Tag: substack

On life and death and the substack writings of Helen de Cruz

If you want to read some thoughtful posts today, I highly recommend the Substack of Helen de Cruz.

I used to follow her on Twitter while I was still a user of it. He posts there were always thoughtful and wise. To find out she was writing on Substack was a blessing. To discover (via Bluesky) that she passed away in 2025 was terribly sad.

While she was a philosopher by profession, her writing on Substack is very accessible. And thoughtful. And wise. Give what she wrote a read when you can.

(Image = link to one of her colored pencil drawings on her substack)

On substack and it’s alternatives and why you might want to switch

If you use Substack, should you stay on it? You might want to leave because of its Nazi problem, and that’s a good reason to do so. However for this post I’d like to focus on why you might you might want to leave for financial reasons.

To see what I mean about financial reasons, take a look at this chart above. I found it via this post on Bluesky: “Here’s some napkin math for how expensive Substack is compared to its competitors, assuming that roughly 7% of all subscribers will pay for their subscriptions, and that subscriptions cost $5/month. — Molly White (@molly.wiki) April 11, 2025 at 10:47 AM”. According to the chart, once you get above 18 paid subscribers, it gets worse and worse to be on Substack vs some of the other platforms there. And if you have 350 paid subscribers, all of the alternative platforms are cheaper.

I commented that I thought 7% was the highend, since I’ve seen a numerous substacks with 3% pay/free, but she replied she got the 7% from substack. Fair enough. I did come across this chart that showed the percentage varies, depending on the substack topic. Regardless of what percentage of your followers are paying one, once you start getting a significant number of paying subscribers, you should consider moving.

If you still need convincing that switching seems like a good move, read this.

On blogging/writing online in 2020 (how I write now)


In 2020, blogging is back. At least blogging as newsletters. Think Substack and all the people flocking to there. Blogging on WordPress (or Blogger or Tumblr or other blogging platforms) is not as hot but still going strong.

That’s good. I am a fan of more writing and better writing, whether it comes in blog form or newsletter form. Bring it on.

I continue to write here as I have been for some time.  I’ve written a number of pieces on blogging over the last decade; this piece will join that.

I’ll likely to continue writing here until I get 1,000,000 hits (currently at 976,745 hits) but given the limited readership, that may never happen. I’ll keep writing, regardless. We all need goals, and the million hits is one of mine.

Currently I sit down every Saturday morning and review interesting things I’ve found on the Internet and saved in Pocket. I have over 1000 things still in Pocket, not to mention a spreadsheet of old links that were noteworthy. There’s always something of interest to write about. Plus the Internet never stops being interesting.

I usually take 3-4 hours to write about these things. Then I schedule them to be posted throughout the week. My thinking is that this is more likely to bring a wider readership to them. My SEO skills are limited, but this is my thinking.

I enjoy this writing time. I grab some breakfast and a coffee and craft the posts. I grab images from Unsplash.com to illustrate the posts. It’s a hobby and something I enjoy doing. I love doing it. I’m an amateur writer and thinker.

I try and mix up the posts for readers. Something on Monday to help you get your week started. Something fun on Friday. Something to make your weekend better on Saturday. Perhaps a more thoughtful post on Sunday.

As always I think: would someone reading this get any benefit? Much of my posts are advice, but in areas I am interested in. I want to share things of interest to me but that will also interest others.

Once a month I go back over posts from other years. Today I will go back over the December posts. It’s fascinating to see what was interesting to me in other years.

Whenever I am lost for what my audience is, I think: would someone in my family want to read this? Or one or more of my friends? Once I have that one reader, I can write to them. Many of my posts are letters to people that may not realize it.

Since the pandemic, I have started a newsletter within the blog. I haven’t broken it out into its separate media. Just like I never moved to Tumblr or Medium or took up podcasts. This blog is sufficient for what I want to communicate and record.

I have a few other blogs on WordPress: one on cooking that I enjoy writing from time to time. A few others that are experimental. I use Instagram still because it is easy, but photography is a very separate and different media.

I’ll continue to write here, writing for smart people I know. I’ve been doing it since before the World Wide Web.  Why stop now?

As always, for those who have read this far:

An appropriate thank you card for this era.

(Coffee Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash. The other image is also from Unsplash but I could not find who to attribute it to)