They’ll be in the thread to answer writer legal questions for an hour. The rest of the Substack team and fellow writers are also here for you to answer general questions.
What do I do if I find someone copying or plagiarizing my work? Copyright law offers authors of original works broad protection against copying, including many (but not all) cases of plagiarism. Copyright enforcement in the courts isn’t likely to be a practical solution in most cases, but there are often other approaches, like takedown notices sent to content hosts under the DMCA, that can see individual offending items removed reasonably quickly and efficiently. To get started: Visit Substack’s Copyright Dispute Policy to learn about the DMCA process which implements this notice-and-takedown procedure.
Can I protect the confidentiality of my sources if I publish a controversial article? It’s an awfully good question — the unfortunate kind of question that can only be answered with a lawyerly “maybe.” The First Amendment offers some protection against compelled disclosure of journalist’s sources, but just how much and in what circumstances is hotly contested and is treated differently in courts across the U.S. The vast majority of states also have reporter’s shield laws that provide more predictable protection but these vary from state to state, define the protected class of journalists in different ways, and will not necessarily be available when dealing with a federal subpoena (there is no federal reporter’s shield). If this kind of disclosure is a concern, it’s likely worth talking with a lawyer. To get started: Learn more at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Reporter’s Privilege Compendium.
Are you facing legal uncertainty or pressure because of your writing? Substack Defender offers legal support for writers ranging from legal review of stories before publishing and responses to cease-and-desist letters. Learn more.
Drop your questions in the thread and we’ll do our best to supercharge each other.
Our team will be in the thread today answering questions with you. Join us from 2 pm - 3 pm PT / 5 pm - 6 pm ET.
Please be aware that these answers are general, and are NOT personal legal advice. Mike and Tim cannot give you personalized legal advice in this format. They can answer broad questions, but if you need specific advice about a particular situation, they cannot provide it in this format. They are ONLY offering general information about the law. By answering your question, they are NOT agreeing to represent you in any capacity.
I have begun working with a start-up online news source, The Colorado Switchblade. We intend to write deep investigative and features pieces. We ran part one of a series of stories Monday about allegations made against a high school teacher for inappropriate touching and language. All of the Title IX investigative docs were leaked to us. We didn't publically identify the 3 accusers or the additional 5 women who corroborated the allegations. This is a small town and the women made no secret of the charges. It's fair to say they outed themselves, but although their identities were not revealed, two parents complained, threatened law suits, and the school investigators said our story had made the women fearful of retribution. All three declined to be interviewed. Because we don't want to face lawsuits, and do not yet have representation, we took down the story, for the moment, but we are continuing to investigate the allegations. The teacher is much beloved by most of his students.
I love the Office Hours discussions. How do I find past editions? Are they searchable or indexed in some way? If I kinda remember a comment in a thread, and want to look it up, how do I find it?
I have a question for the Substack team that is not a legal issue. It's about using that recording option to just read a post. I have done several drafts already, but have not published. If you record your post, does it automatically go out with the post to email and to our website? I'm trying to time it so the email recipients only get one email that contains both the written post and the recorded oral reading. I believe you thought this was a good idea—to give subscribers another way to access our posts. Im confused about the correct timing of doing this.
Hey thanks for this opportunity. Question: What copyright licenses are necessary to obtain for republication of excerpts from scientific papers/studies with one or more authors listed? I'd like to publish/post various copies of published studies from pubmed and other scientific databases online. I imagine each original publication has their own licensing terms & membership requirements, but to be safe is it necessary to obtain a license from each author listed in each study? Or is a republication license from the original publication generally sufficient?
I have a hobby of taking already published photos and writing humorous captions to them. For example, President Obama was attending an important international political convocation and he was photographed with a beautiful, blond, svelte young woman who was then ambassador to or from Denmark. (Not sure of this; might have been some other Scandinavian country.) But Michelle was seated to their side observing the obviously good-natured and happy sharing that was going on between the other two. Her face bore an unmistakable angry and troubled expression . The caption:
Just wait til I get you home, Sucka...
My question: Can I use someone else's photos for this purpose? Will I be breaking the law if I do?
I wrote a blog for Wordpress several years ago, but when I went to try to upload it to my newsletter, the legal mumbo jumbo scared me off. Does that blog I wrote belong just to me?
I wondering if there is any legal issue with readership age: if I post MG (middle-grade, ages 9-11 or so) novels on Substack... will that be a problem?
