My Love-Hate Relationship with Substack

How the platform that launched my career almost killed my love for writing—and what I did about it.

Ravi Patel

Mar 10, 2025

6 min read

The Seduction

When I joined Substack in 2023, it felt like finding an oasis in the social media desert. Finally—a place where writers were the priority! My first newsletter hit 500 subscribers in a week. By month three, I'd been featured in "Substack Reads." The validation was intoxicating.

Then the anxiety set in.

WordPress wants you to wrestle with plugins. Medium demands you surrender your branding. Social media turns your prose into disposable confetti. And the idea of learning to code? You’d rather edit a 10,000-word draft in a single sitting.
Enter Scribbble.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Platform Dependence

Scribbble isn’t just another blogging tool. It’s a no-code sanctuary built specifically for writers who want:

Ownership: Your domain, your design, your rules.
Simplicity: Publish in minutes, not days.
Elegance: Templates that make your words look as good as they deserve.

The Algorithm Giveth, and Taketh Away
That "Featured" badge disappeared as quickly as it came, taking my engagement with it.

Performance Anxiety in Paragraph Form
Watching open rates fluctuate made me obsess over clickbait headlines instead of truth.
The Comparison Trap
Colleagues' subscriber counts glared at me like report card grades.
The Monetization Mindfuck
Turning my deepest thoughts into "value propositions" made me hate my own words.
The A/B Testing Vortex
Should I send at 9 AM or 7 PM? Tuesday or Thursday? GIF or no GIF?
The Platform Prison
My audience wasn't really mine—they were Substack's.
The Creative Burnout
I stopped writing what mattered and started writing what performed.

The Breakup (And Why It Hurt)

I launched Scribbble after spending $427 and 14 frustrated hours trying to make a WordPress site look less like a corporate brochure. As a writer, I wanted:

Leaving felt like professional suicide. But moving to Scribbble gave me back:

Ownership (My domain, my design, my rules)
Peace (No more stats dashboard haunting my dreams)
Real Connection (The readers who followed me here actually read)

The Complicated Truth

I don't regret my Substack era—it taught me to write regularly and find my voice. But I regret believing any platform could be neutral ground.

My compromise? I now:

Keep a minimal Substack presence (cross-posting select pieces)
Grow my real home here on Scribbble
Use Substack's discovery tools without drinking the Kool-Aid

A Challenge For You

Track your next week of writing:

How many decisions are creative vs. algorithmic?
Where do you feel most yourself as a writer?
What's one step toward platform independence you can take today?

P.S. My final Substack post was titled "Why I'm Leaving Substack." It got my highest open rate ever. The irony wasn't lost on me.