Kit vs Substack: Which One is Best For My Podcast?

Dave, you always talk about how important newsletters are.

I see where I can get a substack for free. So should I use

substack for my newsletter?

So, substack and newsletters

and when to use what? Because my grandpa

told me, any job is easy if you got the right tools,

but painting with peanut butter is not what I

recommend. So substack. This is what I

see a lot of people having success with substack

are doing. That is if you are,

let's say. I know at the beginning it was a lot of reporters

who either a, didn't like

the fact that they had to report the news a certain way with

a certain lean, and they would get fired. And they're like, fine, I'm going to

go report the news over here. And then in theory, if

you have enough followers and people that want your content,

they will actually pay for it. And you get to set that price. And then,

of course, substack takes a percentage. And so it's for

people who are, you know, kind of pontificating.

Here are my thoughts. And there's nothing wrong with that.

And another thing you want to keep in mind is about 3%

of your audience, if you're really good, will sign up for

your newsletter. You have to have some sort of what we call a lead magnet

often to get them to sign up. And even then

again, you're looking at about 3 to 5%

versus something like kit or

Mailer. Light Beehive is another one similar

to substack, where it's

primarily you're writing news. You're not so much

marketing to people, although you can.

So I'll give you an example. I have a substack and

I was just playing with it, and so I went over and said,

oh, my premium price will be whatever. And I woke up and had two

people. And I was like, oh, crap, now I gotta write premium stuff.

And so that doesn't mean, you know, that's gonna happen to

you. It might. I hope so. But my problem

is I want my newsletter to market my

school of Podcasting. And so I also had to

look at what can I do and sustain.

And so my newsletter is usually about three paragraphs about

whatever is on my mind in the world of Podcasting. And

then it's a here is what I've been up to. So

links to all the episodes and blog posts and videos that I've been doing.

And then it's here's what caught my eye, which is things I

saw on YouTube, whatever. It's literally exactly that. Things that

caught my eye. And then at the end it's like,

here's what's coming in the future, please tell a friend. Oh, by the way, if

you need help with your podcast, here's a link to the school of Podcasting.

And so I'm kind of using it in a hybrid way.

I'm not doing a ton of marketing. Like, for example, if I want

to give away a free PDF, Substack is not the place to do that.

That's more of a ConvertKit Mailer, like, kind of thing.

If I wanted to sell advertising in my

newsletter, that again, would not be a Substack thing, although you could do

it via third party. But that, again, is more of a

ConvertKit, definitely more of a Beehive kind of thing.

And so a Substack is a great place where

you want to communicate with your audience. Now, the other

thing is they're going to say, but, Dave, you could use them for your podcast.

And that is true. You could also use Riverside.

I'm trying to think who else has bolded on

Kajabi. You could use them. I am not a

fan of putting my podcast

on something that was not designated from day

one to be a podcast host. I work for

a company called PodPage, and there are many people that have

requested that we become an email service like

Mailchimp or ConvertKit or MailerLite. And we're like, that's not really our

jam. And there's a lot more to it. And

I like the people at Riverside, but when I

saw their podcast hosting solution, it was

definitely a minimalist, viable product in terms

of stats and other features, like, if you just need something to hit

play. Yeah. So consequently, I wouldn't use

Substack unless it was for, you know, Ms.

Marion's sixth grade class and it was just a thing they were going to do

for six weeks. Okay, maybe. But they don't need

the reliability. They don't need. You know what I mean? So

you want somebody who is majoring in podcasting as your media

host, not someone who was like, oh, we're a newsletter.

Oh, yeah. And we also do this podcast thing. So. And if you

are not sure, always ask them, can I get, and this

sounds very nerdy. Can I get a 301 redirect of my

feed. And I remember when Kajabi first came out. Now they have

since fixed this, but when they first came out and Kajabi is,

in my opinion, an overpriced course email,

all in one kind of service.

But they said, hey, we do podcasting now. And I'm like, great, do you do

a 301 redirect if I want to leave? And they actually

kind of went, huh? And I went, oh, yeah, no, no, no,

no, no. Now they have since fixed that and I still think they're

slightly overpriced. I'm a big fan of Heartbeat,

but at any rate, if you're not going to be doing any

marketing, I would use Substack. It is free.

Now, keep in mind, there are tools like Kit

and Mailerlite. Mailerlite is probably the more affordable one, but both

those have free plans up to about a thousand

subscribers. And a thousand subscribers is a lot

of subscribers. And what this enables you to do is

you can make a sequence. Now, a sequence is

a series of emails. Like, if you sign up,

I'll put a link to my, my

convert. I still call them ConvertKit, their real name is Kit, but I call them

Convertkit because they were convertkit for years. But if you want

to sign up, I'll put a link there and then you get a

welcome sequence which explains who I am, what I do.

It talks about the school of podcasting and it starts to market

to you because you've said, hey, I'd like to know more about you.

And then often let's do this. I will put a

link to. I have a lead magnets. That is the

podcasting best practices. I have a

podcasting, a podcast launch checklist. I'll put links to

those in the show notes. Then you can go over, sign up,

get your PDF and once you get your PDF behind the scenes, I'm going to

add you to my welcome sequence. And then if I ever decide

to run a campaign now, a campaign is simply a fancy

word for I'm going to try to get you to buy something. And so

I will explain how I'm going to save you time and money and how,

you know, you're just, this is the best thing since sliced bread.

That's a campaign. You really aren't supposed to do that. In Substack,

their rules are a little gray, but they kind of

hint that, like, this is more for writers than

marketers. And keep in mind you can do things like

that in Kit and in Mailerlite. And again,

there are many, many, many other

Things that you can choose from that are all email list tools and they

will let you do more marketing as well as send out just

an information email. When I looked up Kit

on the Internet you can send up to 10,000

subscribers for free where

MailerLite is 500 and you can

send up to 12,000 emails in a month.

So of those two, it looks like Kit is the better

free plan. You may have other tools I've used. Just for

the record, I use Sendfox, which is a

AppSumo product which means you pay one price

and then you can use it for life. It is a little slower

and as always you kind of get what you pay for and

if you use it on a regular basis, it's not bad. I used it

and kind of put it on hold for a bit and when I went to

resend to people who have been, you know, my followers,

it really took a while to kind of, as they called it,

warm up my list and I found that very, very

annoying. And so that might be a case where you get what you

pay for. So bottom line, should I use

Substack for my newsletter? Only if you plan

on just giving information. If you want to market, it's

not really the right tool, I would point you towards

ConvertKit. I do have an affiliate link, although if you're using the free

version, you know, I'm not sure how that's gonna work, but I'll put that in

the show notes along with if you want to see my lead

magnets. As always, if you need help with any of this stuff,

feel free to go out to schoolofpodcasting.com

join and join the School of Podcasting where you get five hours

of one on one consulting with me as well as step by step

procedures. We got courses on everything over there and

a really great, I mean just totally amazing community that

just keeps getting bigger and bigger and every time we get somebody else to sign

up, I'm like, oh, this is going to be a great addition. Of course,

if you're worried, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

So I hope you're having a great holiday season as I record this.

I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do and I've been doing

it for 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do

together.