Wake up at four in the morning and the last thing you need is your screen burning holes in your retinas. You want dark mode. The web doesn’t care what you want.

Most websites ignore your dark mode settings completely. They serve up blinding white pages like it’s their job. Here’s how you fix it if you use Chrome.

Go to the Chrome Web Store. Search for Dark Reader. Click Add to Chrome. Takes about ten seconds.

Once it’s installed, click the Dark Reader icon in your toolbar. Toggle it on for all sites. Choose your preferred mode from Dark, Filtered, or Sepia. Then adjust the brightness and contrast until it stops hurting. You can tweak these settings for individual sites if one looks rubbish.

Works on almost everything. Google Docs, YouTube, the lot.

Back in my youth, when I protested against war, the placard would surely have read “drop acid, not bombs”. How times have changed.

Serves 2

Sweet, silky, and delicate. Fennel adds subtle anise depth. Simple comfort.

• 6 shallots, peeled and chopped
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 600ml stock
• 50ml kefir
• Sea salt and white pepper

Toast fennel seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, then grind roughly. Warm oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over low heat. Add shallots and ground fennel. Cover and sweat gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until shallots are completely soft and translucent but not browned. Pour in stock and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Blend until smooth. Return to pan and stir through kefir. Season generously with salt and white pepper. Heat through gently without boiling.

Serve with crusty bread and a drizzle of good olive oil. Keeps refrigerated for 3 days.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I picked up Wispr Flow after seeing it used on one of Tiago Forte’s YouTube videos.

I wasn’t expecting much, but within minutes I had cleared my inbox.

I’ve been online a long time. One of the biggest challenges is dealing with the ever-increasing amount of email.

I run a business where, rightly or wrongly, I am the brand. I am the face, and it’s a very folksy industry.

When people send me an email, I want to reply and not put up barriers to my work, especially since I’m an author.

I think it’s important to be there for my audience, who, at the end of the day, are the people who help me pay the bills.

It was getting to the point of complete overwhelm, where I would leave emails for up to a week before replying or until I could schedule some time.

And I would resist doing it.

Then Wispr Flow came along, and within minutes, I had cleared my inbox in a way that felt wholesome, respected my customers, and wasn’t just an automated reply.

In my business, building relationships in a nourishing way is vitally important. I want to treat my customers as humans rather than numbers in a spreadsheet and Wispr Flow has been a game changer in helping me keep the humanity in my business.

When it comes to blogging, I now get up and do my 300 words a day effortlessly.

As a writer, audiences usually think the words naturally tumble out of us. They don’t. It’s trial by fire, but Wispr Flow is a gift to writers.

I have shared it with so many people, even before I knew there was an affiliate programme, because it’s one of those pieces of software that does what it says on the tin and actually delivers.

There’s no hype, there’s no nonsense.

It says, “This is what it does.”

You try it, and it does it.

Website: https://wisprflow.ai/

1. Choose one important thing.
2. Work on it until it’s done or you’re spent.
3. Repeat tomorrow.

Every new Meta ad I start always gets abuse, hysterical diatribes against foraging.

My default response when I am tired or just up for a fight is to throw back a few verbal punches.

After all, these trolls are low-IQ, bottom-feeders. Too stupid to go beyond parroting sensationalist headlines they have read.

There is zero critical thinking going on.

However, I’ve learnt over the years that if you react in such a way, it just adds fuel to the fire.

Even though taking on the twits can often feel quite cathartic.

At the end of the day, it always leaves me feeling unsettled and with a bad taste in my mouth.

“Why did I not walk away?”

The best response to trolls, one that maintains your power and integrity, is actually quite simple.

Block and delete.

Some say it’s better to hide the post because it makes the troll feel like they’re still being heard, when in reality, no one is hearing them. After all, their post is hidden. Invisible.

I’ve observed that blocking and deleting sends a signal to the algorithm not to show my advert to those types of people.

A simple solution and one best practised, even if the person does deserve their teeth kicked in.

Let’s get that straight from the start.

Too many people confuse the two, like thinking a potluck and a soup kitchen are the same thing just because they both serve food. They’re not.

One is people showing up with their best dish to share. The other is everyone getting the same bowl whether they like it or not.

Collaboration is voluntary. It’s personal skin in the game. You bring your craft, your quirks, your lived experience, and put it on the table next to mine.

