Working in the medical field it can be difficult to find specialized imagery without shooting it yourself in-house however Getty has a pretty vast library. They've also done a nice job staying up with 'mask' imagery during the current COVID pandemic which my organization had a very high demand for. You will also find the photography to be more diverse than competitors and their search engine's suggestions are usually pretty spot on.
I think Substack is better for people who want to set up a personal-facing branded website vs people who just want to post random musings every so often. Monetization is better there than any other collective publishing platform as well as organic reach via email. Substack also allows you to build direct relationships with your readers via emails and own them 100% which is great long-term if you use it to pivot to another site or another form of writing/content creation. Substack would be less helpful for someone wanting to write as a part of a group, not individually, or someone who's unwilling to put their personal brand behind their content. It's less optimized for SEO (which other platforms allow you to do) and can be harder to curate content based on your interests (you really have to go in knowing what you want vs finding it on the fly).
Because it has a very high Domain Authority ranking relevant backlinks in a published article will help make my store more searchable.
Substack is very easy to work in. The toolset they provide may not be as extensive as other platforms but it is certainly enough to create a meaningful, interesting post.
Substack is very focused on creating a community of writers that support each other. They run an ongoing email campaign that reinforces their focus on building a community of writers.
Easy to search multiple images and stock footage from the past is really helping us to deliver the content fast to our viewers. It is rather more expensive to send the reporter to remote place than the overall cost of the subscription for any large scale channels who need to depend on authenticated sources.
I could probably rattle after a dozen 'stock' photo companies that tout claims such as '$1 downloads, etc.' but don't bite on them, their libraries are extremely limited and you'll end up seeing photos you've used all over the place. For example, we once used a woman for a magazine cover who I also saw on a Southwest flyer, a Home Depot ad and on a poster at my kid's school all within a few months. It waters down your brand.
Medium is not so good for running newsletter. I find the mail that a user gets is very easily readable. Also as a creator it's very easy for me to track the analytics and monetise my blogs unlike Medium. Blogger is a very old technology. The kind of integrations and the support for Markdown / different media is very great in Substack.
