What the heck is a Substack?
You’re looking at one.
Substack is the service I use now to send unscheduled, short posts. TechByter Worldwide typically had two, three, or four topics each week. Substack messages will have just one. So I create a single message using an interface like a word processor and send it or schedule it. TechByter Worldwide depended on writing the component sections, bringing the text into Adobe Dreamweaver, recording each segment with Adobe Audition, editing and mixing the podcast, creating an RSS file, and writing and scheduling a newsletter update in MailChimp.
So the process is much easier and faster with Substack.
The term “Substack” seems to apply both to the service and to any individual creator’s section of it. Many Substack users will want to take advantage of the monetization feature Substack offers. Using the service is free, but Substack takes 10% of the subscription fee when users enable paid subscriptions. I have no plans to do that.
Substack is definitely not an email marketing platform. If that’s your goal, check MailChimp, HubSpot, Constant Contact, or any of the other similar programs. But if your objective centers around writing and sharing information, Substack looks like a winner. And you can’t beat the price.
Remarkably good support.
I submitted the list of TechByter Worldwide subscribers to Substack and it was rejected. When I opened a chat session to ask why, the response was entirely too fast for it to have been a human at the other end. So I was dealing with an AI chatbot.
After I explained in plain English what I had done, the chatbot instantly replied with some suggestions. I had trimmed the list down to just email addresses and names, so the chatbot explained that I should upload the entire MailChimp list because it contained additional information about when and how people had opted it.
The chatbot even offered additional recommendations to ensure that the process would succeed and the approval was nearly instantaneous when I uploaded the full MailChimp list.
Democratization of information.
Computers have changed the rules for us humans so much in the past 40 years, starting with making it possible for anyone to produce typeset-like documents in the mid-1980s, to record and mix radio-like programs a few years later, to go far beyond the photography darkroom in the 1990s, and to create near-broadcast-quality videos in the early 2000s.
No longer did we need to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy single-purpose machines. Anyone could become an audio or video editor, a typesetter, or a photographer. Artificial intelligence pushes this trend further forward.
Is this good or bad? The obvious answer seems to be YES. It’s good. It’s bad.
Anyone with something to say can use today’s tools to communicate. That’s good because it eliminates gatekeepers who could otherwise stifle unpopular messages. But it’s also bad because unprincipled charlatans can spread disinformation easily. Exacerbating the problem is the clear fact that educators in the United States are forced to teach their students how to pass tests instead of how to think.
I’m probably well off target now, so let’s just say that Substack is an excellent choice if you have ideas you want to share.