We both keep our fingerprints on what we contribute. That’s the point. The magic is in the mix.

Collectivism? That’s the flattening machine.

It says the individual doesn’t matter, only the group. Your edges get sanded down until you fit neatly into the box.

Your work gets swallowed by the ‘we’ until it no longer belongs to you, or anyone, really. Just the grey fog of the committee.

I’ve been in both worlds. In the late 90s, I was part of a ‘collaborative’ arts co-op that was really just collectivism in nice clothes.

Every project had to be approved by a panel. Every bold idea was voted down into mediocrity.

Nobody owned anything, so nobody cared enough to push it further. It was the creative equivalent of boiled cabbage.

And I’ve been part of true collaboration, the kind where two or three people come together with a shared aim but keep their autonomy.

No one’s asking you to dilute your style or seek permission. You work alongside, not under. You learn from each other without becoming each other.

Here’s the danger: collectivism dresses itself up as fairness.

It talks about ‘shared vision’ but means ‘shared control.’

Collaboration, on the other hand, thrives on difference. The friction is what sharpens the edge.

If you’ve ever worked on a book with a good editor, you know what I mean. They don’t rewrite your voice to sound like theirs. They help your voice carry further. That’s collaboration.

We need to stop letting collectivist thinking creep into our creative and business spaces.

The moment you find yourself afraid to take a risk because ‘it might not fit the group,’ you’re done.

The moment you stop owning your contribution, you’ve already lost it.

So here’s my rule: collaborate like a jazz band, not a marching band. Listen to each other, riff off each other, but keep your sound.

The moment someone tells you to play in unison all the time, pack your instrument and walk.

Collaboration builds. Collectivism blurs.

Choose the one that leaves you more yourself at the end.

You start out writing a lean, beautiful horse, something with muscle, speed, and a clear direction.

Then you ask for feedback, and suddenly everyone has an opinion.

Your friend wants you to add more romance. Your cousin thinks you should ‘make it more commercial.’

The writing group suggests twelve different endings.

Soon, your lean horse has sprouted humps, awkward legs, and a face only its mother could love.

When this happens, committees make safe books. Beige books. Stories that offend no one and excite no one. They file down the edges until there’s nothing left worth holding.

That’s why the power of one matters: you own the damn thing. You take the risk. You carry the vision from your head to the page without watering it down to please the peanut gallery.

Steve Jobs didn’t design the iPod by taking a neighbourhood survey. He guarded his vision with focus and determination.

That’s what you have to do as a self-published author.

Otherwise? You’re just another camel in the Kindle store.

So, stop crowd-sourcing your creativity.

Listen if you want, but filter everything through your gut.

This is your book, your voice, your risk.

Write and publish your book your way.

Whatever happens, it’ll be worth your name.

I sell more books when I stop trying so hard to sell them.

No popups.
No countdown timers.
No fake scarcity.

Just a quiet offering made with care.
It’s counterintuitive, I know.
But it works.

I call it Open Heart Marketing.
OHM, for short.

Like the sound — Om.

A little hippy, maybe.
But it fits.

Because OHM isn’t a strategy.
It’s not a trick.
It’s a posture.

A way of meeting people without pressure.

A way of sharing work that’s rooted in trust rather than control.

I learned marketing the old way.

Funnels.
Tripwires.
Emotional triggers.

I spent years swimming in that world, coached by some of the early internet pioneers — John Reese, Jonathan Mizel, Yanik Silver.

Backroom seminars. Private masterminds. Endless talk about “conversion rates” and “psychological pain points.”

And I watched how easily the language of care could be weaponised.

How fast “value” became a mask for manipulation.

I heard the contempt many marketers had for their audience — the way they spoke about customers behind closed doors.

That was the moment I knew I couldn’t keep doing it.

So I walked away.

The shift wasn’t immediate.
It took years to unlearn what I’d absorbed.

To stop treating people like numbers on a dashboard.

To find a rhythm that actually felt like me.

Now I approach marketing like an art practice.

I don’t write “content.”

I make something I care about and offer it freely.

A story, a reflection, a photo, a fragment of insight — whatever feels alive in the moment.

Not what I think will perform.
What feels honest.

I want my audience to feel like they’re walking through a gallery, not a shopping centre.

