I recently switched my writing from my own domain (running wordpress) to Substack. You can now find me at:

Here's why I did it, and some notes on how I did the migration too.

First, the blogosphere is dead, and so is SEO :( When I first started writing a decade ago, there was a "blogosphere" where writers would link to each other, excerpt each others' work. You had features like "track backs" and recommendations via Google Reader and other RSS tools that helped you discover all the interconnections. I found that when I wrote something good, other bloggers would often link, and I would do the same.

Spammy SEO sites were not common back then, and as a result, when you searched for terms that I wrote about, my blog would often come up on top. Years later, none of this works anymore. Bloggers rarely link or talk to each other -- this happens on social media platforms. Content marketing farms will fast follow your high-performing content and make variations, and by optimizing for SEO, will outrank your content. Over time the traffic and conversions go down.

These were also the days before crazy blog spam. A few years into writing, I started noticing that I was getting weird blog comments from bots. It would say some gibberish and then link to a site. Eventually, I turned off comments. I also would see bots signing up for email subscriptions, and they would auto-reply with gibberish. I'm sure this is part of a process of building "synthetic identities" for fraud purposes. So then I turned on CAPTCHAs on subscription. I also saw SEO bots copy/paste my content onto their sites, with some small edits here and there. It's annoying to deal with all of this as part of my open source Wordpress install.

I'm excited to join a network of writers within Substack. I've started to see people recommending my content and I've reciprocated with many. I'm starting to see strong growth in new subs already. The emails look real, and so do the comments. It's great to have a strong team and great company taking care of all of these issues that have plagued blogging for years. I know folks who are seeing recommendations drive >70% of their new subscribers. It's incredible.

Substack is an example of an early platform that's growing and lifting their entire community with it. (Note that I'm an investor of many years, having led their Series A back in 2019, so talking my book, but the data is all public and very positive)

In terms of moving my writing to Substack, I did the lowest possible list thing. On my current domain, I copy/pasted a Substack email collection form so that when new folks put in their info, it automatically goes to the right place. I did that in all the main spots. I left my posts on my old blog for now, relabeled everything as "Andrew Chen Archives" and added some notices that my blog had moved. So far so good.

I'm excited to start this new phase of my writing journey, and also plan to explore video, audio, and other media as well. Should be fun.