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Hi Reader,

A question I keep getting a lot at the moment is…

“Should I start a Substack?”

And in this climate of uncertainty and volatility in the blogging world, it’s easy to understand why.

Substack sounds great in theory:

• It’s free to get started
• There are no monthly fees (you just pay a % of what you earn)
• You can publish content (a bit like a blog)
• You can send free newsletters
• You can monetize via paid newsletters – offering a direct source of revenue without relying on ads
• It is easy to get started and you do not need to be “techy”

If all that sounds a bit too good to be true, it’s because it is.

The truth about Substack

Here’s what the people trying to sell you their ‘How To Earn Bajillions With Substack’ course aren’t telling you…

1. You don’t own Substack

OK so technically you DO own your content on Substack… Just as you do on any hosted blogging platform and you also own your email list – you can download it any time.

But, and this is a big but, you don’t own Substack.

That means you’re at the mercy of whatever Substack decides to do. They control how Substack works, what it looks like, how you can monetize, how much you pay to Substack…

What if Substack suddenly decides to massively increase its fees? Or gets rid of a feature you rely on? Or changes the rules for monetization? Or changes its policies so the kind of content you write is no longer allowed? Or starts plastering ads all over your content? Or just shuts down? (As many platforms have before!) You could lose everything you’ve built.

This is in complete contrast to a self-hosted WordPress blog, which you fully own and where you have complete control over everything.

2. The lack of flexibility and control

And on that subject… Substack offers very little control over design, branding, and functionality.

Your Substack home page (the ‘blog’ bit of Substack) will look pretty much like every other Substack home page, limiting your ability to stand out.

And you only get the functionality Substack gives you… you can’t start adding plugins or tweaking the code, like you can with WordPress.

If Substack doesn’t let you do the thing you want to do, you can’t do the thing!

With a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can fully customize your site, add the exact functionality you need, and create a strong, unique brand identity.

3. Very limited email features

But maybe you’re thinking… “Oh well, that’s OK – I just want to use Substack for email marketing.”

Unfortunately, Substack’s email marketing capabilities are pretty basic: no lead magnets, no automations, no sequences, no evergreen sales funnels, no ‘just click this link and I’ll send you this / opt you out of that / add you to the waitlist’, no advanced segmentation, and very limited list management.

In fact, Substack explicitly state in their Ts and Cs that:

“Substack is intended for high quality editorial content, not conventional email marketing. We don’t permit publications whose primary purpose is to advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third party sites, distribute offers and promotions, enhance search engine optimization, or similar activities.”

This is in complete contrast to a ‘proper’ email marketing service… like Kit, for example, (the ESP I've used for 7+ years and STILL highly recommend!) where you can have as many lead magnets as you want, set up automations and sequences to do almost anything you like, personalize your email marketing to increase engagement and revenue, and use custom fields and tags ensure the right person gets the right thing at the right time.

(Oh and by the way, Kit can do pretty much everything Substack can do – public newsletters, free newsletters, paid newsletters, ‘creator profile’ - which is very like a Substack home page… and Kit’s free for the first 10,000 subscribers!)

4. You still have to build an audience

This one’s the kicker!

One of the most common misconceptions I see about Substack is the idea that it will magically bring you an audience. That you can just show up, write a few posts, and the subscribers will come flooding in.

And yes, Substack can bring you a few new subscribers through its internal discovery features – like recommendations and search. But here’s the thing: it’s usually not very many. And certainly not enough to build a thriving business.

In reality, you still have to promote your Substack - whether that’s through social media, Pinterest, YouTube, or another channel.

And if you’re doing all that hard work anyway, surely it's better to direct it toward a platform you actually own and control – like a self-hosted WordPress blog?

5. It's bad for SEO

But it gets worse…

While Google’s recent changes have been challenging, SEO is still the #1 traffic source for most bloggers. And once a blog post ranks on Google, it can bring you traffic for years without you having to constantly promote it.

But with Substack? Not so much.

Substack’s SEO capabilities are extremely limited. The platform just wasn’t designed with search engines in mind, and it shows.

So while technically, yes, your Substack posts CAN show up on Google… in reality, they rarely do.

Think about it for a moment… When was the last time you did a Google search for something where a Substack ranked on Page 1, let alone Position 1?

I do a lot more Google searches than your average Joe, and the only time I can ever recall getting a Substack in my search results was when I put Substack somewhere in my query!

Compare that with WordPress, where you’ve got full control, access to powerful SEO plugins, and the ability to properly optimize every single post.

If Google traffic is even PART of your strategy (and it should be!), WordPress wins hands down.

6. Very limited monetization options

If your goal is to earn money online, Substack’s monetization options are very limited.

