It’s interesting to see that most people I follow now have a Substack newsletter.

While some choose Substack as a way to share something they deem taboo in society, others use Substack as a form of creative expression.

But for the most part, they’re using Substack because of its simplicity.

Ask anyone about the biggest nightmare in their businesses, and you can be sure that technological failures that strike at the wrong time are one of them.

No wonder why many people will opt for the Substack newsletter.

For one, technological failure is now a thing of the past when you have Substack to handle the technical issues for you.

And the biggest allure of all? It simplifies your content creation process.

Write the post, publish it on your Substack and you can rest assured that the same post is now already sent to your subscribers’ inbox.

Gone are the days when you have to log in to your preferred email marketing platform just to notify your subscribers about the latest post.

On the surface, the Substack newsletter may seem like a heaven-sent for many of us.

But for all you know, it may not be as a game-changer as you thought it would be.

The truth about having a Substack newsletter

I’m sure that you have this notion of how simpler building an email list will be with Substack.

Well, we all know how important it is to have an email list.

But we all know well enough that building an email list from scratch isn’t an easy feat, at least for me.

So, Substack seems like an ideal choice considering that it can help you with building and growing your email list easily thanks to its discoverability feature.

As long as you’re active on Substack, people will stumble upon your Substack page when they search for the topics you write on Substack.

And if they like what you write enough, they will join your email list.

Sadly, that’s never the case at all in reality.

How you grow your email list on Substack isn’t that different from growing your email list through your website.

You will still need to cross-promote to get the words out about your Substack page.

And you will still need to promote your Substack page on social media.

No matter how you slice it, growing your email list through Substack takes just as much work as growing your email list through your website.

And it’s even harder to do so when you’re now limited to growing your email list through the Substack ecosystem.

But these people don’t have to do any of this legwork!

Yes, you’re not wrong to say some people don’t have to do any of these legworks. They seem to have people flocking to their Substack page without them having to lift a finger.

Well, here’s the thing about those people with large subscribers to their Substack page – they already have a large following before they’re on Substack.

In some cases, many of them already built their email list elsewhere before they transitioned to Substack.

So, they can skip the process altogether by importing their existing email list to Substack.

Of course, they can always continue building their email list with Substack like they always do.

But for the most part, that doesn’t seem to be their aim when they move to Substack.

They’re using Substack for what it is – a simpler way to connect with their audience on a deeper level without worrying about being censored online.

Should you be on Substack?

I won’t deny that Substack can be alluring to many of us because of its simplicity.

But unless you already build your audience elsewhere, it’s best you use something else to build your email list.

And when it comes to building your email list from scratch, nothing beats having your own website to do the job.

Not only that you have better control over how people will join your email list. But you can make the process simpler too by optimizing the page for the search engine or running an ad to build your email list faster.

Yes, you can optimize your Substack page for the search engine as well, of course.

But if my experience with Tumblr is any indication, I will say the SEO part isn’t going to be as robust as the one you have on WordPress.

Remember that Substack is notorious for being late to implement features that many of us need to build and connect with our audience.

So, you may as well use an email marketing platform like ConvertKit and Mailerlite to build your email list instead.

Even if you don’t have a website, you can use Convertkit’s and Mailerlite’s landing page feature to build your email list.

If you’re looking for the simplest solution to build an email list, this is worth considering.

Or you can try using this method with Payhip instead to build your email list.

I still want something like Substack but better

If you want something similar to Substack but better, then consider having a look at Beehiiv.

Yes, Beehiiv doesn’t come cheap. And the free plan has limited features too.

But as far as the features are concerned, it offers way better features than Substack.

What’s more, you have so many options to choose from when it comes to building your email list with Beehiiv.

You can use the recommendation feature to cross-promote other people’s newsletters on Beehiiv with a click of a button.

Or you can use their Boost feature to advertise your Beehiiv newsletter on someone else’s Beehiiv newsletters.

Of course, this feature will only be available if you’re on their Scale plan.

But the good news is you can gain access to the Boost feature during your free trial.

So, consider making full use of all the features Beehiiv has to offer during your free trial period.

Just to let you know that I did give Beehiiv a test run before. You can read my thoughts about Beehiiv right here if you’re interested.

What am I using to build my email list right now?

From the look of it, it doesn’t look to you that I’m on Substack considering how much of a jab I’m taking on it.

And I don’t seem to be using Beehiiv either since I’m not a fan of it.

So, what email marketing solution I’m currently using in my author business?

It can’t be that I’m still using Mailchimp, of all things, right?

If that’s your concern, fret not since I no longer use Mailchimp anymore as I write this.

I’m now using MailPoet to build my email list.

As you can see here, I have so many things to say about my current strategies for building an email list and how I use MailPoet to do just that.

So, stay tuned if this is something that you find interesting.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to subscribe to my email list if you haven’t already.

You certainly don’t want to miss any of my future posts if your goal in life is to run your author business like clockwork.