Pros & Cons of Moving from Substack to Ghost
Read this if you are considering a new home for your newsletter.
Megan Bidmead, a freelance writer specializing in gaming and pop culture, started her Substack newsletter in 2022. This year Megan decided to leave Substack and join Ghost, a competing independent publishing platform, for reasons made clear in her post “Moving On”. Here’s a quote:
I would like to make something extremely clear: for Substack to use the argument of free speech to excuse Nazi content on their platform is cowardly and incredibly disingenuous. Substack - who have, up until this point, provided a lovely and welcoming home for so many writers - should understand better than anyone the power of words.
I contacted Megan for an offline Q&A to better understand the pros and cons of moving from Substack to Ghost.
Me: The reasons for why you migrated out of Substack to Ghost is very clear from your post. How would you rate the process of migration: Too easy, Somewhat easy, Straightforward with planning, Some difficulty, Very difficult?
Megan: I'd say it was somewhat easy for me. I can see that if you had a larger volume of posts, it would be more challenging and would definitely require a bit of time to make sure all the posts appear the way you want them to.
Me: Was the export of posts from Substack and the import into Ghost issue easy, and did it keep the chronology of the posts intact?
Megan: Ghost has an import tool, and it provides really clear instructions on how to do it which is really helpful. However, the process wasn't completely straightforward. I'm lucky in that I don't have hundreds of posts to work with. While the tool was easy, and it did carry the posts over in chronological order, there were still a few problems.
For example, some of my posts didn't have a featured image on Ghost, even though they did on Substack. So I had to go in and fix a few things.
I also found that I had to add all my tags again, which was kind of time-consuming.
Also, all of my video posts didn't come across properly, because Ghost doesn't have a built-in video feature. So I had to remove them. If I want to record videos in the future I'll have to upload them to YouTube, I think.
Me: What about the Likes and Comments on your legacy substack posts? I don’t see them on your new Ghost site. Are those importable?
Megan: As far as I can tell, the import tool that Ghost offers does not include comments or likes. So yes, sadly, they haven't come across with me to Ghost. They're still there on my Substack, but it would have been nice to have them on Ghost too.
Me: Did you have the paywall turned on your Substack? Do we need to turn off paid subscriptions, and make the posts free, before starting the exporting process?
Megan: I did have a paywall turned on. I actually found that process really simple. You have to export your followers from Substack, and then import them to Ghost - the tool included in Ghost makes it really easy.
The key thing to remember is that if you do have paying subscribers, you have to make sure your Ghost account is connected to Stripe before you run the migration. Otherwise your paid subscribers won't come across. I found this out the hard way! I had to contact Ghost's support team to help me and to be fair, they got back to me really quickly.
The downside is that you have to contact Substack's support team and request that they remove the fees from your paid subscribers. Otherwise, they will continue to take 10% from your paying subscribers even after migrating to Ghost. This is really annoying, and I have yet to sort this out. The newsletter Citation Needed by Molly White goes into this process in more detail.
Me: I read Molly White’s detailed migration log. As someone with a s/w dev background and having done these steps before, even I found it a bit overwhelming. Did you choose the more tedious Ghost Self-Hosting setup or the Ghost Pro quicker setup?
Megan: I also found Molly White's post a little overwhelming. I decided to go for Ghost Pro. This is because I just don't have the technical knowledge at the moment to deal with that side of things, and I feel that the lowest price tier works well for me. I want to focus on writing and not the complicated coding side of things!
Me: It seems Ghost has an upfront cost regardless of whether we go self-hosted or Ghost Pro. Should writers without any coding background even try Ghost Self-Hosting?
Megan: I can't answer the self-hosting question from experience, but I would say that I think you could attempt to migrate to Ghost Self-Hosting without coding knowledge if you follow a detailed tutorial and are willing to ask for help if you need it! The Ghost support team was helpful to me, and there's a busy forum of users to call on if you need to.
Me: How many total subscribers did you have at the time or migration, and what % were paid?
Megan: My newsletter is still small. I had 40 subscribers at the time of moving and only 1 paid. So that made my decision to move much easier - I'm hoping to get more subscribers and I imagine it would be more of a daunting task to do so at that point.
Me: Substack’s strength is its powerful recommendation engine, the social feed, and rating algorithms. It is also what got them into trouble by promoting the wrong kind of content. The smaller publications need all the help we can get to grow. What is your strategy on the Ghost platform to grow your subscribers knowing that Ghost does not have these promotional features?
Megan: I am going to have to rely on social media to advertise my newsletter now. That is the one downside of moving away from Substack. I have decided to put much more effort into building up my Instagram account this year. I want to write more helpful content focused on writers, so I'm going to try that.
Other than that, I'm still trying to find ideas on how to publicize my newsletter. I'm not in a rush though, and I don't mind slow growth for now. I'm also going to concentrate on making the best quality posts that I can.
Me: Your Substack still holds all the user engagement (likes, comments) on your legacy posts that you weren’t able to import to Ghost. What are you planning to do with the Substack newsletter - keep it or kill it?
Megan: I'm going to keep the Substack. I wouldn't want to lose all the comments; I like reading back on them from time to time, and it would be a shame to not be able to do that. I have written a short post explaining the move, so hopefully, anyone who stumbles upon it will hop over to my new website and subscribe there.
Me: What are your goals for Side Quest and what can your readers (like me) look forward to, in 2024?
Megan: I have two main goals for Side Quest. One is to give myself the space to write creatively about things I love, and to do writing that kind of doesn't have a home anywhere else. This is really good for me! I'm a freelance writer and writing Side Quest is sharpening my skills all the time.
The second goal is to create a community of like-minded people. This year I plan to focus a bit more on the act of creating, whether that's writing or music or art; it's really hard to find the time and motivation to do this kind of stuff as a busy adult, and I certainly need other people to encourage me to keep going. So I do want to focus on that, too. How that looks on Ghost I'm not sure yet - but I'm determined to figure it out.
In 2024 my readers can expect lots more nerdy chat about video games, books, and music, all with the aim of trying to figure out some tricky stuff about humanity and the way we relate to each other. They can also expect more transparent posts about my own creative writing journey and how that's going. I'd like to experiment a bit this year, too. I'd love to try interviews at some point, and more collaborative posts.
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Thanks for reading.