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thanks for the feedback :)

@@thestackjunction just show the screen and talk, or talk and then screen both going back and forth confuse me and make me forget fast. Its not a complaint its a feedback. :)

You are welcome :) I am happy that this video helped you

Thanks for sharing your experience. I agree with you on both it being painful to learn and set up. That was and is the main reason I prefer the managed hosting route. Yes, there is a price difference, but over the long run I feel that my energy is better applied at creating rather than maintaining a site. It costs me money, but at least I have the energy to do what I want.

Thanks a lot for the lovely words Cliff :D

I'm not 100% sure as I did this video a while ago, but adding affiliate links I think are possible (almost all platforms allow it). About Mediavine, I don't think that's possible from what I can remember.

Thanks, but if I want to clap at the start of the videos I will keep doing it

Yes. Ghost is still better for blogging than beehiiv and that isn't likely to change soon

@@thestackjunctionwhat is it that they do better? I have a hard time understanding how it all works for blogging?

Think about Ghost as a mix of WordPress and Substack. Ghost is less complicated than WP because the essential stuff is taken care, but Ghost is still open enough that if you want to make changes you can write code to make the changes (if needed). Ghost also has some newsletter capabilities (like Substack). Yet, I think the newsletter capabilities of Ghost are only average.

Customization on Ghost is mostly done with code, and most times the easier solution is to use a new theme instead of coding

I agree that the cheaper plan could be better by not limiting themes available

Thank you 😁

I think that might be hard to implement on beehiiv. But seeing how their team works, I would not rule out the possibility 👀

You want to create landing page using Ghost to collect email addresses? Or do you want to use other service to collect emails and import users to Ghost?

@@thestackjunction I wanted to use Ghost to collect email addresses but I don't know my way around it. Please do you know of other platforms that I can use to collect users email addresses? Thanks

The way to collect emails on Ghost is bu using the membership feature, so you would ask people to sign up. As an alternative you can use any email service. For example I use MailerLite to collect emails (when people subscribe from other places other than my site). Here is the landing page I built on MailerLite: subscribepage.io/tiago-silva-tsj

Thank you :D

You can use the Free plan on beehiiv. People will still be able to subscribe to your newsletter :) After you reach 2,500 subscribers you have to upgrade to the paid plan, but at that point you should be making money to justify the costs

Thank you :D Reply to the emails I send you if you ever need help or have any idea/question :) -Tiago

Thanks for the kind words :) This video is a bit old, but essential what changed is that Substack is trying to become the "RUclips" of writers where it creates an ecosystem to make things easy for creators. But for someone with an existing blog, the better SEO decision is NOT using Substack. ConvertKit is still the superior newsletter tool between the 2 :)

Thanks for the nice words :) Yes, self-hosting is cheaper, but for the majority of users it adds a lot of complexity which is unpleasant

I don't think it's possible to implement table of contents for content people read on the email client (reading the newsletter in the inbox). But I think it should be possible if people read the content in the website (reading the newsletter in the website). However, I haven't tested this

@@thestackjunction Yes, I meant on the website only. I saw someone do that and realized that it is actually important when you're writing a long post.

I think you can do it by manually writing HTML in beehiiv. Yet, this is a boring process. Look on the page below about how to turn headings into "links", then you need to create a List at the top of the article to work as the table of contents www.sitepoint.com/community/t/how-to-make-h1-h2-etc-as-links/3004

@@thestackjunction Thanks, I'll try this.

Yes. It's my Gameboy color I got as a kid. And it still works :)

10% is a lot. But it can make sense in some cases, however I think it's not a good decision for most creators in the long run. The #1 example is a beginner that don't have money to spend: paying 10% at the start will mean a few dollars only if they generate money. It's a win-win for this creator.

Thanks for watching the video :) Agree with you. When I think about this, I always come back to the idea that I want to hear from other people's experiences, so it's worth to keep creating and sharing what you know

@@thestackjunction True. Another problem I see for creators is being omnichannel. Looks like you have to be in a few channels to get you expert views across to a bigger audience. Like you are doing blog, newsletter, video content. AI can be helpful in presenting your ideas in different formats. But it still has to be you, the expert, and your ideas in the core of that message - not AI compilation of balanced opinions )

100%! Also, being on several channels reduces the risk in case any things goes wrong (social media account banned, etc.)

