Self hosting and using your payment processor of choice is always the best move. Own your own data or be prepared for the jig to be up at some point. This is what every platform that scales does.
I don't use Substack [1], but isn't part of the appeal of Substack discoverability?
Like that's part of the reason that a lot of these platforms get popular. Most software engineers could write something to upload, transcode, and host videos in an afternoon or two, but that only gets you 10% of YouTube's value. The thing that keeps YouTube on top is it's hyper-addictive recommendation system.
I assume that Substack offers something like that? Again I don't actually use it so I'm kind of speaking out of my ass.
[1] No one read my blog anyway so there's no pretense of charging for it.
> but isn't part of the appeal of Substack discoverability?
Discoverability should be happening on non-paid platforms like social media, message boards or channels independent of Substack itself. If customer acquisition is based on your presence on Substack, you will have to stay on it forever, paying whatever they charge, because migrating to a different platform will damage acquisition. Which of course is exactly what Substack's strategy is.
Writers move to sites like Substack (or 15 years ago blogspot) funded by other people's money like a software developer gets into an AI startup (or 5 years ago crypto). You can make bank in the short term even if you should know it will not last. Substack subsidizes individual creators and markets their blog as cooler than old blogs, Google subsidized web ads and upranked blogs in search results. Yes, it is no fun if you like stability, and its not a game I play.
