Have You Caught the Substack Bug?

The allure of owning your audience

Andy Spears
1 min readJan 2, 2023
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Writing online can be daunting — especially if you’re doing it with a goal of earning some money.

While platforms like Medium have many benefits, you don’t really own your audience.

Unless Medium shows your article to people OR they elect to receive emails, even your followers may not see all your articles.

That’s why Yana Bostongirl suggests Substack as a way to diversify — and to break out of the chains of the algorithm.

The Key Reason Why Writing on Substack is Appealing to Many | by Yana Bostongirl | The Shortform | Dec, 2022 | Medium

She says:

If someone follows you on Substack, they get your posts directly via emails, and you get paid if monetized. There is no Algo or feed.

I write two Subtack newsletters. One on education policy and one on consumer finance.

I follow some great Substacks, too. I know a number of writers on Medium who’ve started Substack newsletters. You can definitely earn money from subscribers — and there are a number of ways to monetize.

Here’s my story of how I’m growing my Substack:

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Andy Spears

Writer and policy advocate living in Nashville, TN —Public Policy Ph.D. — writes on education policy, consumer affairs, and more . . .