I don't think you can have multiple blogs in Superblog at this moment

Thanks for the kinds words :)

What is your main type of content: articles or newsletters? If the answer is newsletter beehiiv is better for you. If you pick articles beehiiv may not be the best solution (depends on more factors)

Thanks a lot for the kind words :) Ghost is a hidden treasure and is great for many things

Thanks Cassy :)

blog is a website where you publish articles for people to read on the internet. A newsletter is an email you send to subscribers. You can send different types of content in the newsletter. A few examples: -send your complete articles by email -send only a sample of the articles -send different stories that don't fit the website -etc People will read the newsletter if it's valuable for them. You have to think if you have something interesting to say that is worth sending by email :)

@@thestackjunction okay thank you sir for replying 🙂 I understand this. But I read that some people have managed to sell their newsletter in millions. How does that work? Does companies buy whole blog website including newsletter or just newsletter? (Because they get emails of people)

@DesignerDev369 I imagine people sell both the website and newsletter at the same time in those scenarios

@@thestackjunction Cool. Thanks for helping 🙂

Obrigado Gabriel :D Se tiver dúvidas ou precisar ajuda é só mandar mensagem

Yeah, beehiiv is doing a great job, but it's very hard to be good at everything, and we can see that when it comes to website customization. However, they are making an effort and improved this recently :) Ps. Thanks watching the video :D

Thanks 😊 I put a lot of effort into the review videos (and I got help for this one). The other video (you rightly suggested improvements) is the podcast where things aren't as polished and videos come out more frequently

The way I see it: GDPR compliance (whatever that means) is more on 'how we use the tools', than 'what tools we use'. Why I say this: for example, if you use a platform like Ghost, you don't need a cookie banner (Source: ghost.org/help/cookie-notice/ ). But if put something on your site that uses 3rd-party cookies (example, Google Analytics), you will need to have a cookie banner on your website, whatever the technology is in use (Ghost, WordPress, etc). So, most of the tools for blogs/newsletters can be GDPR compliant or not. This is true for Ghost, beehiiv, WordPress, Substack, etc. I'm from Portugal and I have been dealing with the GDPR mess since it came out. And I lost so much time trying to understand it, and I'm not sure I understand it yet. But as an independent and small creator, my solution is using the least things possible with 3rd-party cookies. This means I don't use Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Google Adsense, and so on. Also, I'm using iubenda as a cookie banner for my site because I embed YT videos on articles, and that requires a cookie banner (at least, that's my understanding). I did not understand your last question ('referral program would not be so helpful for us'). Can you clarify what that means?

@@thestackjunction Thank you very much for your help and answer! My second question was about to have a newsletter in a "small" language lik swedish. I'm thinking that referral program will not be so helpful for that? Any other thoughs for newsletter in small languages?

I think it depends on the niche. For example if it's a newsletter about 'tech news', Sweden is still a big country and you can grow a newsletter to several thousands subs. So, referral can make a difference. But if your newsletter is about something like 'miniature painting meet ups in Stockholm', referrals won't have a big impact as the potential audience is small. Also, you can use 1Promoter, Sparkloop and other referral programs if you don't use beehiiv Overall, I think referral programs make sense to use for newsletters with hardcore fans or after it achieves a certain size (a few thousand subs)

@@thestackjunction Great, thank you very much!

Thanks for watching the video and giving these suggestions :D About the camera angle: yeah, I will improve that in the coming episodes. Re b-roll and the rest: these videos are in a podcast format so I want to make them work with audio only for now. Sometimes I am not looking at the camera as I am talking without a script and I want to be as relaxed as possible (until I get more comfortable with speaking without a script). Also, I struggle with the lack of time to create more videos, so making the videos as raw as you see now takes me about 3h instead of the 20+ for a 'polished' video. At the moment I want to publish more and it means not spending too much time polishing things... Again thanks the feedback, I will use it to improve :)

Thank you :)

@@thestackjunction I wonder... about the SEO thing... if you also promote the writings that are posted on Substack on your own Squarespace (and work with the SEO there via Squarespace)... will that helo bring visibility to the writings on substack? Also, I wonder... do you know where we can find the average amount an average person can make on substack (not the BIG NAME folx... but us regular folk who have a few hundred subscribers and who post regularly) feel free to send me to other links to research on my own, or if you know the answers already, I'd love to hear your opinion. Thanks! peace!