While they push paid subscriptions, that’s a tough sell for most bloggers. (See #8 & #9)

A WordPress blog just gives you so much more flexibility and so many more options when it comes to monetization…

You can have ads on your site, promote affiliates, do sponsored posts, sell your own digital products and services…

And yes, you can do some of that in a limited way on Substack, but you have nowhere near the same level of functionality and control.

You can’t build a high converting sales page or a tripwire page on Substack, you can’t send people carefully crafted evergreen sales funnels, or tag them according to their interests so you only pitch them products they would actually be interested in.

(And besides, remember what it said in their Ts and Cs: “We don’t permit publications whose primary purpose is to advertise external products or services, drive traffic to third party sites, distribute offers and promotions etc.”)

7. 10% is a lot!

Substack isn’t completely free… you have to pay them 10% of everything you earn, plus Stripe processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30, plus a billing fee for recurring subscriptions of 0.5%. That’s a lot compared to other platforms!

For comparison, Kit just charges a 3.5% + $0.30 payment processing fee per transaction for anything you sell via Kit Commerce (including paid newsletters). And you don’t even need to be on a paid plan to use Kit Commerce!

8. The people who succeed on Substack usually have huge audiences ALREADY

It’s true that some people do extremely well on Substack, but they typically fall into two categories…

EITHER they are people who already have large, loyal audiences willing to pay for exclusive content.

OR they are offering highly valuable, unique insights that people can’t easily find elsewhere.

(I fact, I recently read that to fast-track Substack's own growth, Substack actually paid prominent writers with large existing audiences an upfront sum to come over to Substack and publish their content there.)

9. You need a lot of subscribers

For the vast majority of ordinary, non-celebrity, non-expert-in-an-unusual field type people, who don’t already have a huge audience, getting people to actually PAY for your blog posts and newsletters is extremely difficult.

It’s the same problem as I was talking about last week… the paywall is in the wrong place.

But even if you do manage to get people to pay for your paid Substack newsletter, you need a pretty large audience to earn a decent living.

Apparently the average monthly subscription price on Substack is $10.

Let’s say you want to earn $5,000 a month. You’d have to convince 579 people to pay you $10 – not a one off cost but each and every month.

(579 not 500 because Substack takes 10% and Stripe takes about 3.5%.)

That might not sound like a huge number – until you realise how many people you need on your free list to make that happen.

Most creators see only a small percentage of their free email list convert to paid subscribers – we’re talking low single digits. Even at a generous 5% conversion rate (which is quite high), you’d need nearly 12,000 subscribers on your free list just to hit that $5K/month mark. And realistically, many people would need a list double or triple that size.

To put that in perspective, plenty of people who’ve been blogging for years (with all the SEO advantages of WordPress and all the email marketing bells and whistles of a conventional email service provider), haven’t got an email list anywhere near that big!

(FYI – If you did have a list of that size, you could almost certainly earn far more by selling digital products instead!)

And remember, you’re not competing with other people’s digital products… your competing with their free blog posts and free newsletters.

So, unless you have something very unique or valuable to say – why on earth would they pay?

So what should you do instead?

Honest truth, I really wanted to like Substack.

I mean, I LOVE the idea of a simple platform where you can write what you want and get paid for it!

But the more I dug into it, the more I realised… it’s just not the dream it’s made out to be.

Like so many things in the blogging world… Substack is the new shiny thing, and that’s why everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.

But like so many new shiny things… it’s all shine and very little actual benefit.

So, unless you already have a huge audience or a something very unique or valuable to say, here’s what I recommend instead…

A self-hosted WordPress blog as your base – because you own it and have complete control over it. No algorithms. No annoying restrictions No weird third-party platform rules. No risk of someone else pulling the plug.

SEO as your main traffic driver – because despite what some people say, SEO is not dead. (Google still drives over 60% of web traffic referrals. For context, the next highest is Microsoft/Bing at 7.21% and then YouTube at 3.57%.)

Kit for email marketing – because Kit can do everything Substack can do. It’s free for the first 10,000 subscribers. If you want to sell anything via Kit the % fee is A LOT lower than Substack… and Kit has a whole lot more flexibility and functionality than Substack!

Digital products as your main income stream – because they’re scalable, sustainable, and far more profitable in the long run than trying to convince people to pay for a newsletter.

In short, don’t get distracted by the shiny new thing.

Focus on building a solid, sustainable blogging business – one that YOU fully control, that grows over time, and that gives you the freedom to earn on your own terms.

Happy blogging!

Eb 😊
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​Eb Gargano
​eb@productiveblogging.com​
​www.productiveblogging.com​

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P.S I'd love to hear your thoughts on Substack... Do you agree with me? Or do you have a different take? Hit REPLY and let me know!

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