Actual legal question: if I wrote an article which originally appeared in another publication, am I at risk of running afoul by republishing it on my substack? I never signed away my copyright in any way at the time of publication.
After 3 weeks of publishing a weekly newsletter, Health & Wealth reached over 100 subscribers! 🎉
This was built entirely from scratch - published with my first name only / a new Twitter account @healthwealthgen starting with 0 followers. My thanks to all the H&W early adopters for giving my work a slice of their attention 🙏
I was going to ask a question about photo licenses, but that's already been asked by someone!
So instead: I've been reading some of Substack's growth tactic resources and would love to hear from more fellow writers — what have been some of the highest yield strategies you've used to grow your audience?
Still very new to this, open to suggestions/feedback as well as cross-promotions/collabs with those who write about topics related to health, science, or investing :)
Not a legal question, but you force people to charge at least $30/yr or $5/mo. Others do not have this, making me inclined to use one of those. Any plans to allow us to charge whatever we want since we are not 4?
1) Do you have any links to anti-SLAPP motions you've filed successfully in California state courts? 2) Have you been able to transfer defamation and other anti-speech cases to federal court? If so, other than diversity jurisdiction, how? 3) given CA's anti-SLAPP law, which venue do you believe is most favorable to the CA writer?
Not a legal question, but could the substack team take a look at adding an edit function when adding links to the main page? Am I missing something? It seems I can only delete and make new links, not edit them.
I had a blog that I did not renew and was thus sold off to someone who then posted my articles as if it was his. A few friends from the US told me that I should take action against him. I did nothing of that sort as all I had wanted was for my articles to be read by as many as possible.
As far as I am concerned whatever I write is for public consumption and they may do what they like with it.
My sole aim in writing what I have discovered over the years by teaching dyslexic kids is to educate the public. The more readers who share it or copy it and use it as their own the better.
Question about parody vs satire. I can create film parodies of Harry Potter that are legally protected, but if I re-use clips from the movies to satirize racism or colonialism or other topics, am I protected?
Happy Thursday everyone!! In honor of today's topic, a fun movie involving the legal profession is "Legally Blonde" (2001) about Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), a college student who enters Harvard Law School in an effort to win back her ex-boyfriend.
Life Lesson: Learn to see the potential in yourself and in others.
Hello to the Substack attorneys and my fellow writers,
IMy question for the attorneys is about using photos. How do I know if they are "royalty free"? If they are NOT affiliated with a stock agency? I noticed that some Substack writers (Michael Moore), for one, uses photos and gives a photo credit, like: Getty Images, Steve Hall, for example. But it's certainly possible he paid a fee for the use of that photo. Unless I'm looking in the wrong places, it is pretty difficult to come up with a decent photo that clearly says it is free for anyone to use. What am I missing? And thanks!
Thanks to the Substack team for providing this venue. I'd like to hear from the legal team their view of having a paid substack as a sole proprietor or an LLC. I've had an LLC before and it was a lot of paperwork, deadlines, and filings. I'd really prefer not to go down that road again, if possible. Thanks for advice.
I could use a legal defense because readers say my Substack is killing it! But in all seriousness, people are going to copy/steal/use your work. I already see it in my SEO results, it happens. What can we do?
Because I question the official narrative about the pandemic and the vaccines and cite official vaccine death count numbers from the CDC's VAERS site (nearly 15,000 deaths to date), I've been censorsed on google owned platforms like youtube and gmail for about 6 months now. Also, to a lesser extent on facebook. In other words, I not allowed to cite official facts put out by the government, nor can I make a comment or post a link to my substack on those platforms. In short, my Constitutional rights to free speech have been taken away. Do I have any legal recourse?
Great opportunities I never I intended to be a part of. I need to delete this part without losing my connection/subscription to Alex Berenson. Thank you so much. 😔
I guess a good question is: Are these lawyers going to take cases where, for example, if I had no access to funds, and possibly couldn't pay them back? I would fight the case, but It would be a hard thing to think about the responsibilities of having to pay a lawyer when a good lawyer is hard to find and keep. Also fighting the case as well, and thinking about all the possibilities of losing a case too.
Do you have any recommendations or guidelines around disclaimers for financial advice? I include one in my footnotes, but I’d really appreciate any feedback about handling this. (For context, I write an investing newsletter that analyzes companies.)
