[simonw]

I'm pretty happy with the way I've resolved this. I publish everything to my personal blog first, then once a week I copy and paste it all into a Substack newsletter.

I get to use Substack for email distribution (which would cost me hundreds of dollars a month using most other solutions, I have 66,000 subscribers now) but my own blog stays the original point of truth.

Here's the tool I use for the copy-pasting: https://tools.simonwillison.net/blog-to-newsletter

Substack doesn't have an API for composing a newsletter, but their rich text editor DOES accept copy-pasted data - and copy-paste is the universal API.

[sebastiennight]

Hi Simon, I'm not sure I get it completely.

If I get it, you're basically using Substack as an email platform. So the blog (the "original") can use Wordpress, Ghost, whatever ; and this is the canonical place that all articles go to. But then you duplicate the content onto Substack so it gets pushed out as emails.

My understanding of what it means:

- the blog doesn't have its own subscription system ; you link out to Substack for that. So you must be massively losing out on blog-driven subscriptions because of the much higher friction (vs having the pop-ups directly on the blog)?

- all of your content is duplicated between the real blog and the Substack copy. How do you avoid Substack cannibalizing all of your blog's traffic, given that they are a bigger domain possibly better optimized for SEO?

[simonw]

I don't like subscription popups - see recent John Gruber rants on the subject: https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

I'm willing to take the hit to subscriber numbers for not having that kind of thing on my own site.

From an SEO perspective, I think I might be beating Substack comfortably.

My blog has a different page for each item, plus it ties them together with tags.

The Substack email is a full week of content in one go. I don't think that's particularly SEO-optimal.

Again though, I'm willing to take the risk. So far I've not seen any obvious downsides to this model, and I've been dual publishing in this way for a few years now.

[rsingel]

You could do the same thing through Ghost, which has an API, and not be using a service that proudly platforms the Tates and nazis.

[willy_k]

I don’t know anything about the specific situation you’re referencing. That being said, getting mad at an organization, one that is built to be a “platform” for people to share their words, for not going out of its way to police which people share which words, seems to me to be unproductive at best, if not actively close minded and tribalistic.

[rsingel]

Substack has gone out of its way to platform the right and has been very proud to work with folks like Andrew Tate, Graham Linehan, and anti-vaxxers whose disinfo helped kill tens of thousands of Americans.

https://counterhate.com/blog/substack-generates-at-least-2-5...

[incompatible]

Sure, tolerate Nazis, give them a place to share their words, let them be part of the mainstream, let them take part in elections, play their dirty tricks and form paramilitaries and win control of government. It's a shame that that leads to certain groups, like Jews, LGBTQ, non-whites, or immigrants getting exterminated, but that's just the price you have to pay for free speech.

[noosphr]

Let's see what the man who coined the term paradox of tolerance had to say about this:

>In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

Oh no, Karl Popper is a Nazi. Quick punch him.

[willy_k]

That’s backwards. Society does not move forward despite free speech, rather because of it. The only way to truly move past harmful ideas and ideologies is to show those who would otherwise subscribe how dumb they are. You can try to quell them, but that just lends to their appeal, and results in those that do subscribe being more extreme and doing more extreme things. For a real world example, take someone who thinks that Nick Fuentes is a reasonable, respectable guy, and then show them the recent discussion between him and Hunter Biden, and see if they don’t at least get uncomfortable, unsure.

[dpkirchner]

If this were true, far right mainstream media (eg Newsmax, NY Post) would not have the viewership and readership they enjoy.

In any case, few people here (and in general, IME) are suggesting that Nazis should have no platform whatsoever, only that we shouldn't choose to associate ourselves with those platforms -- especially when there are so many perfectly viable alternatives that don't occasionally promote Nazis to your readers.

[incompatible]

The problem is not really Nazis saying despicable things, their so-called "free speech". The problem is that they are Nazis and will really do all these things if they get a chance. Why would you want to collaborate with Nazis, especially by giving them space on your platform where they can organize and publicize? Sure, collaborating with them in any other way is also bad, selling them food, giving them jobs, or whatever. It's not surprising that some people don't like collaborators any more than they like Nazis.

[monknomo]

What about for going out of their way to find and pay despicable people for their words?

[pluto_modadic]

oh it's more than the org. IIRC, it's also the founder.

[simonw]

Ghost would cost $288/month (or $241/month paid yearly).

[rsingel]

I'll put my money where my mouth is. We at Outpost will host your site on Ghost for a year for free and migrate all your substack subscribers, with the only caveats that 1) you put a tip jar link (either to Ghost's or Outpost's) at the end of every email with some text like support us being on an indie platform and 2) at the end of the year or earlier report how it went.

[rsingel]

With 66k subscribers you could cover that without even really trying by setting up a $5/month donation tier or putting a tip jar on the site. With a tiny bit of effort, you could make thousands a month.

Substack lets you get away with sending that many emails without attempting to monetize because you pay them in clout and with your reader data.

I think they are getting the better deal given how good your writing is and your reputation.

[drdexebtjl]

At 66,000 messages/week, you’d actually be spending around $50-$80 monthly with SES and a VPS + database for handling bounces and unsubscribe requests.

[simonw]

... right, and then I'm responsible for maintaining that infrastructure, and I have to think about email deliverability as well.

Plus Substack discovery does carry some value - about 65% of my new subscribers come via the various Substack mechanisms, the rest are from my own site or "direct" (which I think means people landed on my substack directly and then chose to subscribe.)

[cosmicgadget]

It's sort of disgusting that inbox clutter from a publishing service is the dominant delivery paradigm as opposed to browsers natively checking bookmarked RSS feeds.

[boplicity]

Email is so well designed, so resilient, and so ubiquitous that's very hard to displace it's use as a central check-in.

[cosmicgadget]

Right which is why I'd only suggest the browser as an alternative. Imho a browser is something I open when I proactively am seeking information/entertainment and thereby fits blog reading better than email which is more like an interrupt.

[pryelluw]

This is super useful even if I just grab it as an idea to emulate. Have you used an agent to copy and paste for you ?

[simonw]

I've not tried that, honestly it's such a quick process already that waiting for some kind of browser automation to copy and paste would likely be slower.