Moving is hard. For sure. Especially, when you have spent so much time on perfecting your brand—or maybe it wasn’t even your brand. Maybe it was theirs?
When I began writing professionally under Cyan LeBlanc, I created a website called “Posies & Peacocks” which was supposedly my brand, self-press, and it linked to the girl/Mistress storyline. I utilized WordPress as I am again, Bookfunnel (still), and Mailerlite for my emails.
Then I found that Substack could do all of this for me. Everything all wrapped up in a pretty package. Yet, it wasn’t pretty. They had no formatting. Layouts were basic and minimal. You had to work within their brand and concept, making you conform to their ways. Yes, they allowed people to focus on writing. The word was what was important.
Yet, despite all its limitations, I was all in. I moved everything over, created a website the best I could and embraced the paywall concept. Serialized fiction has a place. It takes dedication and consistency. Both something I lack, sadly. I am working on it.
Substack still wasn’t me. I purchased a domain—my domain, and tried to get it hooked up. I am fairly good with websites, but I just couldn’t link it. Then I thought, okay, I’ll move over to Patreon because people are very familiar with this and trust Patreons. After loading all my paid content and getting reviewed, their computers decided that my content was NSFP (Not Safe For Patreon).
Funny part, it was the content from FAN BOY (my memoir) that got flagged. They wanted me to edit it. How can I edit my life?
Shortly after, I learned that Substack allows hate groups a home. I agree with freedom of speech but when Thorns of Yesterday got flagged inappropriate content (not because the children on the island are robots), I had to draw a line in the sand.
That domain I bought – CYANLEBLANC.COM – now would be put to good use. Here.
I took the leap to build a platform for my blog and paid content. I wanted the newsletter too, but that proved to be a little complicated. And since I’d still need to pay, I moved that to EmailOctopus—for now. With that, I cleaned house. Not wanting to bring over 2000+ contacts that don’t really open my posts and emails, I gave everyone the option to move with me.
If you are here, thank you!
There are a lot of good things about Substack, including the fact that its 100% free. Free blog. Free newsletters. I’d rather be in control of my speech, and therefore I said “Farewell, Substack.”