I want them to be moved.
Touched.
Not hustled.

And what I’ve found is — people notice.

They share my work.
They write back.

They say things like,
“This doesn’t feel like marketing.”

And they’re right. It isn’t.

In marketing terms, they’d call it positioning.

But I’m not positioning anything.

I’m just showing up, doing what I love, and letting that speak for itself.

My inner life shapes what I share.

The work draws people in naturally — not through urgency or fear, but through resonance.

I’m not desperate for sales.
I don’t chase outcomes.

And because of that, I’ve built a sustainable business that still feels human.

Others are doing the same.

Seth Godin has written a blog post every single day for over 8,000 days.

Not to sell, but to offer.

He still sells millions of books.

Craig Mod walks Japan’s pilgrimage routes.
Then writes long, handcrafted essays for his members.

No funnels,
no bait,
just care.

Austin Kleon shares what he’s thinking and making each week.

His newsletters feel like letters from a friend, not marketing campaigns.

None of them rely on tricks.
None of them push.
They just show up.
Over and over again.

That’s the heart of OHM.

Open.
Human.
Unforced.

Marketing doesn’t have to be extractive.
It doesn’t have to be noisy.

You can build a life around the things you love by simply being honest about them…

…and sharing from that place.

People are tired of being sold to.
They’re craving something real.
Something human.

If you give them that, they’ll stay.

And you won’t need a popup to convince them.

Note: This app only works on desktop browsers. It won’t function properly on phones or tablets.

Do Not Stop is a free, minimalist writing tool that keeps you in the flow. There are no distractions, no editing, just writing.

As you type, pressing return hides the text—so you don’t get caught up in rereading or fixing.

Your words are still there, hidden to help you stay focused. You can delete as you go, and your browser autosaves your writing (as long as you don’t clear your cache).

Features:

• Desktop-only experience for distraction-free writing.
• Hidden text mode to stop overthinking.
• Live word counts to track progress.
• Download button to save your session anytime.
• Full-screen option for deeper focus.

Perfect for morning pages, journaling, or creative sprints. Built around the principle: write first, edit later.

👉 Click here to use the app.

Watch this short tutorial video

Affiliate note: Some of the links in this post earn me an affiliate commission if you purchase. I only ever use affiliate links for products or services I actually use myself.

Let’s be honest – most marketing is manipulative crap. But it doesn’t have to be.

I’ve spent decades developing what I call open heart marketing.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: promotion that’s transparent, respectful, and actually aligns with who you really are.

Revolutionary concept, I know.

When creative mates ask how I’ve built a publishing company that consistently pays the bills, I’m often taken aback by how much there is to unpack.

It’s a massive topic.

But today, I want to focus specifically on how to use email marketing without selling your soul in the process.

One of the biggest problems I’ve noticed, something I banged on about years ago, is that businesses are rubbish at maintaining meaningful contact with their audience.

I once asked several colleagues if they ran email newsletters. Their answers revealed volumes about their real motivations and priorities.

As a foraging teacher, having a mailing list has always been essential for me. It’s how I let people know when new foraging info is available or I release a new book or online course.

The responses I got from my colleagues were eye-opening, showing just how differently people orient their work around their guiding principles.

My North Star: I want every single household in the country to use wild plants as food and medicine.

Full stop.

Every action I take serves this vision.

When I post on social, publish a podcast episode, run an advert, or send an email newsletter, I’m trying to spark curiosity about plants and encourage people to actually engage with them. Not just think “oh, that’s interesting” before scrolling on.

So how do you stay front of mind in our overstimulated world, where most people spend about three seconds on each social media post before moving on?

The answer isn’t chasing ever-changing platforms and their hyper addictive algorithmns.

It’s to build an email list.

Email is a protocol, not a platform.

No corporation owns it.

Yes, you need providers like Kit, MailerLite, or Buttondown etc., to host your list, but the list itself is 100% yours.

Although I aspire to DIY, the limit gets stretched when it comes to email marketing.

Back in the early internet days, I would host mailing lists directly on my website.

The whole point of running an email newsletter is to get it to arrive in people’s inbox.

Nowadays it is essential to use a specialist provider, like one of the ones mentioned above. I personally use Kit.

But the principle remains: ownership of your list is absolutely crucial.

