The Substack team, and your fellow writers, are here to help!
Today we invited the writers who participated in Substack Grow to share what they learned about building a loyal readership and kickstarting paid subscriptions.
Some territory covered in Substack Grow included:
How do you set realistic goals for growth? To get started, check out our goal-setting guide.
How might you go about crafting a launch announcement post? Judd Legum of Popular Information used his launch announcement to make a call to free readers to support accountability journalism.
What ongoing tactics might you use to grow your free list? In our session on growing your free email list, Ali Abouelatta of First 1000 shared how he uses a schedule to keep on track with routine promotional tasks, like posting on social media and online groups.
Drop your questions and insights on growth in the thread and we’ll do our best to supercharge each other.
Our team will be in the thread today with Substack Grow writers from 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PDT / 1 p.m.–2 p.m. EDT answering questions and sharing insights with you.
You all showed up in a big way today and offered sharp insights to your fellow writers! Thank you for being here, engaging with the community, and writing on Substack.
We'll be back next week at the same time and place for Office Hours. In the meantime if you're looking for more resources on growth, you can visit: https://substack.com/grow
Keep going,
Katie + Bailey + Rose + Andrew + Peter + Kevin + Maria + Rob
This is totally counter-intuitive but the only reason Salty Popcorn is still going (and growing) is because I've not allowed myself to focus on the numbers. It took 10 months to reach 100 subscribers and most of my friends & family that have signed up don't actually read it — including my mum!
Metrics, goals and KPI's are great but they've weighed me down so much in the past that other projects died in a matter of weeks. If the sole purpose you're writing a newsletter is to gain a massive audience it's going to be hard to stay motivated.
Write about something you're passionate about. Celebrate every subscriber milestone and, most importantly, enjoy it — it's the only way you'll manage to invest countless hours in something that will pay little to no money in the short term...
I wanted to reiterate something I shared with the Grow people last night. As we learned within Grow last night, persistence is the key. If you are discouraged because you don't have 1000 free subscribers yet, or 100+ paid members, don't give up.
The important thing is to keep writing and sharing, even when it feels like you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Most people who are doing well have simply been doing for a while, either on Substack or on a different platform, and have built up a following. You can do that too. So keep writing, telling your friends, sharing on social, and so forth. Join newsletter swaps, do guest posts, contact other Substack writers, join the Substack Writers Discord group, etc. And if nothing seems to be working, try changing things up. Try writing about something a little different, do an interview, have a guest writer, do a discussion thread, or change up your artwork. See what works and what doesn't.
Here’s my advice for reframing the idea of growth, away from numbers and money and toward connection.
Try to measure growth in other ways than numbers of people who have subscribed to your newsletter. Are you doing work that matters to you? Did you learning something from writing the piece you sent out that day? Did one person tell you that something you wrote affected them? That’s growth.
I’ve been earning my living on the internet since 2005, starting with a space for writing I created that became the first gluten-free blog in the world. Gluten-Free Girl was my space to play, to create, to write stories, and share my joy. The fact that people arrived meant I created a community. And that community was everything to me.
Look, I fell for the numbers game eventually. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and every other form of social media didn’t exist when I began this. I started believing the hype that I needed to GROW by numbers and likes and follows. But it was all smoke that dissipated. The fire has always been to connect, to create community, and to create something that mattered with me.
I was surprised when the Substack folks quoted me for the day of Grow yesterday! They asked the group we learned from the program and this was my answer:
The most important discovery I made over the past few months running a newsletter is how much easier and more fun it can be when you know a group of other newsletter writers. Solo projects can create a lonely feeling, especially if your readership is small or quiet, which is likely the case for any writer just starting their journey. It feels like writing into a void. You may begin to question whether the newsletter is worth pursuing. I recommend joining a Discord or a writing group to share your work, your ideas, your frustrations, and your strategies. Growth is a long, tough road. No need to travel it alone.
I've been writing the-line-between.com (TLB), a biweekly newsletter about art in progress, for about 6 months now.
I have under 1K total readers (free+paid) and 14% are paying. People can pay $5/mo, $50/year, or $100/year for founding. I think it would have been better to charge $6/mo, $60/year, $120/year. Why not? This probably wouldn't have felt like much of a difference to folks signing up but would have added up to a big diff for me. Oh well, stuck with it now I guess.
I write every 2 weeks and publish at the same time (7pm EDT) same day (Tuesday) like clockwork, I change the preamble and footer every time because I'm playing around with wording and calls to action, and this seems to happen organically.
What's worked well for my ramp-up (resulting in a sign up, quite often a membership) is cold emailing every single person I know, even if they’re distant acquaintances. It's probably not very efficient but I write a personal message to each person; there's no batch emailing or copy-pastes. And I kind of like it that way for now. I want to start real conversations, and I want to create real relationships for folks with my content.
Certainly, this is a short-term thing but I’m going to exhaust it before I try other things too—we’ve only so much time in a day. I try to send out 10 emails once a week or so but admittedly I’ve missed a lot of weeks…still, I aim to do this weekly.
Every single member pays right now even though the main content has been and will likely remain, free for everyone. Many are founding members at $100/year. One, who’s not someone I even really know, decided to pay way way over the multiple, which was a shock. I’ve been humbled by the support. I haven’t done ads.
