after reading a blog post by a writer who posts the same content on his site, LinkedIn, and Medium, I asked about the SEO impact of this. He said that Google would show the link for the first place it appeared. He didn’t mention a canonical link. It sounds like what he’s saying isn’t quite correct. What do you think?

Sandy

I just do want to add, on the other hand, that Russell Nohelty’s writing is fascinating, he’s very knowledgeable about the world of publishing, both online and print, and he gives away a ton of information with every newsletter. My beef with him, is that he sends more than just monthly. And, not a beef, but he’s not in my genre and his style is intellectual, making it less valuable at times. I just want to stand up for the guy, who’s paid a lot of dues in the world of business ups&downs and has good advice in certain areas.

I love Sandra Beckwith’s style and her invaluable contributions to authors like moi who have many questions that only you (and Russell and others too) can provide.

Many thanks Sandra and bless you and yours.

Carmen, this is SO interesting. Thanks! Juat a few hours ago, one of my Facebook group members posted that she likes the community/social media-ish component of Substack and uses that to generate subscribers. I replied that my readers have given me the clear impression that they don’t need another online community demanding engagement from them — they’re already overwhelmed by those they’re using now. You’ve just further validated that point.

For authors specifically, I’m wondering about the quality of those subscribers resulting from this near-gamification of subscriber acquisition. Are they the right people? Are they going to stick around? Are they going to engage with the writer/publisher? I don’t know.

Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. They’re really helpful.

Sandy

Thinking I could reach many more readers, I decided to duplicate my newsletter content on Substack for free and see if the platform’s recommendations feature led to at least the same rate of growth as my regular newsletter.

What I found is that unless you play the Substack game by “restacking” other newsletters, commenting and otherwise using Substack’s social media features, plus have a helpful “stack” that solves problems or teaches, your Substack newsletter is not going to get much traction. Yes, it’s easy to set up a Substack and send out content but that is just the start. My jury is out if this juice is worth the squeeze of learning another social media platform.