OK, so, if I'm writing an article, and I quote a tweet in it, and that tweet contains an image, AND it's the first image in the article, it will automatically set that image as the splash image for the article itself.
Let's say the image is not public domain: should I be worried about this?
Greetings fellow Stackers, My query is not on legal matters but on advertising analytics. Can one attain a Google analytics pixel ID through one's site on Substack? What about Google tag manager. Thanks
Hi there Substack writers, a couple of weeks ago I asked the community about Reddit - some had earlier opined that it was a good place for finding one's readership. I jumped into the site and was immediately shut down, just for saying "hello" to the Writing subreddit. I promised to follow up with my subsequent experience.
Learnings:
1) one of you pointed me in the direction of a detailed onboarding document, written by Reddit, about how to behave in their world; this was super helpful and I have been guided by it ever since
2) Reddit is one odd place on the internet, a mix of kind / helpful souls, confused souls, and trolls; navigating through these is an art-form, to say the least; I started with a handful of subreddits, just looking and commenting helpful words here and there; eventually I landed on a small set of subreddits that make sense for my topics of interest
3) next came the karma effort; karma is their virtual currency that allows you to contribute content without being shutdown; very different from Twitter; following the example of Substack's First1000 author, I dedicated time every day for a couple of weeks, gently adding helpful advice to redditors asking various questions; soon I reached the magic 100 karma points
4) and so, this week, I published the September edition of The Strategy Toolkit (on strategy & biology); via Substack, I was able to post to the strategy subreddit; the next day, I followed up with a post to the biology subreddit
Overall, a time intensive effort but successful in terms of outbound. I will let you know if I gain any subscribers as a result.
Are there any legal complications entailed if doing consulting relating to your Substack? For example, if someone wanted to hire me to consult on a problem, is there a process that I need to follow with Substack to stay right with the law? I'm assuming that thinks like NDA's with the customer would be worked out between them, and that normal ethical "disclose conflicts of interest" apply. What I'm asking is what does consulting affect about my relationship with Substack, or with my copyright.
I use Genius Links for Amazon affiliate links in my newsletter. Somewhere I read that Substack automatically deletes the affiliate ID. I want tot check whether this works for Genius Links as well?
I write TV show reviews, and I use screenshots to illustrate my points. I believe using screen shots from the TV shows falls under Fair Use, but is there any specific labeling I need to do? Right now I have an email footer that says 'all images are property of their respective owners', but do I need to get more specific?
This topic couldn't have come at a better time! Here's my question:
I'm acquainted with a professional photographer who doesn't want her photos copied and used by random people. She has given me permission to use certain photos of hers, but with attribution. My concern is that people reading my blog can click to save the photo and use it anyway, despite the copyright. Therefore, I created a watermark on the photo to make it less useable to others.
As an example, the fourth photo down on my latest post shows this watermark:
Is this adequate protection to help deter people who may potentially steal the photo? Again, the photographer has only required that mention the photo is hers, yet I want to go a step beyond in an effort to protect her art and livelihood. Thank you!
I see that writers must apply to the Substack Defender program, which I'm guessing means limited resources and triage. Is there any sort of insurance available through Substack it elsewhere, particularly in the case of nuisance suits? My student newspaper was occasionally threatened with legal action back in the day, but we either ignored it or wrote a retraction, depending. This was many years ago. Are there any new concerns we need to be aware of? Any specific instances of Substackers being sued or harassed?
I started Odd Jobs Newsletter in July and was able to grow it to over 1,000 subscribers by putting in 2-3 hours of work a week.
Here's what worked really well.
1. Giveaways
I did 3 giveaways and was able to get a huge increase of subscribers. I gave away t-shirts and books (so it didn't cost me very much) and incentivized people to share the newsletter as a way of gaining extra entires to the giveaway.
2. Google Ads
I had never tried Google ads before but this worked so well. I had a budget of $10 a day and researched keywords that my audience would be searching for that applied to the newsletter. I was able to get over 300 subscribers in a week doing this with a low ad budget.
