I started my Hustling Housewife Substack on May 14, 2024. I wrote a post at the 6-month mark giving my honest thoughts about the platform.

And now it’s time for a one-year update. As you can see from the title, I’ve decided to leave the platform.

Let’s get into why…

First, let me give you the quick synopsis of my 6-month review of Substack, in case you don’t feel like reading the entire article that I linked above.

What I loved about it

• Notes, similar to Twitter/X allows you to communicate easily with others on the platform. It’s a great way to build a community.

• Notes is an easy way to grow, and they also have a long shelf life.

• You can highlight text from any post and create a Note from it, which makes things really simple.

• The recommendations feature is a fantastic way to grow.

• The writing platform is easy to use, and there are lots of options for formatting and making things look nice.

• You can set up Welcome emails for paid subscribers, free subscribers, and founding members.

What I didn’t love about it

• It’s too hard to navigate through the site. (There are tons of buttons that lead you everywhere but the place you want to go.)

• You don’t usually get a lot of engagement on your Notes.

• People complain that marketers have taken over Substack (because it’s supposed to be for “real” writers).

• It’s not easy to convince people to spend money on your Substack. (You have to give them a reason to pay, and that takes some strategizing.)

• And…when they do spend money? You’re kind of trapped.

I talked about what I meant by “trapped”, but I’ll cover it here a little later.

My updated thoughts after one year

People rave about Substack, and for good reason. There are many fantastic things about the platform, and some people do very well here.

In fact, I still like quite a few things about it. The problem is, my list of “dislikes” has grown way beyond my list of likes, and that’s why I’m abandoning ship.

Let’s get into it…

Here’s what I still like about Substack

• Notes are still a great way to communicate with people, gain new followers, and (potentially) subscribers, and grow your brand. I honestly don’t know if any of my Notes brought me subscribers (I doubt it), but I did have a couple of popular ones.

• I mentioned recommendations last time, and I still think this is a great tool. It’s given me a good percentage of my subscribers. (I have a total of 874 subscribers at the time of this writing.)

• I still mostly enjoy the writing editor itself, although I’ve run into some glitches lately, which has been a little frustrating. But nothing that’s a big deal.

• It’s super easy to set up more than one Substack, and it’s even easier to navigate between them.

• I love that a Substack is like a website that you can format (but it’s limited). You can also add links to your headers and sort your topics for easy viewing. And it’s simple to do, unlike trying to wrangle a WordPress site.

So those are the things I still enjoy about Substack. Now let’s get into the things I don’t enjoy about it.

Here’s what I don’t like about Substack

The people who love Substack will probably disagree with me on many of these, and that’s totally fine. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind about it. I’m just sharing my experience.

• Notes sounds like Money Twitter from back in the day. I complained about this in my 6-month review, and it’s only gotten worse since then. Many people start using the same kind of formatting and generic advice, and it gets old quickly.

• Most Notes won’t get engagement. I honestly shouldn’t put this in the “dislike” category because I think that’s just how it goes on any platform. I’m sure, like everything in life, Notes follows the 80/20 rule. 20% do well, and 80% don’t.

• If you have more than one Substack, your Notes aren’t separated. If you have a Substack about making money and one about baby goats, your Notes will just be under your name. There’s no way to market them separately.

• It’s still difficult to navigate. There are buttons everywhere, and it’s so hard to figure out where anything is. I thought I’d have it figured out by now, but nope!

• The marketing is rampant. And I love marketing! But there have been some big launches by a few creators, and, even though I like these creators, I had to unsubscribe or unfollow them because it was too much. (I get why they need to do this, and I don’t blame them one bit.)

• They added live video. That’s a fantastic tool for people, and I get why Substack added it, but I can’t stand seeing it all over my feed! It’s non-stop video. I tried to turn off the notifications and the auto-play, but I still get them.

• The DMs. This is another benefit for most people, but I’m not a huge fan. I enjoy chatting with some like-minded people in the DMs. But, as with Twitter/X, most of the time, the DMs are used for marketing. You also get the annoying “Hey. How are you?” DM requests from people. You just know they want to sell you something…

• Chats. This might be my least part of Substack. Let’s talk about it more in-depth.

Why I don’t like chats

Chats show up in your DMs, and it allows a group of people who subscribe to someone to chat with each other. Sounds great, and sometimes it is.

If you’re a paid subscriber to someone, and they start a chat, it can be a great benefit because they’ll ask questions about what topics they should focus on or how they can help you grow.

But…

If you’re not a paid subscriber, you likely won’t get access to the chats, or you won’t be able to respond. Either way, it’s annoying because you get a notification in your DMs, but you can’t do much with it.

It’s just noise.

Now you have an idea of why I’m not a fan of Substack, but let me tell you the #1 reason why I’m going to leave the platform.

The main reason why I’m leaving Substack

Look, I love writing, but I’m not one of these people who writes “for the love of it.”

I want to write, and I want to make money too. Do I need to make a ton of money? No. But I need to make enough to go to some killer concerts every year. 🤘🏻

How much money am I making with Substack? $ 0.

I had payments turned on at one point, but I ended up turning them off. In my 6-month report, I said that having paid subscriptions made me feel trapped.

If someone pays, they expect something extra special out of you. I didn’t have anything extra to give, and I didn’t want the pressure to continuously come up with something.

Some people have paid newsletters, and they are geniuses at coming up with new ways to make it worthwhile. is the person I’m mostly thinking of. If you want to see how to run things, you won’t want to miss her Unplugged Substack. That’s not a paid endorsement in any way. It’s just really good.

While my subscriber count is growing (slowly), it’s not doing anything for me. I’m spending time here spinning my wheels.

I’m not making any paid subscription sales through Substack, and no one seems to go for affiliate promotions there either. (In contrast, I made quite a few affiliate sales when I ran my newsletter through (Convert)Kit.)

Every time I log into Substack, all I feel is dread.

That’s a sign that it’s time to skidaddle.

And since I’m doing pretty well on Medium, I’m going to simplify everything and focus most of my time there.

Is that a risk?

You bet.

But isn’t everything?

Final Thoughts

If you skip all the way down to this section, I don’t blame you. To put this long-ass article in one simple sentence…I don’t vibe with Substack. I never have, and I likely never will.

But, because I change my mind a lot, I might end up back here someday anyway. (I’m not going to delete anything. I’ll just leave it in limbo.)

Any type of posts I wrote here will now go in my Hustling Housewife publication on Medium. I’ll still check in to read some of my favorite writers. I just won’t be writing here going forward. (Except for Notes once in a while.)

See you around… 👋

Hustling Housewife