From Substack to Ghost

and why I hope this will be a permanent move, but cannot guarantee it

Why am I here?

As said above, I started on Substack because I wanted a metaphorical sandbox to post stuff experimentally that I would not want to feature on my personal website or business website.

Substack is a user-friendly platform with an unfortunate neo-nazi problem that its proprietors still aren't fixing. I guess they can afford to keep hosting harmful content, because, like many platforms dooing the same, they benefit or even profit from it.

Me staying on Substack or leaving won't make any difference, since I was using their free hosting only and had disabled paid subscriptions/content, so no money was flowing from my content to them. So it's a move on principle to a different platform that does not have a neo-nazi problem but also does not appear to have a free option beyond its free 30-day trial, so, as usual, principles cost and money is something I currently don't have a lot of.

Will I stay here?

If I can afford to, yes. If you want to help me be able to afford staying on Ghost, you can make a contribution via Ko-fi (or via BuyMeACoffee), because – at least for now, due to the experimental nature of my presence here – I will only enable free memberships. If I ever do manage to turn this into a site/newsletter with regular posts, then I may enable paid subscriptions. (Alternatively, you can hire me in a day job that affords Ghost's prices.)

Why don't others move from Substack?

My own migration from Substack took mere minutes: With paid memberships disabled, fewer than a hundred free subscribers, and not even thirty posts (plus a handful of unpublished drafts), the migration was easy.

However, having worked professionally on the metaphorical coal face of website and other systems migrations, anyone with hundreds or even thousands of paying subscribers and not to mention an archive of countless posts spanning years, it likely won't be as easy or straightforward, and will most probably require a hefty amount of money and time to spend on making sure everything ports over fully and correctly and smoothly. In my experience, there are always manual corrections to be made and individual errors to be fixed post-migration, and that doesn't come cheap or easy.

Will I stick with Ghost?

As I'm discovering and testing Ghost, I intend to go about it carefully and I really hope to stay here and embrace it, just like I embraced Bluesky after leaving Twitter/X.

Problematic platforms and the cost of leaving them

Once upon a time I made at least some of my income working in social media, and although I ran Facebook advertising campaigns for clients who wanted me to, I personally wasn't a fan of doing so.

For reasons I cannot explain, Twitter had become an indirect source of paid assignments. Though I'd never sought it out to be, and tried to not rely solely on the contacts I made there for paid work, it became a valuable resource/network for me. So when that platform became problematic, and I effectively abandoned it, that one cost me dearly. Because most people stayed there, and I didn't, and I paid a price for that.

When Meta became too problematic (in my opinion), I did not lose anything by no longer using Facebook, Instagram and Threads (or at least not as much as I used to), but I am as yet struggling to fully abandon WhatsApp in favour of Signal, because that relies on my contacts making the move and I'm not willing to give up on all those contacts. I already did that with Twitter/X and it cost me and I did not want a repeat.

So no, I don't hold a grudge against anyone sticking with Substack or Twitter/X, despite them absolutely being modern-day nazi bars and problematic as heck. And no, I cannot guarantee I will stick with Ghost over Substack because I am not in the financial position that I entirely have a choice (that's not a complaint against Ghost, that's just me being broke).

But we'll see how it goes.