I think you made a great "long run" move coming over here. It'll take time but not nearly as much time as it did on WordPress.
I hosted my destination blog on WordPress for 10 years and clunky is an understatement lol. But back when I started it's pretty much all we had! Discoverability for me was an easier game than it would've been for you because I was focused on a single destination. I fully occupied that niche. I agree that general travel blogs are harder to get noticed.
I have no doubt that you'll accomplish everything you came here for!
Thanks for the prompt about adding substack to GSC. I have just actioned it this morning. It will be interesting to see which of my substack posts people read. I have also added GA4, showing how much of a difference the traffic is between my wordpress site and substack
I'm OK with managing my own WordPress websites, but I also understand why that's challenging if you're not into web development and content management.
Substack is a great alternative for a WordPress website. The newsletter functionality is also a great bonus.
We started our Substack six months ago, and for the first time we didn't use the community features of substack much. Now that we are actively recommending other substacks and interacting with people more, we get more joy out of the platform. I went from a simple site where you can post your blogs, to a great platform to interact with like-minded people!
Hi Laura, I am so glad; I found this post of yours. I am writing a series of posts (in graphic and handwritten) and was wondering I should bring a plethora of travel articles I have written on my WordPress and Medium on to Substack. It is becoming hard to manage different platforms and having them at one place will bring richness to my Substack. It will also be easy to manage them because I am not managing my WordPress blog very well. However, I am wondering whether I should rewrite them and release them one-by-one or bring them over without sending them to my subscribers.
Whether you choose to rewrite them is up to you. Most of my travel content was just copied over and published. I copied about 75 posts over 2 months and sent them to my subscribers (less than 20 at the time) immediately. I somewhat regretted doing that. When I did it, I did not know that you could publish without sending them to subscribers.
I think I should have copied them all to the drafts and then slowly released them as my audience grew.
But, since you already have a wide audience, you may be fine with doing it all at once.
I am now debating the next step which is closing the Wordpress site and transferring the domain name over to Substack. I am hesitating because the WP site is visually more appealing for travel content. I think I will wait a little longer I have a larger audience and more subscribers on Substack.
I think the key difference between a platform like SubStack and Wordpress is that even if you have the best website in the world on the latter you still have to drive traffic to it.
Whereas here there’s a ready made pool of eager readers, you just have to get noticed. 😊
Thanks for the recommendations on Substack. I used to have a travel blog on Blogger, but when moving to Substack, I noticed that I hadn't been travelling since around 2018 (I retired recently and I am spending more time reading, writing, watching etc), so I did not transfer the blog. I will follow your travelogue to get insight on potential travel destinations.
I think you made a great "long run" move coming over here. It'll take time but not nearly as much time as it did on WordPress.
I hosted my destination blog on WordPress for 10 years and clunky is an understatement lol. But back when I started it's pretty much all we had! Discoverability for me was an easier game than it would've been for you because I was focused on a single destination. I fully occupied that niche. I agree that general travel blogs are harder to get noticed.
I have no doubt that you'll accomplish everything you came here for!
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Yes, I am really enjoying being here and being able to write content I want to share.
No more specific niches!
Hi Laura. Just wondering if installing the Google search console to your newsletter has made a difference?
Thanks for the prompt about adding substack to GSC. I have just actioned it this morning. It will be interesting to see which of my substack posts people read. I have also added GA4, showing how much of a difference the traffic is between my wordpress site and substack
I'm OK with managing my own WordPress websites, but I also understand why that's challenging if you're not into web development and content management.
Substack is a great alternative for a WordPress website. The newsletter functionality is also a great bonus.
Great post!
We started our Substack six months ago, and for the first time we didn't use the community features of substack much. Now that we are actively recommending other substacks and interacting with people more, we get more joy out of the platform. I went from a simple site where you can post your blogs, to a great platform to interact with like-minded people!
Hi Laura, I am so glad; I found this post of yours. I am writing a series of posts (in graphic and handwritten) and was wondering I should bring a plethora of travel articles I have written on my WordPress and Medium on to Substack. It is becoming hard to manage different platforms and having them at one place will bring richness to my Substack. It will also be easy to manage them because I am not managing my WordPress blog very well. However, I am wondering whether I should rewrite them and release them one-by-one or bring them over without sending them to my subscribers.
Hi Neera,
Whether you choose to rewrite them is up to you. Most of my travel content was just copied over and published. I copied about 75 posts over 2 months and sent them to my subscribers (less than 20 at the time) immediately. I somewhat regretted doing that. When I did it, I did not know that you could publish without sending them to subscribers.
I think I should have copied them all to the drafts and then slowly released them as my audience grew.
But, since you already have a wide audience, you may be fine with doing it all at once.
I am now debating the next step which is closing the Wordpress site and transferring the domain name over to Substack. I am hesitating because the WP site is visually more appealing for travel content. I think I will wait a little longer I have a larger audience and more subscribers on Substack.
Laura, the last sentence ; I felt your current emotion. Simple and raw. Ambitious!
As a somewhat new writer on Substack myself, there's some really great advice in here. Thanks for sharing :)
Great piece, thanks for sharing!
I think the key difference between a platform like SubStack and Wordpress is that even if you have the best website in the world on the latter you still have to drive traffic to it.
Whereas here there’s a ready made pool of eager readers, you just have to get noticed. 😊
Thanks for the recommendations on Substack. I used to have a travel blog on Blogger, but when moving to Substack, I noticed that I hadn't been travelling since around 2018 (I retired recently and I am spending more time reading, writing, watching etc), so I did not transfer the blog. I will follow your travelogue to get insight on potential travel destinations.
Thank you so much!
That's great to hear.
Since my WP site was not doing well, I noticed a big difference by adding GSC.
It does take time for GSC to index the posts though.
I believe it has.
However, the challenge is to get the urls indexed.
Google only seems to accept about 2 or 3 at a time and then I have to wait.
I'm not sure why. Indexing itself takes 7-10 days.
Once they are indexed, there is traffic going to them.
I also have links on Pinterest and X.
I have yet to set up Bing.
Hope hat helps.
Thank you so much!
Isn't it a great place?
It is such a refreshing change from the other platforms and social media.
Certainly a place to grow.
Thank you for your kind words!
It's a great place to write and be seen.
Whether goals are big or small, writing gives an opportunity to put your heart and soul into something and feel accomplished.
I couldn't agree more!