Why Post On So Many Platforms?

Remember when blogs first became popular? Or the early renaissance of podcasts? Or the early days of YouTube? At each juncture, people with serious talent but limited following actually had a legitimate opportunity to build devoted audiences simply by writing good content, telling quality stories, or posting solid but not over-the-top in terms of production videos. Those days, unfortunately, are long gone.

In the past couple of years, we’ve changed up our strategy here a little bit. The website, until recently, has had few updates, sans keeping the shop open. Most of my writing has gone to Substack, where we have nearly 500 free subscribers and a growing list of paid ones.

More recently, we’ve come up with a new strategy – diversify content across multiple platforms. Why? The short answer is money. Substack publications are mostly about mental health, with a regular cadence of newsletters about culture, film, politics, or history, whatever is most relevant at that time. We’ve recently launched Real Faith Chronicles on Medium, where we exclusively write and post about religion, faith, and spirituality. In the coming months, we’ll shift back to posting on the website, but most of what’s offered here will be sports, with some politics, film, and television sprinkled in.

In the same way you should have a diversified investment portfolio, we’ve come to acknowledge that because our offerings cover such a wide spectrum, trying to talk about so many different topics through one avenue limits our ability to drive engagement, grow subscribers, and, you guessed it, monetize what we love doing.

I know, I know – everything doesn’t need to be monetized. But if you want to monetize, well, do it. I’ve made a pretty penny off books. Relentless Love is profitable, even if it isn’t enough to support anyone full-time. One of the things I love doing most is telling stories. Few things bring me as much joy as starting with a blank document and creating something anew that tugs at people’s hearts, stirs their emotions, inspires them to be better, and facilitates active change. That’s being me. That’s being love. That’s being relentless.

So yes, I acknowledge that it’s annoying as ever to try and keep up with where a certain type of column is posted. To make things easier, the newsletters will always include an ICYMI section, where we’ll link the best of our publications across platforms over the previous couple of weeks.

Maybe we’ll get big enough in the coming years to have everything in a few locations (website, YouTube). For now, the game is the game, and we're just trying to play it. We appreciate your understanding.