This is perhaps not the most ""growth-hacky"" advice but I feel like I'm in it for the long game, and I want to build a strong foundation of loyal readers, not just grow in number. I’m ok with a fewer number of loyal readers with initially slower growth for now, v. a huge number with ostensibly faster growth (but potential for more churn). I believe it will compound.
I started playing around with a "bonus issue" format where I send out 2 newsletters: the free one is very much a complete newsletter as usual, full of what I hope is useful content—but it serves as an organic lead-in to the bonus content that is for members only, which goes out as a supplemental issue.
Basically the free newsletter kind of functions as a sort of meaty teaser to the paid one, while still—I hope—providing a lot of value, and without feeling salesy or click-baity.
In the free one, I show a bit of the latest work on my animated short, and I explicitly state that Members will get to see the full deep dive on process + a secret Vimeo to the animation so far, with sound and subtitles. It's like a little extra treat! And I get to celebrate with my most invested readers as I go. Win win.
I’m going to be playing around with how I provide bonus content because I don’t want members to feel like they’re getting bombarded all the time. Probably will do something diff next issue (in 2 weeks).
I'm thinking of also writing a Medium article soon within a well-known design publication on that platform (I do this every now and again to help with exposure) about what I've learned so far + the process of designing a newsletter and the experience of reading. (I'm also a product designer, so I think I tend to approach writing a newsletter from a system design mindset.)
Hey all. Michael of Brent and Michael are Going Places here. We just passed a thousand people on free list with not sixty full subscriptions. We really started doing a social media push about two months ago, which took us from about four hundred to where we are today.
I wrote up a pretty lengthy post about my philosophy and strategy for anyone who is interested.
Hey friends! My big advice from Grow, in terms of setting realistic goals for growth, is to beat The Fear by consolidating the things that scare you into one hour on your schedule. So, for instance, if promoting your writing freaks you out or makes you anxious, don’t force yourself to do it all week long. Sit down for one hour and schedule out your tweets, your IG posts, your emails to friends, etc. (There are plenty of free tools to help you do this!) Then you only have to be brave once instead of trying to make your brain be brave all the time.
Launched my weekly Substack last month! It's been an incredibly fun ride so far.
I've reached 180+ free subscribers in these past few weeks, which is crazy given I haven't yet shared within my network (very few of my friends know that I started a Substack 😅 )
Some things that have helped me grow:
1) People really do value high-quality content. 2 out of 5 of my pieces have generated the most traffic and signups. These also happen to be the pieces I put the most time and effort into. I was afraid that people's attention spans are now too short for long-form content, but I was pleasantly proven wrong.
I started my paid subscriptions in early September. It's been a good experience for me so far with ~4% conversion.
This month I reached 1000 free readers! Tomorrow I'm sending out a celebratory post with multiple offers - invites, book giveaways, and discounted subscriptions - to see if I can pull more people to the paid subscription.
I think it's important to know why one is choosing the paid route. It may sound harsh but it can't simply be that because we put in a lot of work, we deserve to be financially supported. Every writer should deeply and dispassionately consider their value proposition from the point of view of their readers. This means also identifying who their readers are and understanding what they signed up for.
I think it helps to grow your readership if you are able to narrow your content to a niche subject area. This niche area can even be "your true voice". But the process of cultivating your niche means writing a lot. So I would also advise all newsletter writers, especially if you're new to writing online, to write 5x more than they share with the world.
Having lots of readers is great. Having no readers is a great time too. There is great freedom in anonymity. Play games, write in different styles, explore genres and voices. Going too early to paid can lead to typecasting yourself, and so can going to an audience with every single thing you ever write.
I've been drawing SneakyArt for close to 5 years. In the newsletter, I write about my art, the circumstances of its creation, and articulate ideas around my work. It makes me a better artist and thinker to do that, and I believe I am able to demonstrate that to my readers. The free readership of the newsletter is a subset of my Instagram following (8-10% conversion), and I wonder if that is a good metric to assess my growth. The paid readership is a further subset of the newsletter readership and I guess I should think of them as my true true fans.
I am curious to learn how other people measure their growth and set goals.
Growth is a relentless pursuit. It takes persistence and most days will feel like you're scratching and clawing to get to your goals.
I'm constantly networking with other writers, joining and engaging in writing communities, doing swaps when it makes sense, asking to be a podcast guest, and posting and replying daily on social media. You never know when the stars will align and the right person will share your writing or retweet you and bring in an influx of new subscribers with them. It can feel like a full-time job with terrible pay at times, but the connections you make along the way—both with other writers and with subscribers—will make it all worth it in the long-run.
We should all be in it for the long run because we love the process and because we have to share our ideas with the world.
I shared the link to this earlier but I figured I'd just go ahead and post the whole thing here for those that are interested.
Tips on Using Social Media to Grow Your Substack
One of the most important tools in growing your Substack is using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora and other platforms.
Using social media over the past two months, we've gone from adding less than five new free subscribers a week to averaging more than thirty, including one day where we added more than forty.
Our email list just passed 1000 sign-ups, with more than 50 paid subscriptions.
We ramped up our social media efforts in mid-August and have added more than six hundred new subscribers.
I've been asked quite a bit how we do that without being spammy, so I thought I'd share some of my observations.
A) Make a Plan
Look at what social media platforms you’re already active on and decide which one or two make the most sense for you to grow your Substack. This might be because you’re already active on them. Or because there is something about your Substack that would fit especially well there.