If your social accounts get locked or search algorithms shift, you can still reach your audience.

Even if you have problems with your mailing provider, you can download your database and take it elsewhere.

That’s why it’s vital to back up your list regularly – weekly is ideal, monthly at minimum.

Your mailing list is one of your most valuable business assets. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Going back to my example of bringing wild plants into every home: every piece of content (let’s call it art!), I create has to align with my North Star.

I share loads of plant knowledge across different channels; social, substack, youtube, podcast etc.

Although I’m not particularly active on youtube. Video often feels two-dimensional to me, encouraging passive consumption rather than getting your hands dirty.

I much prefer podcasting. It’s more intimate and effective and sparks enough curiosity that listeners actually take practical steps towards working with plants.

I also use organic social media extensively. Every post builds presence and profile for me.

When someone joins my newsletter, they enter a structured welcome sequence that introduces them to my work, and gently builds our relationship over time.

Despite what cautious marketers might tell you, I’m not shy about emailing frequently.

People join my newsletter because they genuinely want to learn more.

The idea that you should only email monthly or quarterly is absolute nonsense.

Instead, find a rhythm that feels natural and sustainable. Personally, I send an email every three days.

Pop over to my nature connection newsletter subscription page.

I include a transparency statement making it crystal clear that subscribers will get 80% valuable content alongside occasional promotions of my books.

Being transparent has never been a problem. In fact, it’s fundamental to open heart marketing.

Respect for your audience is non-negotiable.

Few things are more infuriating than subscribing to a newsletter and immediately getting bombarded with aggressive sales pitches and hollow content.

That behaviour shows zero respect for the human being behind the email address.

The inbox is a personal, even sacred space.

These days, people are understandably cautious about sharing their contact details unless they trust the sender and understand what they’re signing up for.

Unfortunately, many businesses treat email acquisition purely as a transaction.

E-commerce companies are especially guilty, offering discounts in exchange for email addresses, then flooding inboxes with relentless promotions.

If we want to build a new way of promoting our creative work, one that fosters long-term trust rather than resentment, we need a different model.

Open Heart Marketing offers that healthy alternative.

I’ve been doing email marketing full-time since the end of the last century!

Over twenty-five years now.

Early in my career, I was steeped in traditional direct response marketing, with its relentless focus on sales.

By 2005, I recognised that this approach was completely out of alignment with my personal values and changed direction.

This misalignment between values and actions is everywhere.

You can spot it even in radical communities that bang on about being anti-capitalist.

Their newsletters and marketing behaviour often mimic the very corporate practices they claim to oppose.

Hypocritical, isn’t it?

True congruence between our values and our marketing actions isn’t just nice to have. It’s essential.

So there you have it.

Open Heart Marketing isn’t just a set of techniques.

It’s a commitment to honesty, transparency, and respect.

It’s refusing to compromise your values for quick cash.

In a world saturated with noise and manipulation, this approach offers a genuine path to connection and sustainable success with your audience.

And isn’t that what we’re all after, really?

I purchased a product online, despite my initial hesitation. I wasn’t fully convinced of the seller’s credentials.

They seemed a bit hypey. It was a book on how to create a successful Substack newsletter. I bought it out of curiosity about the person behind it, not for the knowledge it contained.

But what made me uncomfortable was how the author treated me as a customer. I’ve run a digital publishing business online since 2000.

In the late 1990s, I began moving my mail-order publishing company to the Internet. By 2000, I had established my presence online and earned my living as an author and self-publisher.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot. I learned from some early pioneers. They include Jonathan Mizel, John Reese, Frank Kern, Yanik Silver, Jim Edwards, Ryan Deiss, and Jimmy D. Brown etc. Many have faded from the scene, although Ryan Deiss and Frank Kern are still prominent names.

Both disgraceful humans in my book!

I’ve been on private inner circle calls. They were before John Reese’s launch of Traffic Secrets. It was the first time anyone on the internet had made over $1,000,000 in 24 hours.

The public persona was different from the private reality. They preached about respecting customers and caring for their well-being. Instead, they treated customers as a wallet to extract cash, fast. Then, they moved on to their next victim.

That’s as much as I’m willing to say about these low-life internet marketing gurus, except for a word of caution—buyer beware.

