Greetings! Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself increasingly using Substack. Essentially, Substack is a combination of a blogging platform and an email newsletter service. Creators write posts, publish them to their Substack page, and people who have subscribed to them also get a copy in their email. One of the things that makes Substack different from other blogging platforms is that it can be monetized. It is possible to put up free posts, but it is also possible to set up subscription plans and limit access to some or all of your posts to those paying subscribers. Substack also has a comment section, and access to the ability to leave comments can also be limited to just subscribers.
So, why have I been reading more and more Substacks lately? Well, part of it is that it makes it easier for me to access content when I’m underway. What I have discovered over time is that it is often difficult if not impossible to access various news and commentary websites from shipboard networks, either due to bandwidth limitations or an outright block being placed on the URL. However, I can fairly reliably access my personal email, especially if I use the low-bandwidth version of Gmail. Having Substack deliver content to me there instead of going to a website directly is a big advantage in those situations.
Another advantage is that since all of my Substacks come to my email, it make it easy to keep up with the latest posts from the pages I’ve subscribed to. Instead of having to comb through five or six different websites, I can just check my email like I normally do. As such, Substack acts as a kind of content aggregator, allowing me to get posts “where I live” instead of needing to track them down.
I’ve been very happy with my Substack subscriptions so far, and I have no plans to cancel any of them anytime soon. Going forward, I’m thinking of branching out to find some more hobby-related newsletters. This has led me down the road of starting this, my very own Substack newsletter, which you are now reading.
In the near-term, my plan is to mirror whatever I post here on Andy