I want you to think about when you first started your career. Maybe, you're there right now. What you need as far as living arrangements go isn't a big house that requires a lot of maintenance. You're just starting your career and maybe you're focused on work. You're traveling a lot. You're not spending a lot of time at your living place because you're going out with coworkers, friends, and partners. You need an apartment. This serves as a place for you to keep your stuff, make some meals, and rest your head.
A house is for when you have more people living with you, like a family, like kids. And for when you have a home office or some other living space that is just yours. It's for when your career is in full swing and you are spending more time at home, and you have time to do those home maintenance projects or at least you have the money to pay for somebody to do those home maintenance projects, like replacing a $10,000 HVAC. And, yes, that did happen to me.
The hosted versus self-hosted argument for renting an apartment versus owning a home, that analogy has been done to death. And for a long time, I thought that was the perfect framing for creators and solopreneurs. In fact, that intro is from an article I wrote back in 2022. Back when I was fully transitioning out of the WordPress space.
And while I make a few arguments, I want to revisit that today. Because my friend, Matt Medeiros, recently tweeted that he launched a project on Buy Me A Coffee. It had some donations, and Buy Me A Coffee decided for no apparent reason to shut down the project. He says this is why owning your own platform and monetization methods are critical.
So in today's episode, we're going to look at what solopreneurs should think about when creating your own platform online. We're gonna talk about how you can get started quickly without messing up. We're going to answer the question, do you actually own anything online?
And then, of course, we'll get to the actionable advice, ‘How to choose what platform to use”’. So with that, all of the show notes, I'm sure there will be a lot because, we're talking about platforms, and links and stuff like that. They'll be over at [streamlined.fm/429]. If you want to hear this episode ad-free and you wanna get extra from me, I'll be talking about all the times I messed up choosing a different platform before ultimately going with my own platform. You can become a member. That link is also going to be at [streamlined.fm/429]. But, for now, let's get to the intro and then the episode.
Welcome to the Streamlined Solopreneur, a show for busy solopreneurs to help you improve your systems and processes so you can build a business while spending your time the way you want. I know you're busy, so let's get started.
All right. So what is, what are we talking about, really? What is owning your own platform?
For those who don't know, I came from the web development space. And I was primarily a WordPress developer. So, this is something I've thought about a lot. When should you use some platform that you need to sign up for versus spinning up your own website using a platform like WordPress? And for the sake of this argument, or for the sake of this discussion, I have generally referred to owning your own platform as using a self-hosted option, which means that you buy hosting from a company and then you upload your website to that hosting company. So, maybe you buy hosting from Pressable or LiquidWeb and you install WordPress, and now you own your own platform.
This is not the same as using something like Webflow or Squarespace because, or Shopify because you don't actually own any of that code. You can't download the code for that website and put it somewhere else. So I guess portability is really the main thing you wanna look at. Right? You can't download your website from Squarespace and then take that HTML and all of that code and upload it somewhere else. Or with Buy Me A Coffee, you can't take what you've built on Buy Me A Coffee and upload it somewhere else. You have to start from scratch. Whereas with WordPress, you have all of the…and this is any open-source project. Right? So, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Moodle, whatever, like any of those platforms where you can download the code and then upload it somewhere. That's owning your own platform. And already we're a little bit off the rails, right, because, like, this already sounds complicated.
But going back to the housing analogy, with an apartment you meet with the apartment building owner, you look at an apartment, and then you hand them a check. Right? I mean, you have to move, like, you still have to, “build out the apartment”, but you probably don't have to supply your own appliances. You don't have to cut the grass. If you get kicked out, the same thing goes though. Right? If you get kicked out, you have to find another apartment to go to. Right?
Whereas with a house, you probably have to buy all of the appliances. There's a big, long process of negotiating with the current house owner, figuring out what they have to fix versus what you're going to have to fix, and then you have to move in. But at least more so than with an apartment, you can't just be capriciously thrown out of your house. Right? It's your house. Right? And so when we talk about owning our own platform, that's really what we're talking about. Can some unknown, unseen, like, unseen hand shut you down for no reason? So which is better? Right?
In my 2022 article, which is it's gone now, I'll try to find it and maybe republish it over on [casabona.org], but it's for a web, it was for a WordPress-centric website, like a WordPress news website that I decided to shut down. And so I let the domain expire. I don't have the code anywhere. I'm sure I have the code somewhere. But, you know, I didn't purposely back it up. So, when I…but when I wrote this article, I made a couple of arguments for why you might want to use an owned platform, right, a hosted platform.