I wasn’t impressed with how the person who sold me the Substack book treated me. He bombarded me with so-called “bonuses.” All were attempts to get me to buy more of his products. This isn’t a respectful way to onboard a customer.

I took the first step with a cheap book. But he was already trying to sell me more before I could review it.

This leads me to the topic of customer onboarding. You don’t immediately push for more sales when you onboard a customer. That’s the traditional approach, but building trust first is much more effective. To boost back-end sales to that first customer, establish trust. Be an authority.

You’re much more likely to succeed if you do. Help them understand and use the product they’ve bought. If someone buys a £15 book, you should guide them through it with short, concise emails. Thank them. Offer to help them reach their goals with the product. Guide them through how to use it, providing reassurance.

A week of onboarding emails is ideal if the market can bear that frequency. These emails show your genuine support for the customer. When done right, the open rates will be high—my onboarding sequences have over 70% open rates.

This works because I know how to build that trust. Only introduce back-end offers when the customer feels comfortable and trusts you.

This approach goes against the grain. The usual advice is to extract as much cash as possible until the customer gets fed up and unsubscribes.

I can’t sleep well with that kind of attitude. It feels scummy, predatory, and extractive—the worst aspects of capitalism.

Instead, we need to reinvent the world to be more caring and service-oriented. Extracting money from people, with no care for their well-being, isn’t service. It’s exploitation.

That’s something worth reflecting on.

I came across a quote from Joe Schrieffer, a high ranking executive at Agora Financial Publishing, one of the world’s most successful paid newsletter brands.

His words resonated with me, particularly in relation to my experience as a bestselling author on Substack, where I have gained hundreds of paid subscribers within three months.

I’ve observed numerous individuals positioning themselves as Substack experts. When evaluating marketing advisors, I always scrutinise their practical experience.

From my observations, the majority of Substack trainers appear to have limited real world experience, merely repackaging information from Substack’s help files and formulating theoretical principles for managing a paid newsletter.

Intriguingly, some of these self proclaimed experts have fewer subscribers than I do.

This situation underscores the importance of thorough research before accepting advice from individuals who may excel at self promotion but lack substantive achievements.

Joe Schrieffer’s statement encapsulates this issue succinctly:

‘Most teachers of marketing are nothing but wannabes. They fake their guru status because they’ve never actually made anything work.’

This assertion rings particularly true in the context of self publishing books or running a paid substack newsletter.

Caveat emptor.

👉 Subscribe

Every foraging course, workshop, and retreat I have run since 2010 has been fully booked.

My in-person courses sell out in days, my online workshops are fully booked within 72 hours.

I once had 1300 members enrolled in one of my online membership sites.

Maybe you’re wondering how I did it?

I’ll tell you.

It’s simple.

I used my email list.

An asset I own and control.

But email marketing isn’t as simple as having a sign-up form on your site, then hitting up your subscribers with course dates, workshop offers, or book pitches.

NO!

That’s not how to do email marketing.

“Robin’s 1-2-1 mentoring and coaching helped me successfully launch my online storytelling course, generating more than £13,000 from a tiny email list of 1180 subscribers! Amazing. I am so grateful… he knows his stuff.” – Chris Holland / storytellingforoutdoorlearning.com

Recently there was a discussion in a Facebook group, talking about building mailing lists, publishing newsletters etc.

One fellow who I know. Let’s call him Scoot, said this:

“I have a funny situation where thousands have subscribed to my newsletter, but business is so good I no longer have the time/need to send it.”

And then a fellow foraging friend of mine chimed in:

“People quite often tell me they’ve signed up for my newsletter and that it’s not working, when in fact it’s simply because I haven’t sent one for months.”

And another herbalist friend said:

“Yeah, I don’t send one often. Not because of success though – more that I never have the time.”

And I shivered when I read their comments.

I shivered because these lovely folk where doing the two things I strongly urge you not to do…

… rest on your laurels

… use “not enough time” as an excuse

They simply didn’t get why owning and growing a mailing list is one of the most important things to do if you want to sell more books and have your workshops/online courses etc. fully booked.

It’s not an afterthought.

It needs to be one of the key focus points of your business strategy.

A strategy is an overarching vision, intended to fulfill your predetermined goals and objectives.

And most self-help authors focus on tactics, not strategies.

