Giving Ghost a Test Drive: Here's Why I'm Interested in It

As I said in my previous post, I had found that Substack and Patreon were both wastes of my time. I'd realized this just 30 days into my #ContentStorm experiment.

Then, I saw this tweet:

I Knew @Jack was right

I've followed him as a thought leader long enough to know Jack's always a dozen steps ahead of us mere mortals. I remembered him giving an interview years ago talking about something I'd never heard of before called "blockchain" and how it was the future.

Now, here I am, a Bitcoin maximalist running my own lightning ⚡️ node. That damn Jack sees the future, y'all.

I'll Be Honest: I've Made Bupkiss from Substack, Patreon, Medium, etc.

I could maybe use my earnings to buy a pair of Nikes. With a coupon. So why try this?

Because I'm at the intersection of experimentation and discoverability as a writer now that I've completed my first #Ship30for30 cohort and shipped for 74 days straight now. I left a long (20+ years) broadcasting career in 2021 to start social media marketing as a content writer.

I'm pivoting from legacy media to...something that actually works.

I've been obsessively teaching myself content marketing for the past 5 years and managed to turn this side hustle into a main.

Here's What I've Learned

Patreon and Substack won't get you anywhere before you've built a large following somewhere. You don't get many views and it's hard to convert them to paying subscribers.

Ship30 taught me what should have been obvious to me—no one is reading blogs. There's nothing worse than creating a blog, putting effort into it, and then putting out online to...crickets.

A social blog, like Typeshare, helps you gain feedback, analytics, and traction faster.

Open Source: IFYKYK

When I mentioned writing marketing content above, I meant I write about open source SaaS. I feel I've learned just enough to appreciate open source: its community of devs, the decentralization Jack mentions above and the innovation.

Yes, lightning is favorable to Stripe.

But I think we'll get there.  No—I know we'll get there.

Why not be on the leading edge of that?