Why Have Your Website (and not Medium, LinkedIn, Substack, ...)
I’m saying this repeatedly: have your own website and domain. Platforms come and go. I have experienced it myself with Medium, WordPress, and inspired by Why does every personal website look like this now?, I wrote:
Please create your own website. Don’t give away all your content to social media. That was always my philosophy; therefore, my website has a lot of content. I created knowledge for myself, not for other huge companies.
Eric does a fantastic job explaining the Second Brain mantra and what Derek Sivers is doing so well (check Tech Independence), and he adds all his content to his website. He also mentioned Luke Smith’s website and Jared White’s.
If you like this, also check out Other Public Second Brains, where people share their second brains and, therefore, their wealth of knowledge. I think it’s the Future of Blogging.
Essentially, don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms, and try to write long-term.
# Should You Use Substack or Others?
I would NOT. I started with LinkedIn Articles, then there was Medium (Luckily, I already uploaded it from my blog), and now there is Substack (very hyped), and many more (Open Subscription Platforms). So what is next?
Every time you need to migrate over (if not, what a pity for all the content and hard work!). I have had my website since 2007 (many iterations since then), and I enjoy the process and owning everything myself.
And isn’t going on someone else’s website like exploring their unique personality? I love that most when I read on someone else’s website, and not the same template as the other hundreds of Substacks.
But I’m hoping people realize this and build their own websites again. Sure, it’s also hard work, but it will pay off, and migration and optimization across other platforms take time.
# Why Platform Then? And how to Write
I have lots of thoughts, too, on why Substack or other Open Subscription Platforms.
I recommend never betting on a single platform. The best you can do is like Tim Ferriss already said 15 years (20?) back, build your own newsletter. One day, Substack will be gone, so it’s good to have your blog IMO, or if not, at least your own domain - which Substack lets you do. Also, Substack is great. If it’s going away one day, like Medium, and many other platforms have before. At least you have full control over your subscribers and can potentially export content.
What I find sad is that if you put a lot of effort into writing a blog, it dies with the platform. So always have a plan to export valuable content if you move on. What do you all think about that aspect?
# My Plan
My plan is to lead people on any social platform to My Websites. I don’t care so much about any social media platform or its metrics - it’s just a Vanity Metric anyway. I love writing, so I hope to write the best possible I can. But then, I also like that people at least get a chance to read it, and nowadays it seems you almost need to share it somewhere.
Oh, and yes, Markdown is the real winner, at least for the writer (the reader doesn’t care so much, although with AI and when you copy text from Markdown-based pages, it’s just clean and works great), as you don’t need to fiddle with formatting any time anymore. Plus, you can just have it offline, and because it’s tiny, everywhere.
I love Obsidian for its connected linking, which gives me many new ideas I wouldn’t otherwise have. But yeah, it’s also not for everyone. If you do start, I’d use the paid Obsidian Sync, as it makes it seamless to work on the phone, desktop, and anywhere.
Also, why I use Obsidian, it’s VS Code, but for text. And I can use Vim Motions (nerdy, I know), but I’d argue that vim motions (not vim) is the best way to manipulate text, period.
# POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site
After I wrote this, I found, much later (2026-07-28), that what I mean by owning your own website, is described in POSSE way, and publish on your own site. It’s part of the IndieWeb and means that you publish on your side, and Syndicate elsewhere.
Instead of posting on Substack, you post on your own site, and reshare on Substack, use it for email senders, if you don’t want to build yourself.
# Have Your Own House
The best write up so far I have read, and better than I could say it by Elizabeth Tai at Substack writers, you need a website!. Elizabeth says
Writers, don’t do this (having only Substack). It’s short-sighted and unwise and can derail your long-term visibility on the Internet.
Or
When you build your audience entirely on someone else’s platform, you aren’t a homeowner. You are a tenant. Or worse, a Digital Sharecropper. And corporate landlords always change the rules eventually. It’s not personal, it’s just business.
A interesting comment on HackerNews on this article said:
I’ve been blogging for 22 years now. At the beginning I could tell I had a relatively steady audience based on frequent comments (when comments on blogs were a thing). These died off over the years. Then, in 2020, I implemented my own unobtrusive subscription mechanism and email distribution to try to regain such an audience. And… it’s pretty disappointing. I’ve gotten less than 200 subscribers that way; conversions just don’t happy.
Then I “switched” to Substack 3 years ago and the audience growth is real. I’m approaching 2000 subscribers (some of which are paid!), and these keep growing organically (although I’m sure a large portion of which are fake). It’s hard to say it doesn’t work or isn’t worth it.
Now… spoiler: I never “switched” to Substack. I continue to write all of my content on my website first, with all of the features it had before, but now I copy/paste the content into Substack and distribute it that way. It’s painful, but I have scars from when I moved off of Medium and want to ensure I “own” the originals.
More details on this journey in https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/20-years-of-blogging if you want them!
This is exactly what I went through too, migration off Medium/LinkedIn articles. Luckily, I already cross-published back then. Just published an article on Why I Still Blog and my ten years of writing online. But I also advise everyone to have their own website, as noted in this very note.
And I have the same feeling as Elizabeth Tai, I don’t want to send people to someone else’s platform when I have all the articles and notes on my own website. I found a way that works for me: notes I update regularly in my second brain, and blogs for capturing moments in time, all on my own domain/site.
Also, now with AI, it’s so cool to quickly add your own Instagram feature or anything you can think of, and make it your own home.
# The Open Web
The POSSE reminded me of Open Web and Open Social I posted about in relation to Bluesky.
# You Need a Push Mechanism (newsletter) to Reach Readers.
You need a push mechanism to reach readers. Comment on HN
I use self-hosted Listmonk for that push. Works great in combination with my blog. But yeah, it’s slow growth. But that’s actually what I prefer, because if you grow fast on Substack, these are gone as fast as people don’t really read Substack emails anymore after getting 10 of them every day (since subscribing is so easy on Substack). So, having a slow but honest subscriber base and then sharing it on socials like Reddit, places where it’s genuinely helpful to people, there will always be some who subscribe and read.
I agree, if you don’t publish anywhere and just write on your website, and you’re not yet known, it’s hard for people to discover initially. But in the beginning, the writing is also more for you than for others.
# You Won’t Write Masterpieces from Day One
I haven’t read from anyone who writes super well on day one. That will come with the reps, and by then, people will read you, have discovered you.
# How to Get Started? With a Simple Websites
The best approach, in my opinion, is to use a Static Site Generator (SSG), which generates your website in simple HTML. This is super fast for viewers, and you can write simple Markdown, while still having the option to style or add features as you want.
There is also a movement toward plain HTML sites; this is what Derek Sivers has been doing for years on his website, with a little PostgreSQL Stored Procedure for comments. The The Brutalist Network is another website that went full HTML. They call it the Small Web; e.g., The small web is beautiful is a longer-form explanation of this.
# Further Reads
I wrote a deep dive into self-hosting and tech independence that also circles around owning your domain and website. Check it out at Self-Host & Tech Independence: The Joy of Building Your Own.
I also wrote about Why I Still Blog — and Why the Future of Blogging Is Connected.
# More
- Personal Websites
- Personal Blogs
- Future of Blogging
- Creating your own website with Static Site Generators (SSG)
- My approach to running a link blog
- On 10 Years of Writing a Blog Nobody Reads | flow2
- Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax
- Open Web and Open Social with protocols such as AT Protocol for the win.
- Why websites? - from anna - pckt on top of AT Protocol
# Beautiful Websites
Origin: Why does every personal website look like this now? - YouTube