For us the answer was clearly Facebook since I was already very active on several relevant groups. Some I have been active on for years.
If you’re already active on groups that are right for you, begin thinking about how you can start converting some of those participants to newsletter subscribers (more on that in a moment). If you’re not already active on relevant groups, become active on them so you can begin appropriately sharing your content.
At the same start thinking about what other platforms might be relevant and useful for you.
Based on Substack’s own suggestion, I created a Reddit account and gradually became more active there. I’ll have more to say on that in a bit. I’ve now done the same with Quora as well.
We were also somewhat active on Twitter but over the month have considerably ramped up our efforts there.
B) Be Genuine
It isn’t enough to just a join a Facebook group or subreddit, tell people you have a newsletter, and expect people to sign up.
First you need to join groups that are actually relevant to you and with which you can genuinely interact. If you can’t do be genuine, you’re pretty much doomed to fail.
Our Substack is about our lives as a gay digital nomad couple traveling the world. So I’m not going to join a Facebook group for people into sailing or extreme sports or dating after the age of fifty, pretend I’m interested, and then leave a comment or two and a link. Instead, I belong to groups that either specifically relate to being a digital nomad, travelers in their fifties (our age), long-term travelers, and gay related topics.
Being genuine also means that before you begin trying to get people to sign up, you need to respond to other people's posts with real comments and contribute appropriate things of value to the group that don't include you pitching your newsletter.
People can usually smell a fake a mile away.
Also be sure to follow the rules. One group to which I belong allows businesses to post links to their business every Tuesday, so that is exactly what I do by sharing a newsletter I think will be genuinely helpful. (And also interacting the rest of the week with other people’s comments and sharing relevant posts that aren’t our newsletter.)
And if you’re in doubt about sharing something, contact the moderator. This is helpful in two ways. First, it shows them you aren’t there to just spam their group. Second, it makes them aware of you and much more likely to take you seriously, which is always a good thing.
I started my newsletter in March and committed to publishing weekly. It’s given me the external pressure (in a good way) to keep going and in the process my readership has steadily grown and like anything you practice, my writing and my posts (I hope!) have improved. There was a quote I heard last night on Substack and I’ll paraphrase: We have no choice but to get better.
Thanks to Substack for providing this platform, structure and incredible support.
Some things that I’m trying: 1. Commit an afternoon to creating multiple social media posts — written and graphics — to promote your newsletter. Use Canva or similar to create templates and reusable elements. Make some strictly promotional (what your newsletter is about), others can be about content (pull quotes from issues) and others can be lead magnets (a bonus piece of content you can create just for subscribers). Set yourself up with a social media management platform (Publer, Hootsuite, Buffer) so you can set these as an calendar that will post to multiple sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) in automated and recurring fashion so you've got a constant stream of exposure. Don't worry about doing "too much": the constant news stream on any platform means you need repetition to get noticed, even by your followers. 2. Don't be afraid to ask your social network to share to their followers. 3. Look for podcasts in your area and reach out to be booked as a guest, this is both a great way to get the name of your newsletter out there, a transcript can be new content for your newsletter and/or promotions.
A thing I was reminded of from yesterday's session, from a talk by the excellently-brained Mason Currey: (https://masoncurrey.substack.com/): if you're not achieving "balance" with your work routine, maybe that's a feature and not a bug.
I've been a f/t writer for ten years and I have never overcome my tendency to attack my work like a dog: 100% mad work-related zoomies for a certain period, and then collapse in a heap and feel self-indulgently sorry for myself for a while. And now I'm starting to realise that lurching from flat-out activity to totally self-indulgent laziness & back again isn't necessarily a sign I'm maniacally writing myself off a cliff...
What works, works. If it looks crazy and scatterbrained to other people, that's their problem. If it feels sustainable (and exciting) to you, nuts to more "sensible" methods. You've found what you need. If it's not broken, don't persuade yourself you need to fix it.
I participated in the Substack Grow programme to learn more about Substack, how to use it and get the best out of the process and system. What I have taken from the process is that a routine, publishing regularly and keep evolving are important.
I found the 6 weeks of late night Zooms (midnight!) were incredibly useful and I came away with at least one nugget every session. My goal is now to mould that experience and learning into a plan and a newsletter that add value to the audience I want to attract.
A good example of a nugget was to promote the newsletter wherever you can. I have it on every page of my website, I have in my email signature, it goes out on social media (FB, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) every time I post. It did not take long to do all that. Next goal is to find a format that I like for the newsletter. Work in progress.
My thoughts and reactions to the process are:
be honest and share your thoughts and ideas freely. Get started and you will learn how to create your own style, format and creativity. The more you share people will find their way to you, word of mouth is the best way of finding your own audience. It will take time and it will have its moments. Be determined and do not take criticism personally, I know that we do but it is part of the apprenticeship of writing. Time is the key factor and that is one I have not yet fully mastered but I hope that I will get into my routine for writing soon! Good luck to all on the Grow programme. It has been a fun time and I have learnt many useful things from the Substack team and the group of writers involved!
Having serialised my fiction online since 2015, my advice is less Substack-specific, and focuses more on looking after yourself as a writer, because you have to be in this for the long haul for it to work -
Be ambitious, but look after your health.
Being creative can be a struggle, but you don't have to suffer.
