Tarot By Thea Podcast Migrated To Spotify and YouTube

Substack Paused Due To Critical Data Loss and Lack of Recovery Support

You Can Now Find The Tarot By Thea Podcast on Spotify and YouTube.
Below is The Story Behind The Migration:

Data Loss

If you have been following my Notes here on Substack or my Facebook Group, you will know that about three weeks ago, I had critical data loss on Substack.

I had an old podcast linked to my Substack called Choose To Play Big. I have not published any episodes on this podcast since Feb 2022. When I create a new post on Substack, it would try to add it to my old podcast. Eventually, I knew I would remove it, and three weeks ago, I decided it was finally time.

I was in a coding frenzy, getting some website updates done, and sleeping very little for weeks. In my wired state, I removed my podcast without doing a backup. (And yes, as an ex-IT professional, I absolutely should have known better.) I hit the delete button on the podcast, and all but two of my published posts disappeared along with my podcast.

None of my published posts were associated with the podcast, and it was strange how two posts managed to be left unscathed. It smelled like a bug to me (or something done “by design” that was very unintuitive - it would have been nice to review what it would delete before it was gone forever!).

Waiting For Support

Even though I went into shock and then panic, I knew I had all the content on my computer. However, I didn’t want to recreate it because all the links to the content would change, and my subscribers would get emailed about old content. I wanted to avoid this.

So I looked up how to contact Substack support and found this was my only option:

Substack’s Only Customer Support Portal

An AI chatbot. At first, I wasn’t that worried about it. I submitted my issue, and it escalated my chat to support once it identified critical data loss.

Then, one week goes by. I had not received an email ticket in my Inbox, so I didn’t know if the chatbot had created a ticket behind the scenes. I was busy with other things, so I thought I would give their support system some time.

However, the longer it took them to look at the problem, the greater the chance that the backups would be deleted on their end - making recovery impossible.

I asked the chatbot in a second thread how long it typically took for Substack to reply to tickets. The AI told me there was a two-week response time, so I still thought it was possible to get help.

Once two weeks had passed, I started to get concerned. I talked with the chatbot again and gave it as much info as I could think of to make the recovery process easy for the technician who would get my ticket.

Then, I decided to look at their social media and see if there was some other way to contact Substack. While on Facebook, I saw posts from others with the same issue. One person commented that they had been waiting over 8 months and still no response. It became clear that I was on my own.

Alternatives

I love Substack. Its ability to combine blogging, newsletters, and monetization simply and intuitively kept me using the platform for four and a half years. The data loss was the first time I had had an issue with them.

I was considering overlooking the support issue and just restoring the content myself. But it left a bad taste in my mouth. What if I put more content up and I had a problem later down the line?

So, I decided to see if I could find an alternative to make an informed decision on whether to stay or not. At first, I struggled. I looked at membership sites like MightyNetworks and advanced email automation like ConvertKit. But they were a step ahead of where I needed to be, had a steeper learning curve, cost money, and didn’t do everything I wanted.

Then it struck me: Spotify for Podcasters. I couldn’t do the newsletters through them, but I could host and monetize the content with subscriptions. I was blown away by how the platform had improved since I last used it under Anchor.fm.

Then I decided I might as well also upload it to YouTube. I wouldn’t be able to monetize it anytime soon (due to the requirements), but I could maybe start to build a bigger audience there.

The missing link was MailerLite for the newsletter.

I had figured out my alternative ecosystem and decided to go with it.

Migration

I have updated the podcast content to remove any mention of Substack and to blur any imagery in the tarot cards of unclothed people. These platforms have stricter censorship policies, so I have to be more careful from now on. I marked any episode showing one of the six tarot cards with nudity in it as explicit or 18+ to be on the safe side.

I struggled with this issue because I didn’t want to draw on the cards or use sticky notes. These both can change the energy of the cards and can interrupt the flow of the reading. So, I opted for blurring the images in post-production.

All Episodes of The Tarot By Thea Podcast Are Now Available on Spotify and YouTube.

Substack will no longer host the Tarot By Thea podcast. I’ve paused my Substack, so paid subscribers will no longer get billed. It is not possible to migrate your paid subscription to Spotify.

Once I meet the threshold on Spotify for monetization (it shouldn’t take long), you can decide if you want to create a new paid subscription on Spotify instead. Once it’s possible to offer subscriptions, the Psychic SiStars series will become premium content.

Thanks to those who supported me on Substack with a paid subscription. It truly means a lot!

All Substack subscribers will be migrated soon to MailerLite for future newsletters. (You will always have the option to unsubscribe.)

I believe the data loss happened for a reason, so I would move to other platforms before too much content was on Substack. This migration would have been much harder if I had 100 episodes instead of five!

I hope you enjoy our new home on Spotify and YouTube.

Thea