If you don’t have a strategy, and simply chase tactics, you’re at the beck and call of others game-plan.

Unless you have a strategy, you are not ‘master of your own ship’.

But what Scoot and the others didn’t get, along with the hundreds of business owners I meet and talk to…

…is another very real possibility.

You have no idea when the tide of fame and fortune will turn.

And as one very knowledgeable, very experienced marketing colleague told me some time ago.

“When things are going well that is the time to really pump things up. Most people do a lot when they are in need. Then, sit back and relax when things are going well. But when things are going well is when you want to get it up into a whole new level. You want to get to a higher level so that even if it slows a bit you are still doing well.”

Let me ask you this.

What happens to your business when suddenly the free platform you have been using to generate website visitors and clients stops working?

Have you thought about that?

I’ll talk more about why making your business dependent on free platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok, Medium etc…

…is extremely DANGEROUS!

These are simply platforms that can help grow your business.

They are not where real business growth happens.

That’s something else entirely.

That something is called…RELATIONSHIPS.

And all valuable relationships need to be…NURTURED.

If all you do with your mailing list is send out book preorder notifications, discount offers, insert your next sales pitch, you are quite literally killing your long-term potential.

Period!

And although competition is not something many in the author industry like to talk about.

It is a fact of life, that someone, somewhere could come into your market space and literally take it from you.

What will you do then?

If you don’t think it will happen, then I urge you to pause a moment and consider this.

Once Yahoo was the go-to search engine. Now it has disappeared from front of mind.

Remember Myspace? Everyone and their aunt were on it.

Then within a short period of time, it got replaced by Facebook.

See my point?

If you had been dependent on Yahoo or Myspace for getting clients.

Never building your business off these platforms.

What do you think would have happened?

What do you think happened to all those businesses that did just that?

Let’s take Google.

Maybe you are currently top of the search engines for your chosen keywords. Then with one small algorithm change, you disappear forever.

And if not forever, your rankings plummet, and your business is halved or quartered.

And someone on the edges of your market suddenly dominates the rankings you once held.

Are you feeling into what I’m saying?

It’s uncomfortable, right?

And not to put the frighteners on you. This can happen at any time.

A while back, Facebook changed its algorithm… again!

All those businesses that relied on getting likes, comments, building their profile with a Facebook Page and driving traffic to their website…

…suddenly

…over the course of a few days

…saw their reach (the ability to get their message in front of their followers newsfeed)

…fall off a cliff.

They have no way to reach their audience, their customers and potential customers.

They are, in a word…S#!%&ED.

All because they simply didn’t have time or were too successful to build a mailing list.

An asset they actually own and control.

Here’s something you need to get.

Email is a protocol (SMTP). Which is basically part of the plumbing of the internet. All the other communication platforms are owned by corporations who have motivations that don’t always align with your own. This makes your email community your #1 asset that’ll stay with you no matter what. – Marc Eglon, Hackerpreneur

Instead these authors fell for the lazy way to grow a business. They became dependent on the free platforms to reach their market.

That’s like eating at somebody else’s table. You don’t get to decide the menu.

And another thing…

…those free platforms, aren’t free.

There’s a massive price tag. Which you need to wise up to. Quickly.

I’ll tell you a fact.

A real, knock on wood fact…

…I’ve been there.

During my thirty years as a self-published author, I’ve had the carpet ripped from under me. Twice!

All because I simply didn’t get one of the immutable truths of doing business.

Never ever build a business that is dependent on a free platform.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s traffic from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or whatever the next generation platform will be.

That’s like squatting a rented property.

At some point, the landlord will demand rent.

And if you don’t pay, you’ll get thrown out on the street.

There’s nothing touchy-feely when it comes to doing business with the big boys and girls.

Not when you get into bed with corporations like Facebook or Google etc.

Getting your business shut down overnight is not a place you want to find yourself.

So where’s this leading?

Simple.

Start a newsletter.

Note: Substack is playing to their private investors, NOT you, their customers. Plus handing them 10% commission and getting locked into their gilded cage is something writers need to be very very aware of.

You will lose your independence and freedom by using Substack. Read my horror story below and why I jumped ship. Just in time it feels like!

Affiliate note: Some of the links in this post earn me an affiliate commission if you purchase. I only ever use affiliate links for products or services I actually use myself.