Set clear goals but make them achievable; don't set yourself up for failure.
Remember why you're doing this; don't get lost in the woods.
Readers are giving part of their life to your writing.
After Substack Grow, I made an effort to reach out to pre-existing groups on Facebook that focus on the same subject as my newsletter (in this case, the Moon). I've also joined FB groups where fellow Substack writers congregate to share tips and ask for advice. So far that's been really helpful for finding interested subscribers.
My advice for growth? Resilience. It is a slow process, a sisyphean task. But you must do it! You must constantly share, promote, and deliver great content. No one will do this for you. There is no easy hack or service. There is just you and your desire to make it happen. Write great content. Share on socials. Interact with your audience. Rely on yourself and not paid advertising as it rarely works. And never give up!
Question: I have both free and paid subscribers (about 3000 free and 60 paid), but when I go to Substack's main page, I'm do not see my newsletter "discovered" in my main topics. I promote the newsletters on various appropriate social media platforms, too. How do I get more Substack visibility?
I'm looking for someone to act as a substack mentor!!
I am debilitated by a chronic illness, and would really appreciate some guidance. My plan is to use all the revenue generated by my paid subscriptions to fund my ongoing medical expenses. THANK YOU to anyone who has the interest and bandwidth to help - x
Some thoughts about keeping going and motivation based on my experience of sending a weekdaily newsletter for the past 13 months. A big part of building a loyal audience is showing up consistently.
> Energy to keep writing:
I have started and stopped *a lot* of writing projects over the years. What I’m doing now – short daily emails with one illustration, one idea and one song (from Spotify, not my own) –is a form that fits my interests and skills better than anything I’ve done before. I love doing it! The fact that it connects with people is a bonus. Even when it’s hard work, I love it enough to keep going.
> Motivation:
I am a graphic designer in my day job. It’s a good job, but the reason I do it is to fund my real job – writing every day for my subscribers. My real job doesn’t pay yet. It’s still my real job. My boss is kind of a bastard. He insists that I show up every single day. He doesn’t give me a day off when I’m not in the mood. He expects quality when I want to phone it in.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as a job. At least, that’s how my personality works.
> Sustainability:
I came up with a year’s worth of ideas for material before I started, so I would never be scrambling to find something to write. I’ve used less then half of that initial bundle of ideas because new stuff shows up along the way.
I keep my posts short. I’m only writing about 2000 words/week.
I usually have a guest author for one week each month.
I switched to Substack after my 95th email. I’m doing one throwback post each week until all the newsletter is on Substack.
I take a week off at Christmas and two weeks off in the summer.
I’ve streamlined my process for building the posts in Substack so they only take a few minutes.
All these things help keep it fun and not overwhelming.
Over the Substack Grow period, I tried a few different tactics and have gotten some growth out of each one. I signed up on every newsletter directory that I could find, then I did a post swap with the awesome Mahima Vashisht of Womaning in India. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I started recording my posts. I am finding that quite a few people download the recordings, so I will keep doing that as a service.
Hello, everyone. Great to join the community. I started a newsletter about album closers last month (please check it out!) and I'm really enjoying seeing my work presented in a professional and organised manner that has always put me off writing outside of someone else's website. I'd be interested in how to schedule tweets from scheduled posts!
As a growth hack, I'm working on the paid promotion side more now. I'm still in the ideation and data collection stage, but my plan is to start advertising my newsletter on relevant platforms on a fixed monthly budget. I'll try different platforms (newsletters, blogs and websites) of writers with bigger reach. Post a 3 month trial with different platforms I'll release my observation document to help other writers in the community to help them understand what might work for them and what might not depending on their subject matter and niche.
We have a twitter pod of Substack writers who help boost each other's tweets and get new eyeballs, message me @youtopianJ on twitter and I will add you to it, I have found it helpful.
Thanks for putting on these Threads. I always get ideas on how to promote my work through different media. I was wondering what success other writers have had in translating their work and Posting it on their sub-domain at the same time as their English version. Google has a pretty good translator program though it sometimes misses the nuances, but it's a lot better than having to learn a language. I am considering making a German and French version of my monthly posts about life on the Canadian Prairies. Any comments?
How can you encourage new people to read posts and sign up when they are faced with the paywall that isn’t clear can be free signup ? The “none” option doesn’t make sense to most people. I get feedback on social media all the time that they hit paywall on free posts.
I feel like I've tapped out my social networks, but every few weeks I have a conversation with someone who follows me on multiple accounts who has never heard of my newsletter. I post about it all the time! Every time I bring it up in conversation that person then goes and signs up and loves it. Any advice here? I've tried paid advertisements on social but they don't convert at all. And really, I'm just trying to get free sign ups, I convert about 10% of my free signups to paid which I think is a pretty good rate. My newsletter is me trying out different products, hobbies, jobs, diets, and more. https://scottbedgood.substack.com/
I am a historian, and I have just finished writing a historical novel, set in World War II. With Adolf Hitler blockading Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Stalin refusing to feed or evacuate the city's population, the book is about how a group of poets, musicians, dancers and artists overcome hunger and cold by channeling their Russian cultural heritage. More broadly, it's about the triumph of human will over political totalitarianism. I have authored six books, for trade and academic presses, and would like to publish this one as a serial production on Substack. Is there someone I can talk to about the Substack book publication process?
