As I wrote earlier, “folks who don’t use (social media) platforms anymore might not be able to see your hours of business, your location, or your contact info.”

This from merritt k., in the aptly titled, “Have a Fucking Website.”

“If you’re a hair salon, or a tattoo artist, or a restaurant, or whatever, please just have a fucking website where I can go and see your rates and hours. Not all of your potential clients are on these platforms, and I suspect that even many of the ones who are appreciate a simple, unadorned site that tells them what they need to know at a glance.”

I made this stripped down LinkTree clone for free, and it’s hosted for free.

Photographer Noah Kalina made a much prettier “Linktree clone” using Claude Code, and it’s hosted on Dreamhost, which (after their current special) renews at $10.99/month for the cheapest hosting plan (as of 3/18/2026).

A QR code points where you tell it to point.

You can have up to 10,000 email subscribers on Kit for free.

This isn’t hard, it’s just not as easy as social media.

But look what social media gets you:

• You can’t reach all your followers
• You can lose access for almost any reason
• They’re run by horrible people

If people are actively searching for you, or they’re in front of your store and scanning a QR code, don’t send them to platforms where you can’t reach them.

Yancey Strickler posted on Twitter. His idea went semi-viral, and then the trolls chimed in.

“Scale doesn’t just amplify the signal you want. It hands a megaphone to everyone else too. My presence on public channels gave strangers the license to try to wreck my work and ego for sport.”

The idea of “getting word out” sounds so pure and good, but sometimes enduring the negative effects make it not worth the trouble.

I don’t walk into marketing meetings and tell people social media is stupid.
I don’t want to “win a debate.”
My ideals don’t require a dissertation defense.

This is why I rarely post on Substack Notes anymore, as suddenly I’m required to defend any statement and make accommodations for any angle I didn’t address in my original post.

I’d rather write a newsletter to people who subscribed to it.
I’d rather write a blog for people who bother to visit.
I’d rather present ideas with my member community.

These are my safe spaces. Life is hard enough, I’d rather not turn Social Media Escape Club into a hard-mode fighting game. I’m allowed to seek comfort and quiet, and so are you.

As Yancey says:

“What I’m left with: a desire to unscale. To be in spaces where ideas can be heard and developed without the rage brigades trying to inflict pain just to feel something. We’ve been taught to see scale as the whole point of being online — a delusional VC logic we’ve accepted as the cost of participation. We shouldn’t. Our attention and energy are too scarce for it.”

I save time and energy by not being on the social media platforms, by not having comments on this blog. I might lose in the “reaching new people” game, but I’d rather keep my sanity as a daily win.

Emma Gannon, an absolute super star on Substack recently posted, “we all know 1k Substack subscribers is worth 100k in IG followers.”

Emma is right.

You can follow 2,000 people on Instagram, but it’s near impossible to subscribe to 2,000 newsletters – your inbox would explode! The people who subscribe trust you with their email address, and that’s a big deal in 2026.

But don’t get it twisted – they’re not your Substack subscribers, they’re your email subscribers.

Platforms come and go, but your email list lasts (almost) forever.

This from Aral Balkan on Mastodon (via Pixel Envy):

When you post things on Instagram, Facebook, and X, this is what they look like to people who don’t use those platforms.

Take note restaurants and coffee shops and tattoo shops, etc. Folks who don’t use those platforms anymore might not be able to see your hours of business, your location, or your contact info.

A domain name from Hover (affiliate link) + a one page website can cost less than $200 a year, and it’s viewable by anyone with a smart phone.

I’m not on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, or LinkedIn.

How will I ever meet new people?

Yet a few weeks ago I spoke with an interesting designer on Zoom because their LinkedIn request ended up in my email inbox.

Instead of reactivating my LinkedIn account, I did some detective work, found their email address, and we planned a call.

How will you ever meet new people or find new things?

Stop scrolling and pick up a magazine, a book, watch a YouTube video, subscribe to a newsletters, a blog, a zine, a radio station.

Behind every cool thing is a cool person.

And you can send them an email.

I spoke with Cody Cook-Parrott ahead of the release of their new book, The Practice of Attention. We also talked about the messy and imperfect journey we’re all trying to figure out, too. Buckle up.

Cody deleted Instagram, and they also left Substack for Buttondown, returned briefly, then left again and lost their paid subscribers in the process.

“I felt a little flippant, almost. Like, oh, I can just build it back. And it’s like, it took me four years to build that many paid subscribers. It wasn’t like it just happened one day. And so I’ve been really thinking about how precious it is to have — I would like to think I would never delete my email list as a whole. I see people making quick decisions without really realizing how it might affect their self-employment landscape.”

We talked about social media, of course, but arrived in a new place.

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Don’t rely on one platform for all your growth.

“it’s up to us to grow our own publications, and that’s true whether we’re using Substack, Ghost, Beehiiv, Buttondown or anything else.” Simon K Jones

Once we start blaming an algorithm or a platform for our “lack of new subscribers,” we’re in trouble.

Get on podcasts, attend IRL events, get on other people’s newsletters – putting all your growth into Substack’s hands is risky business.

TOMORROW!
◾ MINI ESCAPE POD Q&A #32
Got two spots open – come ask me about websites, sales pages, building an email list!
Friday, March 13 from 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM EST: (Members only, start your first month here)

NEXT WEEK!
◾ CO-WORK ESCAPE POD
Work on taxes, your website, your scales, your paintings, your opera, your ballet.
Tuesday, March 17 from 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST: https://luma.com/74xh39db

◾ SUBSTACK LIVE WITH MAX PETE

“The tech dream is a nightmare… more people I talk to that are in this industry want to leave and do something else—like work at the coffee shop, work at Trader Joe’s—but don’t know how to do that or feel like they can’t.”

That’s from my talk with Max Pete last year – tune in next week!
Wednesday, March 18 from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST (just be on Substack)

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