One is you wanna get up and running quickly. So, like, setting something up on Buy Me A Coffee would be a lot faster than, I don't know, setting up a WordPress site with GiveWP or Gravity Forms because you have to build the forms and connect your payment processor. And with Buy Me a Coffee, like, when I tried it out, I literally got set up in like 5 minutes. I signed up. I created a couple of levels, and in moments, I had a link where people could pay me. So, that's the first one. You wanna get up and running quickly.
The second one is you don't know what custom features you want yet. So if you're just getting started and you don't really know what you need, then you should go with something that works for a lot of people. Right? So, like, a lot of people, actually, I just had a coaching call with somebody who said they don't have a mailing list for their podcast, and they asked if Substack would be good. And so I thought about it for a minute, and I'm like, well, why did they pick Substack? Right? And it's because they know Substack. And I basically said like, Substack is great if you wanna publish, but it's a publishing first platform that happens to also be an email list.
Whereas, something like Convertkit or Beehive is like an email marketing platform. But, if you're just getting started, those features are probably indistinguishable to you, and maybe Substack does work. You can accept payments on Substack, you get a free email list on Substack, and you can write and publish a podcast. So, maybe that is good for you. Right? You don't really know until you try something.
And then the third reason is that you don't have the domain knowledge of running a specific platform. Right? So, like, I'm I'm a WordPress, I'm a a former WordPress Developer, but, like, you know, I spent 20 plus years making websites. That's not just a skill you lose overnight. Right? Maybe in 10 years, it'll be completely unrecognizable to me. But for now, I'm very, still very competent and confident in building, running and maintaining a website. And so, like, it's really easy for me to say, like, yeah, you should have your own platform because I can spin up a WordPress site in minutes, and I will do that if I have bespoke features that I want. Right?
And so a really good example of this for me recently is when I rebranded this show. I looked at if I should just use something like Podpage or Podcastpage, either one, and whether or not they would be a better solution for me than running and maintaining my WordPress site for this podcast. And I determined pretty quickly that, no, that would not be good for me. Because when I built the website for this podcast 8 years ago, I built in a lot of custom features. I have a lot of really nice ways for me to manage sponsors and transcripts. I have a lot of custom features built in to make my life easier for this podcast. And I have complete control over the layout, and I built a layout that my VA can easily create for each episode. I would have none of that if I used something like PodPage. Right? Versus someone like my friend, Jay Clouse, he does use PodPage. He started from the beginning and he used those features and they are good for him. He didn't wanna spend his time building a platform.
And when I built the platform, I was still a WordPress Developer, and this show is focused on WordPress development. So I felt like I kinda had to dog food my own product a little bit.But I had, you know, I didn't check any of these boxes. I didn't need to get up and running quickly or, like, I could because I had the skill set. I knew I had custom features I wanted, and I had the domain knowledge of running a specific platform. But if you don't have any of those things, like maybe PodPage is better or Buy me a coffee is better or like, ConvertKit Commerce is better for you. So I think that's like, the level setting thing we wanna look at here.
But something else that really weighs heavily on me when I think about this is, do we really own anything online? And that is what I'm going to talk about after a word from our sponsors.
Okay. So there's the whole question of, ‘we should own our platform’. And yes, with something like Buy Me A Coffee or Squarespace or PayPal even, they can decide that they don't like what you're doing with their platform and cut you off. Gone. Right? Just, they'll shut down your account. They'll refund the people. They probably legally have to give you any money that you're owed, but you no longer have a platform. And the argument for self-hosted is always, well, you own the code, so you can move it around. But if a hosting company doesn't like something you're doing, they could shut you down. Or with like, with what Substack went through last year, they can choose not to shut you down and and get a whole lot of flack.
And like, that's a little bit different. But, you know, if I host with xyz hosting, I won't name a hosting company. I don't know what their policies are really. But if I host with like an xyz hosting company and they decide that they don't want what I'm peddling on my website, they can shut my account down.
So, like, do I really own the website then? Some would say yes because I can download the code and everything and upload it to a different hosting company, point the domain, and that's it. Right? I was deplatformed from them, but I wasn't deplatformed. And the truth is this happened way less. Right? Like, as someone who's been deeply embedded in the community, there are very few times where I've heard of hosting companies shutting down websites because they don't like what the websites say, especially when there's like, not a ton of public pressure to do it.