I am not familiar with Bobocat in a Box, what is it? Also, what do you mean with 'Video Beehiive'?

Thank you :D

I love what you guys are doing, even tho you make my videos outdated really fast :')

Yes. As a general rule, the free plan of most tools has a badge with their name at the bottom of the page. Think of this like you are promoting their tool as the payment for using the free plan. On beehiiv, if you upgrade to a paid plan, you can remove the badge :)

Thanks for the kind words, Robin :D

Thanks Salehin :D

Thank you for watching the video and the lovely comment, Christian :)

Thank you for the kind words :D If I may ask, do you prefer Ghost or Substack?

@@thestackjunction You're very welcome. Ghost is seeming like it's going to be the one for me. Now I'm debating Square space vs Ghost

To pick between Ghost and Squarespace, here's my general advice. Ghost is better if: - you want to focus on publishing articles or newsletters - content is your main 'business' (selling memberships or earning money via ads) Squarespace is better if: - you want a website to show of your services (more pages than articles) - have e-commerce capabilities (eg. digital downloads, etc.) Hope you pick the right tool that allows you to thrive :D

@@thestackjunction wow that's very helpful, thanks so much again!

Thank you, Joseph :) You can, but I don't think that's a good idea for most creators. And I don't have experience running ads to grow newsletters. However, the best advice I can think for you to get subscribers is to think about: - what content you will produce - where the people you want to read your newsletter hang out (so they get to know you) - how you will promote the newsletter (it can be content on social media, youtube videos, creating articles, etc) This should help you come up with a solution to find your first subscribers and to keep growing over time :)

@@thestackjunction thanks I appreciate the response

Hi Deni, yes you can. This year I started doing something similar as I'm using Ghost for the website and MailerLite for the newsletter. To sync subscribers you have 2 easy options: 1\ use HTML block to put the beehiiv form on your Ghost site. 2\ use Ghost native subscriber form + Zapier/Make to sync subscricers between Ghost and beehiiv.

@@thestackjunction perfect thank you I think I’ll go with the code snippet for the subscriber form on my ghost site and the newsletter section of the site, so I don’t pay members fee as the newsletter scales (right now I’m only paying 11$), and use beehiiv for the newsletter. Just wondering now how I can display latest newsletter issues on the ghost site but I figured an rss feed or just posting them manually would work! Thank you for the swift response, I love your channel.

Wise decision to avoid the double cost of subscribers :D as I'm on the lower levels of subscribers I didn't consider the potential cost in my previous answer. Thanks a lot for the kind words :)

Hi James :) After almost 2 years, I don't miss using WP. On the contrary, I'm very happy with Ghost. Short answer to your question: Yes, I think Ghost satisfies most of your desires. Ghost is fast, SEO is good, and charging for content is easy, but Ghost is not a good option for courses. Longer answer: WP tries to be everything to everyone and that introduces so much complexity. While Ghost 'limits' allows them to be focused and be great at what they do. For example, you don't have to worry about security and maintenance with Ghost Pro. This frees up so much time. To charge for content, you only need to sign up for Stripe and connect it with Ghost. No installing plugins and watching long tutorials to learn how to do it. The writing experience on Ghost is also one of the best. For themes, you can buy one, or if you don't like what exists, you can hire a dev to create one for you. I made a video a while ago with some themes I like: ruclips.net/video/niEDX-KBgD4/видео.html In summary, on Ghost, things just work, but you can't use Ghost for everything. For example, you can use it to sell an e-book with a small workaround. Just make your page exclusive for members and put the PDF as downloadable inside that page. However, if you want to create a course, I advise against even trying that on Ghost. Using Thinkific for the course and the site for the other content will be better.