3. Shareable Content
Every week, I make sure my newsletters are valuable, interesting, and unique so readers feel inclined to share with their friends. Plus, it's free so people want to pass along the good info. with the people they adore.v
Writer Office Hours: Legal 📅
I have begun working with a start-up online news source, The Colorado Switchblade. We intend to write deep investigative and features pieces. We ran part one of a series of stories Monday about allegations made against a high school teacher for inappropriate touching and language. All of the Title IX investigative docs were leaked to us. We didn't publically identify the 3 accusers or the additional 5 women who corroborated the allegations. This is a small town and the women made no secret of the charges. It's fair to say they outed themselves, but although their identities were not revealed, two parents complained, threatened law suits, and the school investigators said our story had made the women fearful of retribution. All three declined to be interviewed. Because we don't want to face lawsuits, and do not yet have representation, we took down the story, for the moment, but we are continuing to investigate the allegations. The teacher is much beloved by most of his students.
Would Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been protected under SubStack's umbrella?
I love the Office Hours discussions. How do I find past editions? Are they searchable or indexed in some way? If I kinda remember a comment in a thread, and want to look it up, how do I find it?
Thanks for coming to Office Hours this week. I see some new faces! The Substack team is signing off for today.
Special shoutout to Mike and Tim for answering legal questions today.
If you are facing legal uncertainty or pressure because of your writing, we encourage you to learn more about Substack Defender: https://on.substack.com/p/legal-support-for-substack-writers
We'll be back next week for Office Hours as usual. Save it to your calendar: https://lu.ma/office-hours
The week following as we enter October, we'll have our favorite thread: Shoutouts! All that and more at: https://substack.com/events
Signing off,
Katie + Bailey + Rose + Mike + Tim + Jairaj + Lulu + Ben + Ari + James + Lisa
I have a question for the Substack team that is not a legal issue. It's about using that recording option to just read a post. I have done several drafts already, but have not published. If you record your post, does it automatically go out with the post to email and to our website? I'm trying to time it so the email recipients only get one email that contains both the written post and the recorded oral reading. I believe you thought this was a good idea—to give subscribers another way to access our posts. Im confused about the correct timing of doing this.
Thanks!
thank for this generous offering!
Hey thanks for this opportunity. Question: What copyright licenses are necessary to obtain for republication of excerpts from scientific papers/studies with one or more authors listed? I'd like to publish/post various copies of published studies from pubmed and other scientific databases online. I imagine each original publication has their own licensing terms & membership requirements, but to be safe is it necessary to obtain a license from each author listed in each study? Or is a republication license from the original publication generally sufficient?
I have a hobby of taking already published photos and writing humorous captions to them. For example, President Obama was attending an important international political convocation and he was photographed with a beautiful, blond, svelte young woman who was then ambassador to or from Denmark. (Not sure of this; might have been some other Scandinavian country.) But Michelle was seated to their side observing the obviously good-natured and happy sharing that was going on between the other two. Her face bore an unmistakable angry and troubled expression . The caption:
Just wait til I get you home, Sucka...
My question: Can I use someone else's photos for this purpose? Will I be breaking the law if I do?
Thank you in advance for your answer.
I wrote a blog for Wordpress several years ago, but when I went to try to upload it to my newsletter, the legal mumbo jumbo scared me off. Does that blog I wrote belong just to me?
I wondering if there is any legal issue with readership age: if I post MG (middle-grade, ages 9-11 or so) novels on Substack... will that be a problem?
Actual legal question: if I wrote an article which originally appeared in another publication, am I at risk of running afoul by republishing it on my substack? I never signed away my copyright in any way at the time of publication.
Thanks for hosting this substack, as always you are super dope! If anyone wants to cross promote/do shout outs, let me know. Happy to grow together.
How do i get permission to use pics? What is the legal issue using pics from google etc.
After 3 weeks of publishing a weekly newsletter, Health & Wealth reached over 100 subscribers! 🎉
This was built entirely from scratch - published with my first name only / a new Twitter account @healthwealthgen starting with 0 followers. My thanks to all the H&W early adopters for giving my work a slice of their attention 🙏
I was going to ask a question about photo licenses, but that's already been asked by someone!
So instead: I've been reading some of Substack's growth tactic resources and would love to hear from more fellow writers — what have been some of the highest yield strategies you've used to grow your audience?
Still very new to this, open to suggestions/feedback as well as cross-promotions/collabs with those who write about topics related to health, science, or investing :)
I can't get in to the meeting
If we post something and do run into potential legal trouble, what is the protocol for asking for assistance from the legal team if it is appropriate?
how do i take what i've written off of substack?
Not a legal question, but you force people to charge at least $30/yr or $5/mo. Others do not have this, making me inclined to use one of those. Any plans to allow us to charge whatever we want since we are not 4?