But I think about this within the podcasting space too. Right? Like, I use a couple of different podcast hosts, and I haven't really read through their speech policy. I assume most of them are like, if you're not actively breaking the law, you can host here. And that's like, certainly the case with some bigger podcasts who, you know, break the podcasting 7 Deadly Sin of Wrath. Right? Where they're like, specifically trying to sow controversy. But it is something to think about. Right? Because I have heard problems, especially with payment processors like PayPal and even Stripe. So like, if those places don't like how we're making money, can they shut us down? Like, do we really own that? We don't own Stripe. We don't own that platform for accepting money. And again, like, they probably like, Stripe especially, probably has a not very strict policy. Right? It's, I suspect it's as long as you're not doing something illegal, you can use Stripe.
And so on the one hand, like, yeah. Like, you own your platform a lot more. It's, again, it's just like a house. If you haven't fully paid off your mortgage and you stop paying your mortgage, the bank can kick you out. Right? But as long as you're paying your mortgage, you are, you're not gonna get kicked out of your house. Right? Or if you live in some place with an HOA, which just like full transparency, I hate HOA's. But if you live in a house with an HOA and you violate that HOA agreement that you, you know, that you signed or whatever, you know, I'm told that those are legally binding, so whatever. Maybe you can get kicked out of your house then. Right? But barring some or, like, I guess, if the government, what's the thing? Oh, man. What is that when the government can take your land? This is gonna drive me crazy. But, you know, barring those more extreme actions, you're probably, you're less likely to get kicked out of your house than your apartment.
And so the same thing goes with like, hosted versus self-hosted.
Eminent domain is what that's called when the government can take your property for public use. It's called eminent domain. So I'm glad we got that out of the way.
So unless you're having, like, an eminent domain situation, right, with your self-hosted website, you are a lot less likely to lose that or get kicked off of a hosting platform. So, and I should say, like and, you know, the story of Matt and his project, like, bums me out, that's ridiculous and crazy. And I could say it doesn't happen that often, but it's like, it's a huge pain in the neck when it does happen.
And so coming back around to this, the title of this article that I wrote was, ‘Why an Apartment is Better Than a House for Most Creators?’ And I'm not fully convinced that is the case anymore. I was going, you know, I was going through like an interesting time in the WordPress space. And honestly, like, I'm not fully sure that WordPress is the best solution either like, every time I try to start a new WordPress site from scratch, I'm like, is this easy? It's not easy. It's definitely not easy. And I have a lot of domain knowledge.
Now, I just, I was able to just spin up a WordPress site from scratch for my new product, Podcast Navigator. And I did that pretty quickly, but it's also like, pretty spartan. So, you know, there's that, and I have a lot of, again, I have a lot of experience.
So, how do you choose whether you should go with a hosted or self-hosted solution? A hosted is like the apartment. Self-hosted is the house.
And I still think I land in the same spot. If you're a solopreneur and you're just getting started, it's a lot like what Rachel talked about last episode with your accounting. If you're just getting started and you're not sure if this is gonna be like a full-time thing or just kind of like a side thing, a spreadsheet where you're just keeping track of your income and expenses is fine. And I would say the same thing for your business in general. If you're just trying to set something up to do like a proof of concept, Squarespace, or Buy Me a Coffee or something is fine. Right? But I wouldn't stake my entire business on it.
And so I think a really good example is, The Dispatch. The Dispatch is a right-of-center, newsletter and news outlet, started by a few folks who not to get like, too political, but, like the, you know, it was started by people who felt disenfranchised by the Republican party. And it started around I think, it was 2017. Could be 2019. The pandemic messed me up a little bit, like, as far as time frames go. But they started on Substack, and they grew pretty quickly, and then they moved off Substack onto a WordPress site using Memberful, a former sponsor. And I think they just recently changed again to a different platform that's for like, big, big organizations and like, gives you like, really custom stuff. Right?
And so this was really good for them. They became one of the biggest creators of Substack. And so, like, they got there and they kind of understood what they needed, and then they moved to a custom site. And they learned a lot there too, and then they moved to, like an even more custom site. I think that's a really good model. Right? And I think, ultimately, no matter what you do, you need to do some research. This is the thing that's going to possibly save you. Right? Because it's really easy.
And again, in Streamlined Solopreneur Accelerated, I'm gonna tell you about a bunch of times where I didn't do enough research and made mistakes, and it came and bit me, and how that's still affecting me. So, if you wanna hear that part, head over to [streamlined.fm/ 429] for all of the show notes, including a link to join. You can also find it in the description wherever you're listening to this.
So, you know, I think that do some research. Maybe, casually look through their terms of service and see what you can and can't do on the platform. I know that's a lot of work.
And, you know, in Matt's case, he wasn't given a reason, and he could appeal if he wants to. But this is really frustrating. Right? Because, he set up a site and started making money from it, and then they shut him down. We're unable to validate your use case based on the evidence provided. So, I don't know. Like, maybe they view his project as a crowdfunding project or something, and maybe they don't allow for that. Right? But if that's true, they should maybe make it a little bit clearer.
