Should you use Substack if you want to grow your audience & not charge?

Hi all,

If your goal is to build an audience that you can then create some product for in the future, rather than building an audience to monetize your newsletter, is Substack a good option?

I ask because I’ve noticed that I’m getting traffic from search engines already.

Does this mean that if I transfer my content to a personal website at some point in the future, I’ll be starting from zero (in the search engine’s eyes)? In other words, the fact that my content was valuable before won’t matter to being listed highly for the search terms.

If that’s right, I’d love to get folks thinking on the best newsletter website/tool for my use case.

Appreciate any thoughts on this.

Thanks, and stay safe,