Exploring Substack for Building a Newsletter

A few years ago I shared a small milestone on Indie Hackers. I counted all of my food-tech articles published on Hackernoon over the years and realized I had written 24 of them. For me, that felt like a real accomplishment. What surprised me wasn't the milestone itself—it was the response. Several people asked the same question: "Have you thought about starting a food-tech newsletter?" The answer is yes. I've been thinking about it for a long time. And whenever newsletters come up, one platform is mentioned more than any other: Substack. So I decided to take a closer look. What Is Substack? Substack is a platform designed to help writers publish newsletters and monetize them through subscriptions. The appeal is obvious. Arthur's image-9cf7d8You can: Create a publication in minutes. Publish articles through a simple editor. Build an email list. Offer paid subscriptions. Handle payments without building your own infrastructure. For many writers, that's enough. And honestly, that's Substack's biggest strength. It removes friction. Why People Love It The platform is incredibly simple. You don't need to: Configure hosting. Manage a website. Set up email infrastructure. Hire developers. Learn marketing software. You simply write and publish. Arthur's image-894888As someone who has spent years working with websites, email systems, and automation tools, I understand why this is attractive.Most writers want to write. They don't want to become system administrators. Substack allows creators to focus on content rather than technology. The Best Feature: Data Portability One thing I genuinely like about Substack is that you can export your data. Your subscriber list. Your posts. Your publication content. That's important. Arthur's image-c831eToo many platforms make it difficult to leave.Any service can change its policies, pricing, or direction in the future. Being able to export your data gives creators at least some protection against that risk. The Monetization Advantage Substack also makes monetization straightforward. You can create paid subscriptions and start charging readers almost immediately. For writers who want recurring revenue, that's powerful. Many creators spend years trying to figure out how to monetize their audience. Arthur's image-0e3d5Substack solves that problem from day one. However, convenience comes with a cost. The Cost of Convenience Substack takes a percentage of subscription revenue. Payment processors take another percentage. Individually, these fees may seem small. But as your audience grows, they become significant. Substack allows you to use Stripe to accept payments. Stripe is available in select countries if you are not located in one of those countries then you cannot receive payments. Both Substack and Stripe take their cut from each transaction. Substack charges 10% and Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents on each transaction. This means if you charge $10 per subscriber then the Substack + Stripe fee will be 1.59. This may not sound a lot but let's suppose you have 100 paid subscribers each paying $10 per month. You'll be paying $159 each month and $1908 each year. A publication earning thousands of dollars per month may end up paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually in platform fees.For some creators, that's a fair trade. For others, it becomes a reason to consider building their own infrastructure. While i'm fine with that(my Udemy profile has "your IRS withholding tax rate is 24%"), someone might want to share their profit The SEO Question This is where things become more interesting. When you publish on Substack, you're helping grow Substack's ecosystem. Your content lives on their domain. Your backlinks benefit their platform. Your audience discovers you through their network. That's great while you're using the platform. But if you ever decide to leave, you don't take all of those SEO benefits with you. You take your content. You take your subscribers. But your search authority largely stays behind. This isn't unique to Substack. It's the tradeoff that exists on almost every platform. BTW, All images hosted on their CDN. Probably they woudnt be indexed as part of your newsletter https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_704,h_396,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F590aa007-1c00-4f98-abcb-f717db528128_4032x3024.jpeg they dont put alts, so ... (its bad ;)) The Platform Risk One lesson I've learned repeatedly is this: Building on someone else's platform is convenient until your interests stop aligning. I've seen this happen with: Freelance marketplaces. Social media platforms. Online education platforms. Content publishing platforms. At one point I relied heavily on Elance for acquiring clients. Then Elance merged with oDesk and became Upwork. The platform changed. The rules changed. The economics changed. Money that we were making droped drastically The same thing has happened across countless creator ecosystems. Platforms evolve. Creators adapt. Or they leave. That's why every creator should ask: "What happens if I want to move in five years?" Limited Flexibility Substack is intentionally simple. That's both a strength and a weakness. You don't have to make many decisions. But you also can't customize everything. What if you want: Advanced lead generation? Custom landing pages? Complex marketing funnels? Alternative payment systems? Advertising placements? Specialized analytics? Unique subscriber experiences? At some point, you may discover that your business has outgrown the platform. The features that once felt liberating may start feeling restrictive. The Ownership Question This is the most important consideration. When you build on your own website, you control: The design. The user experience. The monetization model. The integrations. The infrastructure. When you build on a platform, you exchange some of that control for convenience. Neither approach is wrong. The question is what you're optimizing for. If your goal is to publish immediately and validate an idea, Substack is fantastic. If your goal is to build a long-term media business, ownership becomes increasingly important. My Recommendation If you're starting from zero, Substack is probably one of the easiest ways to launch a newsletter today. It removes technical barriers and lets you focus on creating content. But I would treat it as a publishing platform—not as the foundation of an entire business. Whenever possible: Keep backups of your content. Export your subscriber lists regularly. Maintain your own website. Build assets you control. Platforms come and go. Algorithms change. Business models evolve. Ownership remains valuable. Substack is a great place to start. Just make sure it's not the only place your business exists. aaand fuck paywalls!#My Bias: Fuck Paywalls My Bias: Fuck Paywalls Before going further, I should probably disclose my bias. People who know me well know that I have a personal motto: "Fuck paywalls." It's not because I think creators shouldn't get paid. Quite the opposite. I've spent years creating content myself, and I fully understand that good writing, research, and education take time. My problem is with knowledge becoming inaccessible. For years I've deliberately published most of my work on Hackernoon because I wanted it to be available to everyone, not just people willing or able to pay for a subscription. Some of my articles continue generating traffic years after publication because they remain open and searchable. That's one of the reasons I'm conflicted about platforms built around paid newsletters. I understand why they exist. I understand why writers use them. I even understand why many creators are successful with them. But philosophically, I still prefer open access whenever possible. So if some of my criticism of Substack sounds biased, that's because it probably is.