Holy shit I think I just cracked the code of why people think you can’t sell things on Tumblr 😭
I was reading one of the Substacks I subscribe to, talking about how they promote their publication and their various sources of traffic, when I came across this paragraph:
Now I happen to also run a fairly popular Substack (about gay vampires). One whose readers are almost entirely Tumblr users. And Tumblr clicks have just never shown up in my stats, I’m used to it. Naturally I had to comment:
It’s not just Substack’s tracking that doesn’t work on here. NO tracking works on here. Tumblr is just one of the last platforms left that completely obscures its users’ data!
That’s why there’s this persistent myth that you can’t advertise on Tumblr. It’s not that you can’t sell things here, it’s that you can’t use the invasive methods that are standard everywhere else.
tumblr has, in my experience, consistently been the best platform to get clicks from for anything i share that i’ve done, people on tumblr care about your shit and are used to longer form content and willing to click out of their app/site. this is actually impressive because even on platforms like twitter it’s insanely hard to get anyone to click on article links, etc without massive clickbait, and that’s still ignoring the fact that most platforms other than tumblr deboost posts trying to get users to click away from their platform.
