[articsputnik]

None paywal link: https://archive.ph/bmX1d

I loved the open web quote: "The more important thing is that we have a home on the open web that we control, and whatever anti-creator changes Substack is forced to make in the future to live up to its valuation we won't be affected by."

To me, I always said to have your own website and domain. Because platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPress, etc. I wrote a little more about "Why I think to Have Your Website" at https://www.ssp.sh/brain/why-have-your-website/ (in case of interest)

[wolvoleo]

The problem with that is discoverability. I'd love to do a blog without making money off it but if nobody ever reads it there's no point.

[articsputnik]

This is what they want you to believe, sure, it will help in the short-term. But when switching, losing most of them, and losing your content (if not moved with you), but all the domain ranking, is much bigger. And the real discovery happens on social media or through writing high-quality content that will always be shared or discovered. But all of this applies to blogging, newsletters only, like sending your thoughts via email, is OK, but a real blog, I'd want on my own domain/website.

[wolvoleo]

Yeah it's also, for the first time in my life I'm really pivoting my personal interests away from IT and tech. This was more of a plan when I was still fully into it.

I'm more interested in streaming now for my new hobbies but that is even harder to self host.

[anilgulecha]

IMO, not too many people are being discovered by substack. Twitter and other social media is where you have to have conversations to slowly build up your subscriber base.

[grvdrm]

I agree. A lot of discovery there is just people writing notes and posts “how to discover and boost discoverability” - just an endless loop of growing and talking about growing without substantial non-growth content.

[grvdrm]

Honest question: does the blog have to be for other people or can I just be for you? And if people find it - great.

If you are instead trying to acquire eyeballs for some reason, that’s great as well. But I don’t think you should look at it as “no one will find so there is no value whatsoever”

[altairprime]

Webrings were so valuable they were used to train the PageRank AI decades ago. No time like the present to bring back what works!

[wolvoleo]

They might have been good for pagerank but not for users. I never used them. I really hated them.

[watwut]

I used to be able to find personal and small blogs on google. Blogosphere died when google changed algorithms and it ceased to be possible. They stopped coming out in searches even when I was able to quote the title and parts of the content.

Blame google enshittification for this one.

[wolvoleo]

Yes I like kagi's "small web" search source a lot for this reason.

However 99% of people don't use it (probably higher than that) so it doesn't really help with discoverability.