2: You said something tonight about regular calls to action, regular "hooks" to hook the reader, and regular "reminders" about the "story"? Did I write that down correctly? If that doesn't ring any bells, then I will need to ask Katie and others if they remember this advice!
3: I will make a "Welcome" thing like you have and link to my best pieces in it.
4: I will hire a graphic designer (someone with an aesthetic similar to your own, actually) and get them to make some personalized art for my Substack and put that art on the "Welcome" thing and also on my "About".
5: I got some advice to establish a presence in communities relevant to my Substack, but that's maybe impossible when I constantly rotate between a wild range of topics. Maybe I shouldn't be pessimistic about that, though, and it should be possible to first identify where my highly-viewed pieces have been posted and then visit those communities.
6: One of the first things that the Grow people asked me when I said that I had 8000 views and only 7 sign-ups was something about "headers" and "footers". I'll have to check with Katie if she remembers what they said. It must have been important because they brought it up right away I think (or maybe it was the second thing that they asked after first establishing that I had the "Subscribe Now" buttons in place).
7: Do you know if it's possible to write a short "blurb" for each piece that will grab people, rather than just having a title (like "Will Semantics Inspire You?") and then the subtitle (like "An interview with Paul Pietroski")? In my piece here (https://join.substack.com/p/will-semantics-inspire-you) that got 7 out of 8000 people to join, I think a blurb might be useful to give a sense of what the piece is all about!
And here are some questions that I posed and that Katie generously responded to!
Hi Katie! Just a couple things.
1: The Substack Grow celebration tonight was really great and I really enjoyed it and really benefited from it! Thanks so much for doing it!
3: I noticed that you can see a "Welcome to the SneakyArt Post" thing if you go to Nishant's Substack: https://sneakyart.substack.com/. That's an important thing for me to implement.
4: Nishant's "Welcome" thing that I just mentioned—and also his "About" page—have a lot of visual stuff, so that I need to eventually implement some visual stuff too because right now my Substack only has one photo of myself and that's my only visual element.
5: I haven't implemented much stuff from Substack Grow. I get too overwhelmed by large/complex systems/machines like the system/machine of branding/promoting a Substack, and so I find it challenging to break things down into bite-sized chunks and then pursue tasks one at a time. I think that everyone experiences this barrier to doing something—the gym is a fantastic example because you just want to know what exercises to do and you get overwhelmed with the 1000s of options of different exercises—but I intend to break everything down into tasks and implement everything over time.
6: I would love to get feedback on my pieces from you or Bailey or Jasmine or others, but that's the kind of thing that you usually pay big bucks for! Nishant gave me some generous free advice, though, when he said that my piece was like a word wall that pushes people away rather than pulling people in. This is a piece that got 8000 views and only a pathetic 7 free sign-ups, which is an impressively abysmal conversion rate: https://join.substack.com/p/will-semantics-inspire-you.
Sincerely,
AVW
Hey Andrew,
1. Thanks for being part of Grow!
2. I dig this framing. Not attentions spam but consideration span.
3. A welcome post is a great use of the pin post. Unfortunately it seems the about page can be hard for some readers.
4. Based on our conversation last night and your comment here, sounds like visuals are top of mind. Session #3, building a home for your publication, might be good to revisit.
5. It’s on my mind that we could create a bite size version of all the materials we covered in Grow. It was a lot. Please lmk how it goes if you decide to break it down like that.
6. That’s awesome that you had so much traffic. This is a really robust interview and a warm intro to start. A few things come to mind.
- since this has 50 questions with all sorts of different insights, perhaps you might add a “takeaways” section of sorts that gives people the highlights at the beginning or end. This could help with the consideration span.
- consider adding buttons and perhaps using the Judd Leggum approach. Just before the button to subscribe, include some context of how interviews with people like Will fit into your greater publication. “If you liked this, I do more of this plus xyz.” https://grow.substack.com/p/grow-how-popular-information-rallies
- including images of Will and the subjects you discuss.
Hi Katie, Wondering if Substack will be offering another "Grow" opportunity? I was put on a waiting list for the first one, but didn't get called in. Since then I have actually started my Substack. Thanks!
I started my Substack in July and progress has been slow. I try to network with other writers, promote, and have been done a guest series, but not much yet. I’m hopefully that staying the course, putting out good work, and looking for new opportunity will help grow my subscribers. I think I’m on the right track so far.
I think it’s worth reminding myself that every success story is based on perspective and a different timeline. Some pop off right away, get a viral article, or have a previous audience. Some are wading in with virtually nothing, so to have a few free sign ups is success.
1. How are people using other platforms to network and promote?
2. How do you talk about yourself?
3. Have collaborations been helpful?
4. Any new strategies for growth I haven’t considered?
Hey everyone :) literally just started my Substack this past week, writing about funny houseplant fails, successes, offering a plant advice column etc... if you are into that you can check it out here: https://jnihmeyvasdi.substack.com/
I've seen a number of comic creators do big launch drives. They are known quantities, so people (myself included) were excited to sign up as paid subscribers immediately. But for my own Substack, it seems like doing a big paid launch push right at the start (without any free content up) would not work as well. Do you recommend doing a soft launch and then a proper paid launch once you had a good amount of free posts up?
I know you don't like marketing. I know you don't like promoting, especially self-promotion, but it is needed. Promote the hell out of your work, persistence always overcomes resistance. Keep going no matter what, happy to do shout outs and help you where I can.