At the end of 2023, I disappeared for a period of time into the interior of India. Smartphones are ubiquitous there. People are hungry to better themselves, and almost all the local businesses are run from a mobile phone linked to WhatsApp and a Facebook page.

57% of the total employed population in India is self-employed, which amounts to approximately 285 million people using smartphones and pimping off megacorps platforms.

So, I thought I would give it a go and see how hard it would be to operate a publishing project from my phone.

I returned to Europe in early 2024 and decided to try out Substack.

I jumped in, exported the disengaged subscribers from Kit, imported them into Substack, and then started posting.

I loved the ease of it: tapping away on my phone (I write everything in IA Writer using markdown), then clicking ‘post’ to publish.

What’s not to like?

90% of my site traffic is by people on a mobile device. Design aesthetics are not as important as they might be for businesses that primarily get desktop traffic.

As a publisher, I want my readers to be able to read my words easily and without distraction. In the beginning, Substack was perfect for this.

So there I am with an instant newsletter of 9000+ free subscribers. Over time, due in part to my own efforts and Substack’s so-called network effect, that number has grown to over 15,000.

Not that bad for a lazy arse publisher who made his first post on 13th May 2024.

Then, I decided I had had enough and made my last post on 22nd December 2024.

7 months and 9 days after my first post.

I had over 250 paid subscribers and was officially a bestseller, with bestseller status and the associated preferential treatment.

Now, here’s the thing. When I looked at the stats of where the people who upgraded to paid came from, 90% were from my efforts. Hardly any of them were due to the networked effect.

Substack found me lots of free subscribers, but not all subscribers are equal. This was the equivalent of filling my list with tyre kickers.

But things had started getting a little out of control.

I couldn’t organise the content in the way I wanted to, even using sections, custom-built Maps of Content pages, etc.

Plus, Substack has become more and more like a social network.

Lots of distraction. Lots busyness. Lots of noise.

It was not a place of calm.

Something essential in my niche and to my subscribers.

I left partly due to feedback from paid subscribers who found it confusing, becoming very noisy and distracting, and whispers from ‘out there’.

I also discussed this a while back with Paul from Practicing The Write Stuff. I don’t know him, and we’ve only chatted a couple of times.

So, a bit of humble pie eating on my behalf, as I have previously bigged up Substack on here and elsewhere. No more. In fact, I now see it as a digital cage and something to be avoided at all costs.

Remember those 250+ paid subscribers? How did I move them off Substack and onto WordPress?

Oh boy, what a fucking nightmare.

Over the seven months, I offered my subscription at different prices.

Anyone below a certain amount just got a pro-rated refund. The monthly subs got cancelled, and I slowly went through the remaining 200 paid subscribers and manually cancelled their recurring billing.

Everyone was told what was happening, and my subscribers’ resounding ‘thank gawd for that’ was pretty much their response. Quite a few stated that they were fed up being pushed other people’s content.

They also didn’t like the coercion of recurring billing (nor do I), and they didn’t like Substack’s confusion and how busy it had become.

I am building the new website and will relaunch it in March 2025.

Everyone’s sub is being extended until the end of 2025, after which they can decide whether to renew.

I have to say that I did this Substack test for two reasons.

1. How easy would it be to try and emulate what’s going on in India, and run a publishing business from my phone.
2. Clarify how I wanted to structure the newsletter. Many of my ideas worked, and many didn’t.

Was it worth it? Yes, definitely as a minimum viable product test. I am a lot clearer on how I want to teach the citizens in my world.

I should really have left three months in. Migrating people out would have been less hassle, and there would have been fewer posts to migrate over. Still, it has been a great learning experience.

And fortunately, my delightful citizens (customers) are very patient and forgiving.

Takeaway: NOT ALL SUBSCRIBERS ARE EQUAL!

The low cost, minimal tech stack

• Kit for sending my email newsletter (can also accept payments if you want a premium newsletter)
• Kit also has landing pages for getting subscribers on your list
• Google drive to host PDFs, videos, audios and any teaching material I might need to link to from within my newsletter

The techies tech stack

• WordPress
• Generatepress WP theme
• Google classroom (free online learning platform)
• Kit (for email)
• Thrivecart (shopping cart)
• WPX (awesome wordpress hosting)