They say money is in the lists. I never paid attention to this. So I am not surprised to see that compared to others my success is extremely limited. And the thing with the list is that In past I had no means to send the traffic to specific product or even service or content. 

But now I have youtube channel [here](https://www.youtube.com/c/devnami/videos), I write on Hive and also some of the time post on various content websites around the web. I thought why not create a list and send the users to various such places where I write the content. 

I came across Substack last year and noticed there are some of the bloggers and authors making money off it, simply by writing long form and short form curation content. I was not trying to replicate their success but learning along the way how the list can benefit my use case. 

So I decided to use the Substack for one of my database specific list. I signed up and created the [datasheet weekly](https://datasheet.substack.com/). So far I have published 2 newsletters out of it and trying to promote the emails on other platforms. 

![DS.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmaJkLb6gw5NKJba1wtRxtWKVeE5AQYeVHnLY57zhYCR1z/DS.jpg)

### What are some of the things I like about Substack?
---
Substack is good and if you spend the time the right way. You can get some subscribers to pay you. Depending on the type of the users who subscribe to the newsletter, it'd take some time for this to turn into revenue stream. Here are some of the things I like about substack. 

1. Easy to setup. 
2. It's free. 
3. You can setup domain too. 
4. Use stripe for the paid newsletter plan. 
5. Mail reader app in browser and phone. 

It's one of the good services that is currently in totally free plan. But I am sure they would go in paid plans once they get some traction and also the VC funding for the same. 

### What is not working with Substack?
---
Substack has some issues especially if you are new to the list and the mailer systems. Where you don't know how to grow and how to come up with the topics worth subscribing. Here are some of the topics that I found having issues with the substack. 

1. Getting new subscribers is not an easy task. 
2. Internal database of the newsletter has politics, religion, food niche which may not help you.
3. Not a lot of customization options for the emails. 
4. By default mails land in social or spam folder in gmail. 


![listnerds.jpg](https://images.hive.blog/DQmRhC2eimtsHSaKYpXmxZ7SaV8gRhsY4HX5E2VA48BVT3F/listnerds.jpg)

### Some of the benefits of using Listnerds
---
Tap into the existing hive users and redirect them to your content. Like youtube content, blog pages and the other sites can get the traffic out of your hive following or from the Listnerds mailing. You can reach more people and also get to use your MAIL tokens doing the same. 

Now that I realized that substack is a lot of work. I have to try my hands on the Listnerds too. So I signed up and decided to give listnerds a try. It seems like so far the listnerds is a good option for the users on hive who wants to drive the traffic to their content. Don't be surprised if you se me promoting datasheet weekly and the other content sites or pages from the Listnerds. 

### Conclusion
---
Substack is a good option if you want to monetize your blog on the newsletter. However Listnerds is more useful when you want to drive traffic to the content that you are hosting on the web or even on social media platforms like youtube etc.