Hi. I write about the convergence of legacy media, audio, gaming, e-commerce, and the Creator’s Economy. My audience is primarily investors and C-suite executives. It is small, but concentrated with leaders.
The overall one is, Be cynical about the audience's attention span.
1. That means you have basically your first three sentences to grab their attention (five, if you include header and sub-header).
2. Write those first three sentences with the assumption someone is half-looking at their smartphone, every time. You do it, we all do it, so you know what catches your attention. Write those first three sentences to *that*.
3. When editing, think about how the reader would summarize your mailing to a stranger in the shortest number of words, or with the least amount of logical statements (e.g., "they wrote A is true but B is not and look out for C").
The clearer you are in holding someone's hand through your thinking, the clearer they will be in telling someone else why they should read you.
4. If you can't summarize it in your head simply, assume your reader can't either. So, revise towards the simplest summary possible but which still reads compelling.
5. Set constraints around your word count. You won't always hit those constraints, but it will force you to tighten your writing and serve #3 better.
6. What's more efficient for you to write is also more efficient for your audience to read.
So, borrow tactics from other writers who you find easier to read. I like using simple sentences followed by long quotes to build logical arguments, which I like in Ben Thompson's Stratechery.
7. Make sure you you talk to and/or email with engaged readers regularly. They will help you evolve your thinking and iterate your value proposition.
8. Yes, you will need to push beyond your comfort zone, but don't do it alone. Ask readers in #7 if the idea sounds directionally right. If they push back, fine-tune the idea and come back to them once, maybe twice, but no more.
9. Growth in awareness is also growth, but it isn't directly measurable on Substack. It will be evident in other areas like podcast appearances and invites to be quoted in articles.
10. (NOTE: my favorite) Your value proposition is going to evolve. That's ok. Ruthlessly refine it into the simplest possible, two-to-three word statement each time it evolves.
That process is awful to go through (truly), but the outcome will clarify what to prioritize next.
11. Less is more. Write about what you know & think about what *logically* relates to that or can be easily researched.
Write to educate (or to entertain), not to impress.
Your subscribers want to be educated. They are subscribers b/c they've already been impressed.
They're not hard rules (I violate #5 regularly), but they have led to better outcomes.
I see some Grow writers are already here! Would love to do a quick roll call.
Can I get a 👋 from those who participated in Substack Grow?
You all showed up in a big way today and offered sharp insights to your fellow writers! Thank you for being here, engaging with the community, and writing on Substack.
We'll be back next week at the same time and place for Office Hours. In the meantime if you're looking for more resources on growth, you can visit: https://substack.com/grow
Keep going,
Katie + Bailey + Rose + Andrew + Peter + Kevin + Maria + Rob
Here’s what’s helped me grow over the last year…
This is totally counter-intuitive but the only reason Salty Popcorn is still going (and growing) is because I've not allowed myself to focus on the numbers. It took 10 months to reach 100 subscribers and most of my friends & family that have signed up don't actually read it — including my mum!
Metrics, goals and KPI's are great but they've weighed me down so much in the past that other projects died in a matter of weeks. If the sole purpose you're writing a newsletter is to gain a massive audience it's going to be hard to stay motivated.
Write about something you're passionate about. Celebrate every subscriber milestone and, most importantly, enjoy it — it's the only way you'll manage to invest countless hours in something that will pay little to no money in the short term...
But as you grow, you'll reap what you sow.
I wanted to reiterate something I shared with the Grow people last night. As we learned within Grow last night, persistence is the key. If you are discouraged because you don't have 1000 free subscribers yet, or 100+ paid members, don't give up.
The important thing is to keep writing and sharing, even when it feels like you're spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. Most people who are doing well have simply been doing for a while, either on Substack or on a different platform, and have built up a following. You can do that too. So keep writing, telling your friends, sharing on social, and so forth. Join newsletter swaps, do guest posts, contact other Substack writers, join the Substack Writers Discord group, etc. And if nothing seems to be working, try changing things up. Try writing about something a little different, do an interview, have a guest writer, do a discussion thread, or change up your artwork. See what works and what doesn't.
But above all else, just keep going.
To help you take the next step with your newsletter, I wrote up some quick tips (incuding a link to the Discord I mentioned above). Maybe one or more of these will help you out. https://storycauldron.substack.com/p/so-you-have-a-substack-what-next
Here’s my advice for reframing the idea of growth, away from numbers and money and toward connection.
Try to measure growth in other ways than numbers of people who have subscribed to your newsletter. Are you doing work that matters to you? Did you learning something from writing the piece you sent out that day? Did one person tell you that something you wrote affected them? That’s growth.
I’ve been earning my living on the internet since 2005, starting with a space for writing I created that became the first gluten-free blog in the world. Gluten-Free Girl was my space to play, to create, to write stories, and share my joy. The fact that people arrived meant I created a community. And that community was everything to me.
Look, I fell for the numbers game eventually. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and every other form of social media didn’t exist when I began this. I started believing the hype that I needed to GROW by numbers and likes and follows. But it was all smoke that dissipated. The fire has always been to connect, to create community, and to create something that mattered with me.
In that way, I feel like I’m always growing.