1) Do you have any links to anti-SLAPP motions you've filed successfully in California state courts? 2) Have you been able to transfer defamation and other anti-speech cases to federal court? If so, other than diversity jurisdiction, how? 3) given CA's anti-SLAPP law, which venue do you believe is most favorable to the CA writer?
Not a legal question, but could the substack team take a look at adding an edit function when adding links to the main page? Am I missing something? It seems I can only delete and make new links, not edit them.
same experience here - i think it's just this thread - not a video
the link keeps taking me to this page it is circular
What is the easiest way to transfer content from Blogger to Substack en masse?
Is this a live event? Where's the link to join...?
I had a blog that I did not renew and was thus sold off to someone who then posted my articles as if it was his. A few friends from the US told me that I should take action against him. I did nothing of that sort as all I had wanted was for my articles to be read by as many as possible.
As far as I am concerned whatever I write is for public consumption and they may do what they like with it.
My sole aim in writing what I have discovered over the years by teaching dyslexic kids is to educate the public. The more readers who share it or copy it and use it as their own the better.
Question about parody vs satire. I can create film parodies of Harry Potter that are legally protected, but if I re-use clips from the movies to satirize racism or colonialism or other topics, am I protected?
Happy Thursday everyone!! In honor of today's topic, a fun movie involving the legal profession is "Legally Blonde" (2001) about Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), a college student who enters Harvard Law School in an effort to win back her ex-boyfriend.
Life Lesson: Learn to see the potential in yourself and in others.
Movie Scene: https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/legally-blonde/
If anyone has any favorite movies they would like share, consider writing a "Guest Post" on moviewise 🍿: https://moviewise.substack.com/s/-guest-posts
Hello to the Substack attorneys and my fellow writers,
IMy question for the attorneys is about using photos. How do I know if they are "royalty free"? If they are NOT affiliated with a stock agency? I noticed that some Substack writers (Michael Moore), for one, uses photos and gives a photo credit, like: Getty Images, Steve Hall, for example. But it's certainly possible he paid a fee for the use of that photo. Unless I'm looking in the wrong places, it is pretty difficult to come up with a decent photo that clearly says it is free for anyone to use. What am I missing? And thanks!
Thanks to the Substack team for providing this venue. I'd like to hear from the legal team their view of having a paid substack as a sole proprietor or an LLC. I've had an LLC before and it was a lot of paperwork, deadlines, and filings. I'd really prefer not to go down that road again, if possible. Thanks for advice.
I could use a legal defense because readers say my Substack is killing it! But in all seriousness, people are going to copy/steal/use your work. I already see it in my SEO results, it happens. What can we do?
Because I question the official narrative about the pandemic and the vaccines and cite official vaccine death count numbers from the CDC's VAERS site (nearly 15,000 deaths to date), I've been censorsed on google owned platforms like youtube and gmail for about 6 months now. Also, to a lesser extent on facebook. In other words, I not allowed to cite official facts put out by the government, nor can I make a comment or post a link to my substack on those platforms. In short, my Constitutional rights to free speech have been taken away. Do I have any legal recourse?
Great opportunities I never I intended to be a part of. I need to delete this part without losing my connection/subscription to Alex Berenson. Thank you so much. 😔
I guess a good question is: Are these lawyers going to take cases where, for example, if I had no access to funds, and possibly couldn't pay them back? I would fight the case, but It would be a hard thing to think about the responsibilities of having to pay a lawyer when a good lawyer is hard to find and keep. Also fighting the case as well, and thinking about all the possibilities of losing a case too.
Do you have any recommendations or guidelines around disclaimers for financial advice? I include one in my footnotes, but I’d really appreciate any feedback about handling this. (For context, I write an investing newsletter that analyzes companies.)
Not a legal question: I would like to publish a webinar series on S/S and charge for it. Will that fly in your terms of service?
How does the legalities work outside the United States?
readers say my substack is illegal, it instantly improved their lives. join the philosophical community.
OK, so, if I'm writing an article, and I quote a tweet in it, and that tweet contains an image, AND it's the first image in the article, it will automatically set that image as the splash image for the article itself.
Let's say the image is not public domain: should I be worried about this?
Greetings fellow Stackers, My query is not on legal matters but on advertising analytics. Can one attain a Google analytics pixel ID through one's site on Substack? What about Google tag manager. Thanks
This isn’t a question about legal, but I was just wondering how ios 15 is expected to affect open rates on Substack?
