Leaving to Ghost and self-hosted website

Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost

I'm currently migrating from Substack to Ghost (I've only been on Substack for three - four months, but I've been lucky enough to have incredible growth).

The reason for the move is:

1) I wanted to delete my old blog, which I had for almost 9 years. It simply outlived itself (as did my blog title).

2) I've used WordPress for years and still love it, but I'm looking for something new and would like to start fresh.

I've read some posts on Substack saying that blogging is dying. I don't think so… It may be evolving, but it's not going away completely.

4) Ghost is a blogging website service with a built-in subscription, where you can choose to be a free or paid subscriber (monthly, yearly, etc).

The beauty of Substack is that it offers cross-recommendations and promotes your work via Notes, a kind of social media (like Twitter/X or Threads). I must say, I've got a lot of subscribers from your recommendations. Thank you all!! Still, Substack is more of a "social platform" for me…

Of course, being active on Notes can help you get noticed faster and gain followers or subscribers (I hope you understand by now that they are two different roles). But Notes can also make you wobbly, unfocused and, worst of all, unaware of your life and your surroundings.

We should all be making the most of life, and that doesn't mean spending all our time on our phones.

Notes take all my energy... and I've found that I don't want to write anymore. I just spend all my time on the screen like a dummy: reading, checking my app every ten minutes and scrolling, but there's no joy in it because that's what I do most of the time.

Of course, we are all different, and this may work for some of you. In my case, I prefer to concentrate on something I love: reading and writing. I also don't want to feel the pressure to turn up every day and discuss things. It doesn't help me become a better writer or a better person.

5) Ghost does offer some meta and SEO help (it's sort of built into every post, but to see if it makes any difference, I'll have to use it for at least 4-6 months).

Well, maybe a move like this only makes sense if you have a big following or if you're comfortable writing into the void. If you're building a community and need immediate feedback on your writing or words of support, Substack is better.

Still, it seems to work best for non-fiction articles, as far as I've noticed.

6) Ghost will cost you money: to host your website, to use Ghost PRO (which I do). This is especially important if you have more than 1000-3000 subscribers. With my subscriber list (5000+), it costs me about 70 per month.

Substack is free… unless you have a considerable number of paying subscribers. It has also been integrated with social media, making promotion and monetization much easier.

7) I haven't sent out newsletters from the Ghost website yet, but I'm planning to try it later in March or for my next post - Endless Faces of Immortality: A Deep Dive into the Paradox of our Desire to Escape Death.

By the way, the Ghost team contacted me and asked where my followers came from because I simply exported most of my subscribers from the old blog, including, of course, all of you who subscribed to Angela Marrant here on Substack. But remember, you can unsubscribe at any time!

If you're following Bullet's Adventure (an absurdist comedy), I'll post it on No Clue Land once a week - Wednesday. It’s free to read.

8) By the way, in Ghost PRO, you can add more authors to your team (you can have a Ghost website with a group of friends if you have creative friends like that and don't want to do it all alone), but I'm not focusing on that… It might be too crowded lol

9) Another great thing about Ghost is that it doesn't have an app... I tend to only use it when I'm on my laptop or planning my post/newsletter.

I'm not closing my Substack just yet, but I won't be here as much as I used to be. On my days off, I'll post my new stuff in Notes and read and restack some of yours. Cheers!