Or, How I Learned to Dance With the One Who Brought me …
You guys may be noticing that this week’s newsletter (and also my home page) look different.
That’s because I switched content management systems and hosting platforms. This time from Ghost back to WordPress.
Longtime readers (the few! the proud!) may remember that I launched this website on WordPress more than a decade ago. I let it languish for a long time and only really got back into regular updates during the pandemic.
And when we moved to Germany, I launched a completely separate blog about that, currently hosted on Substack. It’s still there and going strong.
Read: Why I Went Back to Substack. by Cathi Harris. Medium. November 22, 2024.
But the truth is, I have a lot of misgivings about Substack as a platform and as a social media entity (or whatever it is trying to be …). And I have always wanted to keep an independent site, where I had more control over what I published and how it was shared online.
The hill that I will die on
On Substack, and the other popular publishing platforms (Ghost, Beehiiv, etc.), they only offer a subscription-only monetization model–no ads. And – this is the big one for me – no option for single-article purchases.
I don’t think this is sustainable for most writers and most publications.
I used to work in newspaper journalism.
Advertising provided the funding that kept the lights on and our salaries paid. Subscriptions were a supplement (and mostly a way to justify our ad rates!). I think advertising and sponsorships, if disclosed and ethically managed, can still be a part of supporting public journalism and serialized writing.
And, readers could always pick up a single issue of the paper at a local store, if they wanted to. It wasn’t ‘Sign up for a year or don’t read us at all!‘
Like a lot of people, I can’t afford a paid subscription to every writer, magazine, or newspaper that I want to read.
(And I subscribe to a lot!)
Sometimes I really just want to read that one article. And I don’t want the commitment of a subscription and a renewing payment each month or the hassle of trying to remember to cancel before I am charged.
I’ve never really understood why I can make micro-payments in online gaming platforms (don’t judge!) but publishing platforms couldn’t – or wouldn’t – offer this option, too.
Then I learned that Patreon was moving into the newsletter publishing/podcasting space and allowing their creators to offer the option of getting their premium content with a regular subscription or for a single-article payment.
They managed to lure away some of the bigger writers from Substack, like Anne-Helen Petersen and Virginia Sole-Smith, by offering this option. (Well, that and actual human customer service!)
Read: Leave No Carbs Behind. Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith. October 7, 2025.
I briefly explored moving over, as well. But their publishing and design tools still leave a lot to be desired, in my opinion. Plus, until very recently, there was no way to promote your work within the platform itself. Unlike Substack Notes, which has driven a lot of regular readers to my publication.
As a writer with a much smaller following, it doesn’t make sense to mess with what works there.
The straw that pushed this blog off of Ghost
In terms of my personal site, though, I was also frustrated that Ghost forced publishers to only allow comments on posts from logged-in subscribers.
I understand the reasoning, but I was getting zero engagement, despite pretty decent open and click-through rates on my individual posts. I looked into third-party commenting systems and the possibility of moving (again!) off of Ghost Pro hosting to a self-hosted installation of Ghost. (This would allow me to upload a custom theme that would allow me to install third-party commenting software, that would allow me to open the comments!)
But I digress …
This led me to thinking about my old flame — original recipe WordPress. WordPress has always allowed open commenting, with great moderation tools. Also, WordPress was allowing readers to subscribe by email for years before Substack even existed!
The deal was kind of sealed when I poked around, blew the dust off my old blog themes, logged back into Jetpack and discovered …
One. Time. Payments.
There it was. One platform to rule them all! And it was my old lovely platform that had been there all along.
Now, of course, nothing is perfect.
The interface can be kind of clunky and comes with a steeper learning curve than Substack. I am still working out the kinks of my plans for a limited paywall.
The advantage of WordPress is that they offer the publishers almost endless options for customization. You have a lot of individual control. The downside is that it is not as simple to get started as it is for a Substack writer.
And, setting up the payment options is also more complicated. So, this is very much still a work in progress.
What I’m trying
I am going to start offering paid subscriptions to this site. But my plan is to keep virtually all of my regular posts publicly available to everyone. Likewise, subscribing by email will always be open to anyone.
I am also going to start importing – to this site – my best articles from my other pubs – those from Alte Frau – New Life that are behind the paywall1, and from my Medium publications, which usually require a Medium membership to read.
And, just like you can stop by a physical newsstand to buy a single issue of the newspaper or a print magazine, this will be my ‘virtual newsstand.’ You can buy just one issue of certain articles that I write that are behind the normal paywalls on Medium or Substack.
Ads + sponsorships (not yet)
In the future, I would really like to develop partnerships with reputable companies that may want to sponsor my content. That is one way that would help defray the cost of publishing. And, advertising itself is not the devil.
If they are properly disclosed and managed, ads and sponsorships can be good way for independent publishers to built a sustainable business.
I really like how email newsletters have taken off, allowing so many individual voices to be able to find support and even a decent living from their writing. Many are people that no one would otherwise hear from – but they have important information to share.
Right now, I don’t have enough subscribers for corporate sponsors to be interested. And I want to keep my writing freely available. But a lot of what I publish takes a significant amount of time to research and write.
And I also want to travel more and expand the types of articles that I publish. But all of that takes money.
I am hoping to find different revenue streams to support my work, instead of just relying on payments from readers.
Obviously, I hope that you will check out my work over at Alte Frau – New Life, and my other articles here, and decide to subscribe.
All subscriptions – free or paid – help support my work.
If you are a member or regular reader of Medium, please follow me on there, too.
1 Most content on AF-NL is free. Articles older than two months are automatically paywalled.
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