Moving Day
"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
—Leonardo Da Vinci
My website has always been a work-in-progress. Click here if you don't believe me.
You might notice a few changes on it today. For openers, it probably loads much faster and the menu bar now sticks to the left—not the top. Yeah, my trademark orange is still prominent, but the major changes aren't just cosmetic: today marks a new chapter for my website and, more importantly, for my business and me.
The Skinny
In June, I announced that my publishing website was adopting a subscription model. Today, I'm letting you know that I'm doing the same thing with this one.
I'll still occasionally publish free posts, but the vast majority of my new musings will live behind a paywall. That term is a bit of a misnomer. Reading almost all of my content will require no payment. Rather, you'll have to subscribe to at least the Free plan.
For more on the benefits of subscribing to my site, click here.
Why Now?
Where to begin?
Let's start with the simplest reason: the technical one.
Maintenance Fatigue
I've long known that I'm a geek. At Carnegie Mellon, even the poets know how to code. At the same time, I realize that I've spent way too much time over the past 15 years performing maintenance on my site—and hiring others to help on occasion. I'll conservatively estimate that I've put in an average of 1.5 hours per week diagnosing a bevy of issues over the last 15 years. That's 1,200 hours in total.
To be sure, my old WordPress theme Divi served a valuable purpose. Still, its future direction makes me suspect that my days of debugging wouldn't be ending. I'd much rather spend my professional time writing and ghostwriting books, speaking, creating Notion templates, and consulting.
Tech alone didn't drive this decision.
I'd be lying, though, if I claimed that tech alone drove this important (monumental?) decision.
Far from it.
Protecting My Content From Greedy Tech Companies
As an added benefit, the decision will make it harder for soulless tech corporations to illegally hoover up my intellectual property without compensating me. (Count The Guardian and Reddit among the companies that have recently filed lawsuits against these scoundrels, but I digress.) It's become such a problem that Cloudflare and other companies are launching tools that prevent AI crawlers from doing their thing.
The Core Reason
Since leaving ASU in 2020, I had been relying on white whales for clients. Maybe it was time to make a change?
A few months ago, my Carnegie Mellon friend and fellow Die Hard fanatic Moneet Singh and I were discussing evolving business models and the need to build subscription businesses.
Like all good friends, he didn't hold back when he assessed my site. In between Hans Gruber quotes, he mentioned how I had already created plenty of solid lead magnets. I just wasn't using them properly.
Moneet was being kind. I wasn't using them at all.
That conversation stuck with me over the next few weeks. I harbored no illusions about climbing to the top of the Substack Business Leaderboard and pocketing six figures per month. Still, was the idea of taking advantage of my existing blog posts, courses, Notion templates, and other assets to create a decent monthly revenue stream really farfetched?
Returning to the Tech
I didn't think so, but my website's legacy underpinnings would mean adding even more software in the form of subscription plugins and proper newsletter capabilities.
I came to a realization: If I wanted to create viable subscription business, I didn't need to tear down my website. Make no mistake, though: A more contemporary and faster content management system would certainly make it easier for me to achieve my goals.
The New Foundation
With the help of rockstar developer Cathy Sarisky, I have successfully migrated my WordPress site to Ghost. (I'm hardly alone in doing so.)
You'll notice a significantly faster website. The difference between Ghost and WordPress is almost comical:
All of my old posts should render, just at different URLs that should automatically forward. I'd be mystified, however, if we caught all bugs. Let me know if you find:
- Any 404 errors or dead links.
- Any missing images.
- Something else janky.
I'll get them fixed as quickly as I can.
What Has Changed
I've fused all of my prior followers into Ghost. If you subscribed to my WordPress blog, Patreon page, or Substack, I've moved you to this site's Free plan.1 I've used the email address that you gave me when you signed originally up days, weeks, months, or years ago.
My new Ghost site is a clean, lightning-fast, SEO-optimized, and responsive one that looks good on any device—all without third-party software and caching plugins. I'm kicking myself for not moving to Ghost sooner.
Check out the subscriptions part of my FAQ page here. If you don't find what you're looking for, comment here (after you log in) or contact me.
Phil Simon
The Future of My Site
Look for more frequent and longer posts from me over the coming months and years on AI, the future of work, Notion, citizen development, workplace tech, hybrid work, and the usual bouillabaisse of other work- and tech-related topics. (Future posts on writing and publishing will live on Racket Publishing. In case you're wondering, I've adopted a similar subscription model there as well for nearly identical reasons.)
Why the renewed enthusiasm for writing?
A few reasons.
First, I want people to subscribe and for some of them to pay. In order to achieve these goals, I have to bring the goods. The occasional short post just won't cut it. By all accounts, posting content irregularly leads to increased churn.
Second, on a personal level, I absolutely love Ghost's über-clean UI. It's very Notion-y. Here's a screenshot:
Now that I'm not waiting 60 seconds for WordPress and Divi to create a new post, I'm stoked about putting more of my thoughts and creations out there.
Get your popcorn ready, and thank you for reading this post.
Phil Simon
Footnotes
- Medium doesn't let you export followers. ↩
Member discussion