1,000th POST ON SUBSTACK!

It began on 5th January 2022

It was an angry moment when I decided to open a Substack account. I remember it well. Facebook and Discord had both deleted my accounts on their platforms. It happened at 8pm on Christmas Eve of 2021, just as I was creating a joyful post to share with all my friends and followers. Suddenly I had no access.

Of course I knew why….

I had received enough warnings and temporary bans. Social media did not want to carry my messages any more. My deep research into the super wealthy aristocracy was drawing a lot of attention and that was bad enough…. but when I started naming them, well…. things got sticky. One Italian Countess even sent me a cease and desist via Twitter!

Then I published my email exchange with UK MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) on Christmas Eve of 2021, just before the vaccines were rolled out in UK and that, dear friends, was the final straw.

I still had most of my research safely stored on Hive blog but was being down-voted by the ‘whales’ on that site to such an extent that it was pointless publishing anything there any more. I cashed in my little stash of crypto earnings and gifted it to my son who dabbles in such things.

Trying to find an acceptable social media platform, I opened a tentative account on GETTR to test the waters there, but found the newsfeed almost devoid of British news. However, as I scrolled down the content, I noticed that there were a number of interesting articles being published by Substack. I read a few, liked the presentation and the liveliness of the comment sections.

OK… let’s give this one a whirl… I thought.

Slowly I edited and uploaded my most precious research posts from Hive blog to Substack and set about building a small audience. It was a long slow climb back up to the reach I had previously enjoyed on Twitter, Facebook and Discord. In all, I had lost 24,000 followers!

Then, after a few fun interviews, the ball began to roll faster and faster.

I wrote a couple of funny short stories, The Nobs and Lymp Duhdashian which were great fun to do, taking stabs at the status quo via fiction.

My best friend, an Aussie/Brit, nagged me to write my autobiography and that turned into a weekly series which lasted almost a year!

So here I am, now writing my 1,000th article for Substack and celebrating with more than 10,000 lovely subscribers, over 100 of whom are generous folks who pay me a little each month to entertain them with my ideas!

AMAZING!!

To add a fat, juicy cherry to the top of my happy cake, yesterday was a bumper day! More than 51,000 people opened my 999th article!

The statistical analysis that Substack provides its writers is unmatched by any other platform and by monitoring it, we can easily see how our work is appreciated or not. All writers need feedback like this and Substack provides it in spades.

Since January 2022 I have been delighted with the way that Substack has developed. We now have private messaging which is most appreciated and the twitter-style feed of Notes took off slowly at first, but is now becoming very popular.

Overall, Substack has impressed me - especially when the management fought off a spiteful assault from The Atlantic successfully. Way to go!

Then, last week, Substack added a pretty orange tick to my name as a reward for gaining over 100 paying subscribers. I was super-charged with delight, I confess!

What will the future be?

I cannot predict!

Let’s hope our happy community continues to grow and more of you take up writing your own Substack posts, sharing your thoughts and concerns.

Thank you so much for making this old hippy chick very content! It reminds me of a weekend when a crowd of us young hippies crammed into a removals van to go to Knebworth in August 1979. We sweltered and waited all day for this moment, this song and this joy.

I want to share that with you all now…..

ONWARDS!
xx

If you appreciate my Substack but cannot commit to a subscription you could buy me a coffee here »https://buymeacoffee.com/francesleader