I was surprised when the Substack folks quoted me for the day of Grow yesterday! They asked the group we learned from the program and this was my answer:
The most important discovery I made over the past few months running a newsletter is how much easier and more fun it can be when you know a group of other newsletter writers. Solo projects can create a lonely feeling, especially if your readership is small or quiet, which is likely the case for any writer just starting their journey. It feels like writing into a void. You may begin to question whether the newsletter is worth pursuing. I recommend joining a Discord or a writing group to share your work, your ideas, your frustrations, and your strategies. Growth is a long, tough road. No need to travel it alone.
Substack Writers Unite Discord: https://discord.com/invite/q9S4feaDVz
Sorry this is so long!! But wanted to share.
I've been writing the-line-between.com (TLB), a biweekly newsletter about art in progress, for about 6 months now.
I have under 1K total readers (free+paid) and 14% are paying. People can pay $5/mo, $50/year, or $100/year for founding. I think it would have been better to charge $6/mo, $60/year, $120/year. Why not? This probably wouldn't have felt like much of a difference to folks signing up but would have added up to a big diff for me. Oh well, stuck with it now I guess.
I write every 2 weeks and publish at the same time (7pm EDT) same day (Tuesday) like clockwork, I change the preamble and footer every time because I'm playing around with wording and calls to action, and this seems to happen organically.
What's worked well for my ramp-up (resulting in a sign up, quite often a membership) is cold emailing every single person I know, even if they’re distant acquaintances. It's probably not very efficient but I write a personal message to each person; there's no batch emailing or copy-pastes. And I kind of like it that way for now. I want to start real conversations, and I want to create real relationships for folks with my content.
Certainly, this is a short-term thing but I’m going to exhaust it before I try other things too—we’ve only so much time in a day. I try to send out 10 emails once a week or so but admittedly I’ve missed a lot of weeks…still, I aim to do this weekly.
Every single member pays right now even though the main content has been and will likely remain, free for everyone. Many are founding members at $100/year. One, who’s not someone I even really know, decided to pay way way over the multiple, which was a shock. I’ve been humbled by the support. I haven’t done ads.
This is perhaps not the most ""growth-hacky"" advice but I feel like I'm in it for the long game, and I want to build a strong foundation of loyal readers, not just grow in number. I’m ok with a fewer number of loyal readers with initially slower growth for now, v. a huge number with ostensibly faster growth (but potential for more churn). I believe it will compound.
I started playing around with a "bonus issue" format where I send out 2 newsletters: the free one is very much a complete newsletter as usual, full of what I hope is useful content—but it serves as an organic lead-in to the bonus content that is for members only, which goes out as a supplemental issue.
Basically the free newsletter kind of functions as a sort of meaty teaser to the paid one, while still—I hope—providing a lot of value, and without feeling salesy or click-baity.
You can see an example here, it's my latest public issue: https://www.the-line-between.com/p/11-still, the bonus issue (which I guess only staff can read), is https://www.the-line-between.com/p/11s-still
In the free one, I show a bit of the latest work on my animated short, and I explicitly state that Members will get to see the full deep dive on process + a secret Vimeo to the animation so far, with sound and subtitles. It's like a little extra treat! And I get to celebrate with my most invested readers as I go. Win win.
I’m going to be playing around with how I provide bonus content because I don’t want members to feel like they’re getting bombarded all the time. Probably will do something diff next issue (in 2 weeks).
I'm thinking of also writing a Medium article soon within a well-known design publication on that platform (I do this every now and again to help with exposure) about what I've learned so far + the process of designing a newsletter and the experience of reading. (I'm also a product designer, so I think I tend to approach writing a newsletter from a system design mindset.)
Hey all. Michael of Brent and Michael are Going Places here. We just passed a thousand people on free list with not sixty full subscriptions. We really started doing a social media push about two months ago, which took us from about four hundred to where we are today.
I wrote up a pretty lengthy post about my philosophy and strategy for anyone who is interested.
https://brentandmichaelaregoingplaces.substack.com/p/my-tips-on-using-social-media-to/comments
Hey friends! My big advice from Grow, in terms of setting realistic goals for growth, is to beat The Fear by consolidating the things that scare you into one hour on your schedule. So, for instance, if promoting your writing freaks you out or makes you anxious, don’t force yourself to do it all week long. Sit down for one hour and schedule out your tweets, your IG posts, your emails to friends, etc. (There are plenty of free tools to help you do this!) Then you only have to be brave once instead of trying to make your brain be brave all the time.
Launched my weekly Substack last month! It's been an incredibly fun ride so far.
I've reached 180+ free subscribers in these past few weeks, which is crazy given I haven't yet shared within my network (very few of my friends know that I started a Substack 😅 )
Some things that have helped me grow:
1) People really do value high-quality content. 2 out of 5 of my pieces have generated the most traffic and signups. These also happen to be the pieces I put the most time and effort into. I was afraid that people's attention spans are now too short for long-form content, but I was pleasantly proven wrong.
2) For the pieces I'm really proud of, I tease it on Twitter a few days before posting. Usually get a few signups and it puts people on the lookout for it. Example: https://twitter.com/healthwealthgen/status/1446897417920471041?s=20
Still have a lot to learn — but I'm here to play the long game and grow (both numbers-wise and as a writer/person!)
I started my paid subscriptions in early September. It's been a good experience for me so far with ~4% conversion.
