A year (plus) with Ghost

In July 2025, I had been tracking the fuckery that Substack was undertaking to apply pressure to the smaller, "free" (as in beer) publications, I wrote about this here:

There’s Fuckery Afoot

Substack has begun its enshittification

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

and expanded upon it here:

Substack’s Evolution

A traipse through the history of Substack, and predictions on where it is headed from my perspective.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

but the net result was that I had a pretty solid growth trajectory of subscribers, and because I hadn't turned on paid subs, the algorithms were punishing me.

Instead of flipping the switch, I said "fuck it" and grabbed my content and the subscribers list and struck out for Ghost.

I had long used Ghost going back to its pre-1.0 days, so I had familiarity (what was great, what was OK, and what sucked). At first I self-hosted, and managed the emails directly with Mailgun (great service if you have to bulk mail BTW). But it was clear that I was spending a LOT more time managing the tech stack than actually, ya' know, writing. I had a huge backlog of items I was half working on and researching, but I was keeping things updated, and an eye on the emails sent to not tip me over to a much more expensive tier at Mailgun (50,000 emails sent a month is a trigger for a much larger bill, or very expensive overages).

Earlier this year, I punted and moved to the Ghost(PRO) hosted environment. For my subscriber count it is about $700 a year, or $65 a month. That was almost exactly what I was spending on my hosting fees + the mail carriage service. A wash.

That has been great so far. It is super reliable, and I didn't have to manage the transition from a stand-alone service to the new architecture that would require me to learn enough about Docker to be dangerous. I know I chose the right moment to make the transition.

Now, I just focus on writing and publishing, and I have much more time to research and to explore topics. My publication frequency is way up (the downside is that means a lot of email in your inboxes – sorry).

The less good

Audience growth is nil. I get 2 - 3 new subscribers a month on average. At Substack, before the algorithmic fuckery, I was getting 10 - 12 new subscribers a week.

Ouch.

The Substack benefit is the Notes, which is a true, tightly integrated social media layer that early on had simple algorithms that really helped likely subscribers find you (that is no longer the case though – they are trying to maximize engagement and doomscrolling like all the other SMs) and that would organically increase your subscriber counts.

Now, I cross post on Substack Notes, but because my links don't originate on Substack, the engagement is minuscule. And people don't click through to my main site very often.

I also post to Bluesky, but that is such a curated, self fart-sniffing world (admit it) that it is a muddle.

As an example, my best performing post of the last 30 days is this one:

There Are No More Republicans in the Woods

The Never Trump movement may have already persuaded nearly everyone it can. Democrats need a growth strategy, not another search party.

Sweaty's CornerGeoff Anderson

Let's peek at its performance:

Of the near 70 clicks, 40 came from the 1,774 emails sent (fair enough, most people read in their email), 22 were people who navigated to it from a non-referring source (that is not from a social media post, or a link by someone else), for the 3 times I posted this on my Notes on Substack just two fucking clicks.

Ouch.

But, that was better than Bluesky.

Sadly, I am bleeding subscribers. I am down from nearly 2,100 to (checks this AM) 1,738. That is nearly 400 have bled off. Sure, some of them got tired of the volume of email, or some of them were not true fans, or perhaps my harsh takes on the Never Trumpers pissed off some kindred spirits.

Whatever.

But nothing seems to help grow this. I actually add more people on my shuttered Substack profile than here.

Double ouch. (I do sweep them in once a month or so).

the astute will note that when I sent that post on the last republicans, the liat has 1,774 members and now it is 1,738, so the decline is visible in real time.

Going Paid

One thing I did do was to hook up Stripe and turn on paid tiers. In reality, I had enough people who wanted to help the site and pay, and that I now have 2 paid subscribers.

But it did allow me to add a Tipjar, and that actually has been a huge success. I am at about $200 collected so far, mostly $5 at a time. And yes, this is on track to cover the annual hosting costs (and if I am lucky, it might cover the Plausible analytics service I use ($100 a year) to avoid connecting to the Google surveillance juggernaut).

I do want to make it abundantly clear though: I do not need this to fund any part of my life. I run this as a hobby, and the $800 or so a year I will spend is really no strain.

But, it is a huge ego boost to have someone tap that Tipjar button, and send me a few bucks.

Final thoughts

Moving to Ghost was the right thing. From what I am seeing on the Substack notes is a lot of churn, an emphasis on driving engagement, and the goals of the founders to maximize revenue even knowing that it totally fucks their loyal base in the A.

The fact that I do not have unlimited time to post, cross post, and do a ton of self promotion is likely why I am unable to grow. Ed Zitron is killing it, but he is 24/7 on the promotion work, and as a PR person, that is just who he is.

Alas, I am a mid-level product leader at a tech major and this is my outlet to let off steam (not work related).

If you got this point, I do want to leave you with a dad joke:

Why do golfers carry a spare pair of socks?
In case they get a hole in one...

I'll be here all week. Tip your server. The lobster bisque is worth it.