July 28, 2026
Home page or homeless?
Substack writers, you need a website
Substack isn’t your real home, and the comments are having a landlord meltdown
TLDR: The article argues writers should own a real website and treat Substack as a delivery tool, not their forever home. In the comments, some cheered that idea as basic online survival, while others bluntly argued independence is nice in theory but useless if readers never show up.
This article basically walks into the room, points at every writer who moved into Substack, and says: you’re renting, not owning. The author’s big warning is simple: if your writing lives entirely on someone else’s platform, one company decision could rearrange your whole online life overnight. The proposed fix is POSSE, which in plain English means: post on your own website first, then share it everywhere else.
But the real fireworks are in the comments, where the internet immediately split into Team Own Your House and Team Be Serious, No One Visits Websites. One reader dropped the cleanest mic-drop of the thread with a deadpan summary: “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.” Another chimed in with a money gripe, saying Substack charging $50 just to use your own domain was an instant dealbreaker, pushing them toward Ghost instead. Then came the exhausted realist: yes, owning your site sounds noble, but adding all that extra work makes them wonder if it’s even worth the hassle.
And then the counterattack landed. A longtime internet veteran basically said the quiet part out loud: nobody will visit your website unless something actively pushes your work to them. Ouch. That’s the real drama here: independence versus convenience, digital freedom versus actual readers. Even the funniest comments had survival energy—people tossing out alternatives like Leaflet, Offprint, and Pckt like they were emergency exits from Platform City.
Key Points
- •The article argues that writers should not use Substack as their primary digital home and should instead keep a website they own.
- •It says linking a custom domain to Substack is better than relying on a Substack subdomain, though Substack still has CMS limitations.
- •The article identifies SEO control and page customization as areas where Substack is more limited than other content management systems.
- •It compares Substack with earlier platform waves such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Medium, and cites Twitter and Reddit as examples of changing platform conditions.
- •The article recommends the POSSE model: publish first on an owned website and syndicate content to external platforms.