Some thoughts on my writing journey

As I approach two years of writing on Substack, I'm looking back

Mar 12, 2023

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person using MacBook Pro — Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Have I really found my voice in this whole writing thing? Has my work on Iterate been a success? If I look back at the day I started my Substack, is this the two year outcome that I envisioned? I'm not really sure how to answer these questions. But as I come up to my two year anniversary of being a writer on Substack, I figured I should give them more thought.

Wordpress

A few years before Substack, I made a pretty serious commitment to start writing on a regular basis. I had a few Wordpress sites that didn't gain a ton of traction. The site that was a resource for early Airbnb hosts was probably the most trafficked (I ended up just repackaging it as an e-book) It's probably best to just let those sites wither and die so new ideas can be reborn. I used to be of the mindset that everything I created on the internet should live on forever to gain fans in the long tail and act as a piece of my resume that people could check out for years to come.

But I'm beginning to think that is a silly idea. It's like hoarding digital content. I've written about being a digital hoarder, it's not a good look for anyone. Wordpress was great for a long time. It still works totally fine for many creators. But it just never stuck with me. I hated the constant spam. I hated the facade that it was a free (or inexpensive) platform when you ended up paying a fortune in extra plug-ins and things to actually make the sites usable. Without those things, these sites just became a cesspool of viagra bots and hot local singles looking to meet up in your area. How did they become so spam heavy? Was it just me? Did I do something wrong?

Medium

I thought the logical place to continue my writing was on Medium. And this was a solid choice back in the early days of the platform. It was such a placid environment free from all the junk that was making my Wordpress sites unusable. There were no ads. The interface was clean but inviting. It seemed to have everything that I writer needed. There were no plug-ins and nonsense to run in the background. I didn't have to worry about the system crashing or backing up all of my writing somewhere. There was also enough customization options to create publications and redirect them to specific URLs that you already owned. Pretty soon, howtousetechnology.com was up and running. I was posting fairly consistently on it. I also posted regularly to my own personal Medium page. I even dabbled with a few different publications that I thought echoed my feelings on the subjects I wrote about.

And Medium was great for a while. I liked the almost instant audience that I was able to build. The numbers looked good, but were the people really fans of my writing or were they just playing the follow-for-follow game? I was guilty of following plenty of users but didn't read their work on a consistent basis. The system was starting to show cracks. I would see more spam accounts following my work. I seemed to be rewarded for cranking out writing everyday but penalized if I took some extra time for longer pieces that didn’t fit the mold of the dreaded algorithm. I felt the hamster wheel starting to turn. In order to gain consistent revenue from the Medium Partner Program, I had to keep posting and concern myself with headlines and topics that seemed to be flashing in the proverbial pan of the internet that week.

Substack

When I got sick of that rat race, I started my Substack. I brought over a modest list of people who had subscribed to my previous writing and/or followed me on Medium. There were plenty of people who trailed off and decided they weren't interested in my new venture. That's fine, I'd rather refine my list and get people who are genuinely interested rather than playing the game of questionable Medium subscribers again. At least it gave me some confidence to not start from absolute scratch on the new platform. Starting a publication with 0 subscribers can be both liberating and frightening. I knew that at least a few people would be reading my work and that gave me confidence to keep up with it.

A weekly newsletter that talked about the hot topics in tech, media, health, etc. seemed like a natural place for me to start. I've always been a guy with a diverse set of interests. I didn't want to only be "the tech guy" or "the guy who writes about fake meat" or electric cars or whatever. I still feel that committing to too narrow of a niche is a mistake. I wanted a platform that let me bring my full self to my writing each and every day. And it may sound cheesy, but I think that's what I've built with this Substack publication.

I should also say that I did dabble a bit with Ghost and found it to be a very powerful and enjoyable alternative to Substack. It still may have a place in my writing future, but it seems like overkill for most of my needs today.

Conclusion

The people who have followed along over the past two years have appreciated the breadth of the knowledge I share, the humor and snark that permeates many of my posts, and the genuine curiosity that I bring to every article, comment reply, or survey request. I can't imagine a life where I'm not writing at least two substantial pieces each week, and I envision an uptick in my content production.

There will be more coming soon, but I wanted to get these words down as a map to retrace my writing journey. And as I set forth on year number three of writing on this publication, I'm filled with excitement to take things to the next level. I really appreciate you being along for the ride.

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