But as a result, like, you should double-check. Maybe, reach out to support and be like, hey, I'm thinking about starting this type of business on your platform. Am I allowed to do that? Right? Like, that's maybe, and again, for 99% of people, that's not gonna matter. Right? Like, for Buy Me a Coffee, like, if you're just looking for donations, like he says in a later tweet, I've used the platform for 3 years on another project of his, the WP Minute, without issue.
Originally, I chose it like most so I didn't have to build out my own hosted donation page on WordPress, saving time. Right? And so, like, you run the risk of not saving time in the long run, but do a little bit of research, see if they have the features you need, see if they have a capricious policy for shutting down websites or projects or accounts. Those are all things that you can do.
But it's tough. You never know. And as an example, I usually do Apple's trade-in program when I'm getting rid of old devices. I know I'm not getting as much money, but also I don't have to, like, go through the rigmarole of finding somebody to buy my old device and then shipping it to them. It's just way more convenient.
And two of the last, let's say five times, Apple, rejected my trade, my original trade-in value and set it to 0 for seemingly no reason. I appealed both times, and it got reversed. So, like, you can probably appeal, and that was like a pain in the neck because, like, one time, it was like, the device won't turn on. I just forgot to charge it. And, like, they charge it, and they're like, right. And then like the last time, it was that the device was discolored, like the screen was discolored and warped. And I'm like, that's not true. I used this device until the day I sent it to you. And so like, they reviewed and reversed it. So like, that was a super weird one. hey didn't tell me why or what happened or anything. But, anyway, the point being, nothing is ever really foolproof, but do some research to make sure you do it right.
And then right? I went on a long tangent when I started this point, which is, if you're not sure if this is gonna be your full business or you're not sure what you need, use a hosted platform. When you're ready and you know what you need and you know that this is like, what you're gonna stake your livelihood on, then you move to a self-hosted platform because you need that. You need to own as much as many aspects of your business as possible. Because if you don't, then you could be left in the lurch.
And so, you know, the things that I would look for, especially in a hosted platform, or like something in between, right, that's like ConvertKit is technically a hosted platform, but, like, I would never tell you to set up your own email service provider because that's insanity. And there's like so many issues with that.
But, like, with your website, like, you do have the option of an open-source project with WordPress where you can take the code and upload it somewhere else. Right? But look for export. Like, something great about Substack is like, you can easily export all of your email subscribers onto a new platform, and they use your Stripe account as the base.
So, if you decide to switch from Substack to something else like Memberful, former sponsor, then it's like, really flipping a switch like, Memberful can do that easily. They'll just, like, grab the subscriptions from your Stripe account, and then like, you turn, you can turn them off in Substack. So like, portability in hosted platforms is really important.
Again, with Buy Me a Coffee, like, this email makes it seem like you don't get the money. It says like, your account will no longer be able to accept future payments. If there is a remaining balance, it will be refunded to your supporters within 30 days. We recommend contacting them to discuss alternative means of payment. So, like, Matt's kinda screwed here, like and that's pretty messed up. And so, like, now I'm not gonna recommend Buy Me a Coffee. So, that's so…
Okay. So, do some research. I would read reviews and check out their terms of service or like, what kind of projects they allow if you're looking at a hosted solution. And then look at how easy it is to export your data. I have been frustrated by some platforms that I use that don't let me export data, and it's like, it's insanity to me. So, definitely look for those things.
And then when you've built your business up a bit and you're like, yes, this something that I could do, just like Rachel said, start with an Excel sheet. And then when you get to a certain revenue level, like, yeah, revenue level, or a certain profit level, then, you hire an accountant. So, when you get to a certain level in your business and you know you wanna stake your livelihood on this and you wanna make this your full-time thing, then you should move to a self-hosted platform that you own more of.
Okay. So that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you enjoy episodes like this, let me know. You can go to [streamlinedfeedback.com]. There's also a link in the description. It'll also be over on the show notes at [streamlined.fm/429]. So, if you only remember one link from all of this, if you're driving or working out and you're like, hey, I wanted to check that stuff out. What was that URL again? [streamlined.fm/429].
In Streamlined Solopreneur Accelerated, I'm gonna tell you about a bunch of mistakes I made from choosing hosted platforms without doing a lot of research and how the ramifications are still affecting me to this day. So, if you wanna hear that and you wanna hear every episode ad-free and extended, you can become a member over at [streamlined.fm/429] or in the description. It's all there, all in one easy convenient place for you. But that's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks to our sponsors. And until next time, I'll see you out there.