Hi there Substack writers, a couple of weeks ago I asked the community about Reddit - some had earlier opined that it was a good place for finding one's readership. I jumped into the site and was immediately shut down, just for saying "hello" to the Writing subreddit. I promised to follow up with my subsequent experience.
Learnings:
1) one of you pointed me in the direction of a detailed onboarding document, written by Reddit, about how to behave in their world; this was super helpful and I have been guided by it ever since
2) Reddit is one odd place on the internet, a mix of kind / helpful souls, confused souls, and trolls; navigating through these is an art-form, to say the least; I started with a handful of subreddits, just looking and commenting helpful words here and there; eventually I landed on a small set of subreddits that make sense for my topics of interest
3) next came the karma effort; karma is their virtual currency that allows you to contribute content without being shutdown; very different from Twitter; following the example of Substack's First1000 author, I dedicated time every day for a couple of weeks, gently adding helpful advice to redditors asking various questions; soon I reached the magic 100 karma points
4) and so, this week, I published the September edition of The Strategy Toolkit (on strategy & biology); via Substack, I was able to post to the strategy subreddit; the next day, I followed up with a post to the biology subreddit
Overall, a time intensive effort but successful in terms of outbound. I will let you know if I gain any subscribers as a result.
I can't join live later today, unfortunately.
George
Are there any legal complications entailed if doing consulting relating to your Substack? For example, if someone wanted to hire me to consult on a problem, is there a process that I need to follow with Substack to stay right with the law? I'm assuming that thinks like NDA's with the customer would be worked out between them, and that normal ethical "disclose conflicts of interest" apply. What I'm asking is what does consulting affect about my relationship with Substack, or with my copyright.
Hi Substack Team!
I use Genius Links for Amazon affiliate links in my newsletter. Somewhere I read that Substack automatically deletes the affiliate ID. I want tot check whether this works for Genius Links as well?
Does anyone else use Amazon affiliate links?
Thanks!
Rishi
I write TV show reviews, and I use screenshots to illustrate my points. I believe using screen shots from the TV shows falls under Fair Use, but is there any specific labeling I need to do? Right now I have an email footer that says 'all images are property of their respective owners', but do I need to get more specific?
Does Stripe on S/S operate like Medium, where you need to form an entity, along with a physical address in order to charge money?
This topic couldn't have come at a better time! Here's my question:
I'm acquainted with a professional photographer who doesn't want her photos copied and used by random people. She has given me permission to use certain photos of hers, but with attribution. My concern is that people reading my blog can click to save the photo and use it anyway, despite the copyright. Therefore, I created a watermark on the photo to make it less useable to others.
As an example, the fourth photo down on my latest post shows this watermark:
https://createsoulspace.substack.com/p/psychological-physical-violence
Is this adequate protection to help deter people who may potentially steal the photo? Again, the photographer has only required that mention the photo is hers, yet I want to go a step beyond in an effort to protect her art and livelihood. Thank you!
I see that writers must apply to the Substack Defender program, which I'm guessing means limited resources and triage. Is there any sort of insurance available through Substack it elsewhere, particularly in the case of nuisance suits? My student newspaper was occasionally threatened with legal action back in the day, but we either ignored it or wrote a retraction, depending. This was many years ago. Are there any new concerns we need to be aware of? Any specific instances of Substackers being sued or harassed?
OK ma'am
This is a sound plan.
Hi everyone! Sharing some insight on how I grew my subscribers this week - some free ways and some paid.
www.oddjobsnews.com/welcome
I started Odd Jobs Newsletter in July and was able to grow it to over 1,000 subscribers by putting in 2-3 hours of work a week.
Here's what worked really well.
1. Giveaways
I did 3 giveaways and was able to get a huge increase of subscribers. I gave away t-shirts and books (so it didn't cost me very much) and incentivized people to share the newsletter as a way of gaining extra entires to the giveaway.
2. Google Ads
I had never tried Google ads before but this worked so well. I had a budget of $10 a day and researched keywords that my audience would be searching for that applied to the newsletter. I was able to get over 300 subscribers in a week doing this with a low ad budget.
3. Shareable Content
Every week, I make sure my newsletters are valuable, interesting, and unique so readers feel inclined to share with their friends. Plus, it's free so people want to pass along the good info. with the people they adore.v