Category: WebsitesCategory: Websites

Put something new on your website, and link it in your next newsletter. Your newsletter isn’t your permanent address, it’s a delivery truck. Build an archive of work on your website and link to your stuff from your newsletter!

Kate Ellen and I (mostly Kate!) wrote ‘Ghosting Spotify: A How-To Guide‘ which got people talking.

We laid out why she pulled her music from Spotify: the streams weren’t translating into real support, and the platform made it almost impossible to build direct relationships with listeners.

We talked about how Spotify keeps people inside its walls, as listeners don’t click through to emails, don’t buy vinyl, don’t follow links. The listening numbers might look cool on paper, but they rarely lead to anything that pays the bills or creates momentum. Leaving forced Katie to focus on places where people actually show up, like Bandcamp, her website, and her email list.

Once she made that shift, she started seeing repeat buyers and more meaningful conversations. We dug into how owning the audience gives you room to experiment — releasing small projects, selling limited runs, offering commissions — instead of hoping a playlist bump solves everything.

The takeaway wasn’t “streaming is evil,” but that depending on Spotify (or social media!) as the center of your work keeps you stuck waiting for something that rarely materializes.

From ‘Where does blogging fit in your newsletter strategy?’

First, publish freely on your own site. When stuck, employ constraints. Follow-up anywhere else you want. This keeps you healthy, curious, and prolific.

Remember, anything can be a blog post. Not everything can be YouTube video, a podcast, or pithy quote for social media.

The full post is gold, really.

I’ve been saying for awhile now, your subscribers eat first (a play on the old “Instagram eats first” saying). They deserve your gold, your finest work, your biggest news.

But really – “publish freeling on your own site.”

Do this for years and see what happens.

(via Rhoneisms)

This is a hill I will die on – if you’re going to tell your newsletter subscribers or social media followers about your new video, put the video on your own website, and then link to your own website.

Leading people to YouTube just keeps people on YouTube’s platform. Their site is built and optimized to keep people on YouTube, and to make it as difficult as possible for your fans to stay in your universe, whether to pre-order your new album, or sign up for your new course offering.

Sure, keep posting your videos to YouTube. But don’t send your already established fans to places where you can’t reach them. Why build up your audience on YouTube if you can’t even reach 5% of them when you post a new video?

Your audience is your email list – something you control, something you can export, something that the algorithms can’t mess with.

At Social Media Escape Club, we believe in escaping the idea that “the new way of doing things is the only way of doing things.”

It’s a lie. We’ve all heard that lie in various forms:

• Nobody visits websites anymore, so just be on all the social media platforms.
• Email marketing is too crowded, so keep paying for social ads.
• No one buys music these days, so just point everyone to Spotify.

None of us picked up paint brushes, cameras, and electric guitars to fall in line with what everyone else was doing.

We took a risk, didn’t we?

This is why so many of you have been building websites recently, to take ownership of your work, your brand, your message.

This is why so many of you have built your own Twitter-like feeds on your websites, to own the small bits of magic and wonder, to have an archive of the tiny things you post about week after week.

I took a risk this week, cancelling my Google Workspace account which hosted my freelance work email.

I cancelled my Google cloud storage plan, and downgraded my Apple iCloud storage by getting the photos off my iPhone to an external hard drive I already owned, all backed up via Backblaze.

These are small risks, and not really big public marketing wins. But they’re a signal to how I want to run my business, which is giving as little money as possible to corporations for services I already own or already use.

We’re all sending signals, remember? Even to ourselves.

I’ve seen some of you refusing to put your music on Spotify, or play bars. Some of you stopped making videos for vertical video feeds, or deleted entire social media accounts, entirely. Some of you have resisted the urge to sign up for other newer social media platforms.

Those are signals to ourselves, and the people in our creative orbit.

There are risks in all this, yes, but social media has done a great job telling us to take less risks.

Social media says, “just keep posting to further your career!” That’s like saying buy another scratch-off lottery ticket. After all, you see other people win, so maybe the next winner could be you!

That’s safe. Low risk. Everyone is doing it.

What about emailing someone directly? Like Katie O’Connell, who wrote an email to the folks at People & Company back in 2019:

“It’s an email that wrote me into the job at People & Company and the one to follow at Substack — jobs that didn’t exist and the email conjured into being.”

Sending an email can be scary, but there’s a 50/50 chance you get a reply. I like those odds more than playing the social media slot machines for five hours per day.

And think of the ways you could take more calculated risks with an extra five hours per day.

What about turning your portfolio into a zine “mailing it to a bunch of agencies and creative studios?”

Learning how to write better newsletters? Write a better bio, or freshen up your About page?

Pitching yourself to be interviewed on podcasts and YouTube channels? Getting “awareness” off your plate?

Busking downtown?

Making a poetry zine and leaving them random places?

Making stickers from your photos?!

Making a limited run of your podcast on cassette?!! What?!

I think it’s time we start our Risky Resumé in 2025.

Hire yourself to make bold, audacious products. Interview yourself on taking up more space in your creative endeavors. Give yourself that raise by offering the sort of workshops and courses and offerings that the world needs right now.

What does our Risky Resume’ look like by the end of the year?

How many risks did we take?

How often did we just “go with the flow?”

Did we just keep posting? Did we keep upgrading our iCloud accounts because we just have sooo many photos? Did we keep opening new social media accounts, thinking this next one will be THE ONE?! Did we neglect our website again?

Or did we boldly launch ourselves into things that maybe didn’t “work out?”

Because honestly it’s not even that they don’t “work out!” We just learn new angles, fresh perspectives on how to work and exist in this crazy world we live in.

Maybe we all just step back and look at what everyone else is doing and ask ourselves if there’s another way to do our work.

How are you going with the flow?

What’s one risky thing you can do today?

What’s the big thing you want on your risky resumé at the end of the year?