Hey . Michael here.
If you use Substack, you are no doubt aware of the fact they introduced a (pretty aggressive) "age verification" mechanism in early December through a company called Persona.
As I wrote extensively here, this move had NOTHING to do with "protecting the children" and predominantly (if not outright exclusively) affected Substack publishers (and their readers) whose content had absolutely nothing to do with the legislative requirements in either the UK or Australia.
It's also obvious (or at least should be) that this will be rolled out elsewhere as more countries adopt such measures.
In my article on this topic, I specifically mentioned the two open source content management systems (CMS) that I consider to be the best alternatives for Substack publishers seeking to set-up their own self-hosted distribution channel:
- Ghost; and
- WordPress
I explained the reasoning behind these recommendations, as well as why I personally decided to go with Ghost, in that article starting from the heading "Some alternatives to Substack to consider" so you can go and read this for yourself.
Since making those recommendations and helping two dissident writers make the transition, it has become evident that making the switch is not necessarily a trivial matter for people who unlike me, have no technical or digital marketing background. This is especially the case for Substack publishers that have a fairly high amount of paid subscribers through that platform.
Based on the feedback from several people, including those two dissident publishers, it has become evident that there is a need for a service that will make it easy for non-technical people to switch their publications from Substack to Ghost and have the entire process streamlined without any downtime or loss of revenue.
Well, today I am officially launching such a service to the general public where I will personally do all the work for you!
I have priced that service at US$500 which is very affordable given you get a fully built and designed website of your own that has all your existing content from Substack as well as all the functionality Substack offers, including:
- Sending email newsletters;
- Putting content behind paywalls; and
- Taking payments for paid subscriptions
Ghost also has additional features which Substack simply doesn't have at present...and unlikely to ever have such as:
- An easy way to move your content to a different web host with minimal downtime (several hours at most) while maintaining all the existing design and functionality. Like WordPress, Ghost is an open source software so no one can prevent you from using it.
- Effectively protecting content from scraping by AI and others looking to use your content without giving you proper attribution (or payment);
- A built-in mechanism to collect one-off donations so that you can ditch platforms like Buy Me A Coffee or Ko-Fi where you do not own the payment relationship with your supporters and which have a history of censoring creators based on their political opinions; and
- Lots of other features (both in term of design and functionality) that I simply cannot mention in one email but include an easy way to get on the social web through a server you control and cannot be banned from, as well as giving your website a look and feel that is uniquely you.
You can get all the details about what is included (and read some testimonials) by clicking here or on the button below:
If you have any questions or need further clarifications, just reply to this email.
Put any concerns about potential censorship or intrusive measures for your audience behind you....forever!
I look forward to helping you make the switch away from "platforms" to "protocols" which is how the Internet was always meant to operate (and actually did until the early 2000s).
Let's Make the Internet Great Again...😉
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