An Ambitious Start
I woke up on December 28, 2025, and decided to launch my Substack on January 1, 2026. What better way to start the new year off than to put myself in a time crunch, right?
Good thing I had everything mapped out and my first story written. I just needed to work on my welcome post and about page, and I got them done in time to say I officially launched on the 1st. 🎉
Going forward, I planned to post once a week. I posted my first story on January 7th and two more stories in the following two weeks.
And then I hit a wall.
My Biggest Mistake?
I came in blasting. 🚀
I had everything planned out, including my Substack subscription tiers. It's not the worst thing I could've done, but here’s the thing…
The subscription benefits couldn’t live up to the hype because I had ZERO subscribers 🤌🏾. Okay, I had three friends subscribed, but you know what I mean.
There was no community to execute the community-driven benefits I was offering. And as for the posting schedule…
I knew I had to get used to writing consistently, but once a week still proved to be too ambitious.
So, what could I have done differently?
Just write, lol. Get in the habit of writing consistently, build up an audience, and then monetize. Did I know that logically?
Yes. But I had gone full throttle into my marketing training. And you know what they say…
It’s hard to be objective when you’re doing your own marketing. I was having so much fun planning, organizing, and strategizing that I couldn’t see myself. 🙂↔️
But that wasn’t what made me leave.
The Trigger
Okay, so first off, my newsletters weren’t really showing up in Substack’s main feed.
On top of that, Substack was heavily focusing on the Notes feature, and I really didn’t want to play the notes game.
But to be honest, I thought I was, lol. I posted a note for each newsletter, but even they weren’t getting any views.
The trick was to just post notes that weren’t linked to a newsletter at all, and I, stubbornly, refused to do so, lol. I wasn’t there for that.
But it doesn’t matter because on February 24th, I woke up to a redesigned Substack Profile, and I was pissed. 🙄
That was it, that was the trigger. I was out of there. Not only was the platform dominated by notes…
But now my profile was designed for a “notes-first” experience. Where the hell is my newsletter?
Anyway, I personally think this was destiny having its way because it led me back to what I really wanted. ✨
Enter WordPress
I wanted a blog for so long. An ad-free blog, I should say.
And yes, I’ve also thought about having a newsletter. I used to research “blog vs newsletter” all the time, lol.
But now I have a better grip on when to go for a paid newsletter vs a blog. Paid newsletters are great when you’re giving people something worth paying for...
Which is why I went full throttle on my subscription benefits. I knew I needed to offer people something other than my personal stories...
Especially because I had no authority and no existing audience. But here’s the thing…
Fulfilling subscription benefits isn’t what I really wanted. What I really wanted was no posting schedule, no obligations, and full autonomy.
So, after logging into my old WordPress account, finding empty blogs and old poetry, lol...
And going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to post my stories on Medium, it was settled.
WordPress would be my new home. But I still had to decide if I wanted to use WordPress.com or WordPress.org.
Would I go with the monthly price tag on WordPress.com for an “easy” setup…
Or would I go with no monthly fee on WordPress.org for a DIY setup?
After doing some research, I learned that a WordPress.org setup would be more affordable for me. Plus, I thought I was tech-savvy enough to figure things out.
Spoiler: I was.
Stay tuned for my next post on everything I did to set up and design my blog on WordPress.org.
– Chadras ❤️