Migrating to Beehiiv

Over the weekend, I moved the newsletter from Substack to Beehiiv. Although I'm still using the same domain name, the platform is now different.

This change might cause some issues, so I apologize for any glitches that occurred over the weekend or may arise in the next few editions.

I appreciate your patience as I finalize the migration process.

What you should know

Four important things for you to know:

1. The newsletter on Substack is still there but marked as private. I will keep it until I can review all the content and ensure it was imported correctly. You can access the Substack here.

2. As this is a different platform, the unsubscribe process is different. So, I made a short video about how to unsubscribe to make it easier. Of course, you can always use the link at the end of the email.

3. The RSS feed is now at https://feed.newsletter.shortruby.com

4. The sending email is [email protected], and once the sending is warmed up (Beehiiv has a concept of warming up the sending), it will be changed to [email protected]

What is not yet working

The migration was generally smooth. I kept a log of what I did for the migration here (it is too detailed to put it all here).

Two main things are still not working:

1. Imported posts don't have captions. Although the URLs are correct (thanks to Beehiiv), the captions didn't come through because Beehiiv doesn't support importing them. As a result, the source information for all images is missing. I intend to add this information manually over the next few months. This issue only affects older posts; new posts will have the correct captions.

2. It seems that there is a problem with around 100 subscribers that have not been imported. We are currently working with Beehiiv support to understand why this is happening. Although the new edition is now available on Beehiiv and the older one is marked as private, the best option is to move forward and ensure that this issue is resolved during the week.

Update (8 October 2024): Beehiiv support reviewed all the non-imported email addresses and confirmed that all of them are invalid. And I agree that it does not make any sense to import them. I don’t want to have subscribers just for numbers but I want people that are reading the newsletter.

Why move to Beehiiv?

First, I think Substack is a good email newsletter platform. The move is more about what Beehiiv can offer extra than not being happy with Substack.

Why I stayed with Substack for so long

I stayed with Substack for so long because of two main advantages: free and subscription inertia.

First, Substack is accessible for free newsletters. This is a huge advantage for Short Ruby because I intend to keep the newsletter free.

Secondly, there was a network effect on Substack that you can see in this image.

On the other hand here is a kind of distribution by sources and it the main source of free subscriptions is direct and via Twitter so I am confident that I will be able to still drive traffic and new subscribers to the newsletter by using other channels.

Why move to Beehiiv

Intentions and Goals

The following intentions drive the motivation to move to Beehiiv:

1. While I made more efforts this year to get more ads in the newsletter, it is not yet sustainable. But I think we are getting close.

2. I want to automate the process of properly citing the authors of the posts I include and putting content on the page

3. I want to expand the current automated citation (that gets the author, the content of the post, and formats the citation) to BlueSky, Reddit, and Linkedin. Now the posts that I include from these sources have all those elements (author name + link, citation of the source with link to the content) created manually.

Thus I have the following goals for next year:

1. Bring in an income of at least 800 USD per month for the newsletter, which will allow (after taxes) to pay for services and allow a content editor to spend 8-10 days per month editing the newsletter fully.

2. Transition to capture the code from images into code blocks in the newsletter so people can copy/paste it and try it.

Beehiiv advantages

Beehiiv offers a REST API that will help automate the process of putting in the newsletter in the newsletter while allowing me to focus more on curation or other Short Ruby projects. Because I already have a Rails app where all my curated content goes, I see a lot of possibilities for integrating with Beehiiv API.

Beehiiv has a much better editor with two important features: proper code blocks with syntax highlighting for Ruby and markdown support. This is pretty important because so far, I included a screenshot of the code because Substack did not have a code editor with proper syntax highlighting.

Beehiiv also offers more ways to earn money while keeping the newsletter free. They have Boosts and an Ad network. I plan to experiment with both of them and see which one fits the newsletter.

In the same time for a newsletter of the size of Short Ruby, Beehiiv has only a paid plan. But I see this as a motivator to force me to find ways to add more revenue to the newsletter because so far I was in a cozy place.

In case you want to try Beehiiv (referral link) and want to support the Short Ruby Newsletter in the same time I invite you to use the following referral link: