#Promote your Substack via WordPress blogs

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Substack Mastery Book: Chapter 11

Supercharge Your Substack Newsletters with Blogging on WordPress, Medium, or Other Platforms: Here’s What You Need to Know and How to Get Started Right Now I wrote this chapter because I gained significant benefits from blogging, especially within the last 12 months when I started intensifying my efforts on Substack. Until I deliberately blogged my content published on Substack or sent it…

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Hey r/Entrepreneur, this ones for all of you who are looking into creating a business from written content, but don't know what platform you're going to use - I've been there and continually wrestle with the idea when I'm looking to launch a new thing.Each one of these content/blogging platforms has their merits, and I've broken them down here. This isn't intended to tell you which one is the best, each is good in it's own way. Hopefully the breakdown will shed some light and give you a better foundation to make the decision yourself.The Top 4 Content Platforms for 2020MediumWordPressSubstackGhostMediumMedium is YouTube but for writing. You publish content and the Medium Gods put it in front of users to see. You make your money from the Medium Partner Program. But instead of YouTube's advertising revenue model, Medium is subscription based, like YouTube Red. People subscribe to Medium and depending on the member read time on your blogs, you get paid accordingly.I've found that my RPM (Revenue per thousand views) is about $10, lower in comparison to a stand-alone revenue optimized site. Here's an example of how much I earn on a popular article on the original version of this (scroll to the bottom of the Medium section).That being said, I can't get ad revenue or add affiliate links to Medium - so easier traffic comes at a cost.ProsEasier traffic as Medium has visibility for your content through its algorithmFree to use and enroll into their partner program, even if you aren't a premium memberVery easy to setup your profile and start writing in their in built editor, no domain buying, no hostingConsIt's a platform and it's not your own real estateNo opportunities for expanding revenue streams besides directing people to your newsletter and using that audienceYou can't control the look and feel of your profile besides a basic description and a featured postYou cant get deep insights or integrate analytics, you need to use Mediums own version, which is OK.WordPressWordPress is the superman, the big boy. It powers 35% of the independent blogs on the internet, yes the whole internet, and is used by some extremely profitable companies. WordPress is usually everyone's go-to when starting a content based website but it's morphed into more than that. You can make it a shop, a portfolio, a SaaS product - it's much more than just content now.But it's got it's drawbacks as well, with all those extensions, bells and whistles, it's gotten slow. It's harder to keep it simple.ProsIt's easy to learn with countless resourcesIt's usually a one click install on most platforms as it's so widely usedIt's open source, so free to use in a commercial capacityIt's scalable and has diverse options for revenue streamsNo doubt one of the best out-of-box SEO setups out thereConsSlow - It's got too much fat as a platform with the average user loading up on bulky extensions that do a simple thing at the expense of 200ms load timeBecause it's your own real-estate, there's costs like domain name and hosting (yes standard, but 2 of the other platforms don't have that)You're not part of an established platform where users will visit every day (YouTube, Facebook, Medium), you need to work harder on driving trafficSubstackSubstack is a direct competitor to Medium. Substack makes their money from subscriptions, just like Medium, but unlike Medium, it’s on a per-blog basis. People don’t subscribe to Substack, they subscribe to your particular blog. And your blog is an email newsletter - they're one and the same on this platform.Your content is delivered as an email new letter, so every new thing you publish, you send. It’s free to use, but they bank on the fact that you will eventually make premium emails that are only for subscribers (taking a portion of these earnings) - It also publishes them to the site.So this platform is more about finding your true fans, than going for volume.ProsIt’s got its own editor, is free and easy to use (like Medium)It’s your own list of portable followers (unlike Medium)You can link out to anywhere and promote practically anything without consequencesYou can add analytics software for deeper stats per blog post/emailYour blog is your email list, so you don’t need to worry about promoting it constantlyYou have infrastructure to monetize via subscriptions like Medium, but you get a bigger piece of the (smaller) pie when someone subscribesConsThe visibility of your content isn’t increased for being on the platform, except if you’re in the Top 50 for a particular post — so less reachYou still can’t monetize through affiliate programs or ads, but you can link out as mentioned priorIn the fashion of strength in numbers, it’s harder to convert someone for only your content than it is for converting someone for many author’s content and taking a smaller piece of a larger pieGhostGhost is a direct competitor to both Medium and WordPress. It's basically Medium, if you could grab Medium as a software package and install it on your own real-estate. It's open source but has a paid managed install version like WordPress, called Ghost(Pro). It can get expensive if you set it up that way, but it might be the way you go considering that unlike WordPress, this platform isn't at a stage where it's highly customizable for a user who isn't a developer.But for every bit of bulk that WordPress carries, Ghost is that much lighter. Here's an example of a ghost site. In fact it's the only standalone site I run, and it's on Ghost.ProsIt’s built with Node.js — massive pool of developers to help with scaleSuper lightweight and doesn’t have the bulk of WordPressHas all the built-in features of Medium that matter and more — Unsplash integration, subscription functionality, Zapier, AMP, Disqus comments, analytics etc.It your own real-estate so you can add multiple revenue channelsFully customizable, if you have the right knowledge and toolsConsThere are very few 1-click installs. Even DigitalOcean’s one isn’t hassle-free, and they’re the ones that manage Ghost(Pros) infrastructure.You need to have a trivial knowledge (at least) of contemporary JS, SSH and how server architecture works for your own install.There aren’t unlimited themes or extensions, as there seemingly are for WordPress.Fixing trivial problems like making your external links open new tabs requires knowledge that you otherwise wouldn’t need on WordPress.To avoid these problems, you’d need to pay a developer, learn to develop or use the pro version — each has problems when you look to scale the site.Hopefully this shed some light on some of the options that are available out there, and if you're looking to start a content based business, no doubt that knowing this information will enable you to make a more educated decision. This article was adapted from this original one, so head over if you want more.Hope you got some value! I'll answer questions below, but I'm about to go to sleep so I might be several hours late!Thanks,Sah