This month I reached 1000 free readers! Tomorrow I'm sending out a celebratory post with multiple offers - invites, book giveaways, and discounted subscriptions - to see if I can pull more people to the paid subscription.
I think it's important to know why one is choosing the paid route. It may sound harsh but it can't simply be that because we put in a lot of work, we deserve to be financially supported. Every writer should deeply and dispassionately consider their value proposition from the point of view of their readers. This means also identifying who their readers are and understanding what they signed up for.
I think it helps to grow your readership if you are able to narrow your content to a niche subject area. This niche area can even be "your true voice". But the process of cultivating your niche means writing a lot. So I would also advise all newsletter writers, especially if you're new to writing online, to write 5x more than they share with the world.
Having lots of readers is great. Having no readers is a great time too. There is great freedom in anonymity. Play games, write in different styles, explore genres and voices. Going too early to paid can lead to typecasting yourself, and so can going to an audience with every single thing you ever write.
I've been drawing SneakyArt for close to 5 years. In the newsletter, I write about my art, the circumstances of its creation, and articulate ideas around my work. It makes me a better artist and thinker to do that, and I believe I am able to demonstrate that to my readers. The free readership of the newsletter is a subset of my Instagram following (8-10% conversion), and I wonder if that is a good metric to assess my growth. The paid readership is a further subset of the newsletter readership and I guess I should think of them as my true true fans.
I am curious to learn how other people measure their growth and set goals.
Growth is a relentless pursuit. It takes persistence and most days will feel like you're scratching and clawing to get to your goals.
I'm constantly networking with other writers, joining and engaging in writing communities, doing swaps when it makes sense, asking to be a podcast guest, and posting and replying daily on social media. You never know when the stars will align and the right person will share your writing or retweet you and bring in an influx of new subscribers with them. It can feel like a full-time job with terrible pay at times, but the connections you make along the way—both with other writers and with subscribers—will make it all worth it in the long-run.
We should all be in it for the long run because we love the process and because we have to share our ideas with the world.
I shared the link to this earlier but I figured I'd just go ahead and post the whole thing here for those that are interested.
Tips on Using Social Media to Grow Your Substack
One of the most important tools in growing your Substack is using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora and other platforms.
Using social media over the past two months, we've gone from adding less than five new free subscribers a week to averaging more than thirty, including one day where we added more than forty.
Our email list just passed 1000 sign-ups, with more than 50 paid subscriptions.
We ramped up our social media efforts in mid-August and have added more than six hundred new subscribers.
I've been asked quite a bit how we do that without being spammy, so I thought I'd share some of my observations.
A) Make a Plan
Look at what social media platforms you’re already active on and decide which one or two make the most sense for you to grow your Substack. This might be because you’re already active on them. Or because there is something about your Substack that would fit especially well there.
For us the answer was clearly Facebook since I was already very active on several relevant groups. Some I have been active on for years.
If you’re already active on groups that are right for you, begin thinking about how you can start converting some of those participants to newsletter subscribers (more on that in a moment). If you’re not already active on relevant groups, become active on them so you can begin appropriately sharing your content.
At the same start thinking about what other platforms might be relevant and useful for you.
Based on Substack’s own suggestion, I created a Reddit account and gradually became more active there. I’ll have more to say on that in a bit. I’ve now done the same with Quora as well.
We were also somewhat active on Twitter but over the month have considerably ramped up our efforts there.
B) Be Genuine
It isn’t enough to just a join a Facebook group or subreddit, tell people you have a newsletter, and expect people to sign up.
First you need to join groups that are actually relevant to you and with which you can genuinely interact. If you can’t do be genuine, you’re pretty much doomed to fail.
Our Substack is about our lives as a gay digital nomad couple traveling the world. So I’m not going to join a Facebook group for people into sailing or extreme sports or dating after the age of fifty, pretend I’m interested, and then leave a comment or two and a link. Instead, I belong to groups that either specifically relate to being a digital nomad, travelers in their fifties (our age), long-term travelers, and gay related topics.
Being genuine also means that before you begin trying to get people to sign up, you need to respond to other people's posts with real comments and contribute appropriate things of value to the group that don't include you pitching your newsletter.
People can usually smell a fake a mile away.
Also be sure to follow the rules. One group to which I belong allows businesses to post links to their business every Tuesday, so that is exactly what I do by sharing a newsletter I think will be genuinely helpful. (And also interacting the rest of the week with other people’s comments and sharing relevant posts that aren’t our newsletter.)
And if you’re in doubt about sharing something, contact the moderator. This is helpful in two ways. First, it shows them you aren’t there to just spam their group. Second, it makes them aware of you and much more likely to take you seriously, which is always a good thing.
Then begin posting.
Which brings me to...
Apparently, this is too long for a comment. So here is the link to the rest. https://brentandmichaelaregoingplaces.substack.com/p/my-tips-on-using-social-media-to/comments
I started my newsletter in March and committed to publishing weekly. It’s given me the external pressure (in a good way) to keep going and in the process my readership has steadily grown and like anything you practice, my writing and my posts (I hope!) have improved. There was a quote I heard last night on Substack and I’ll paraphrase: We have no choice but to get better.
Thanks to Substack for providing this platform, structure and incredible support.
Some things that I’m trying: 1. Commit an afternoon to creating multiple social media posts — written and graphics — to promote your newsletter. Use Canva or similar to create templates and reusable elements. Make some strictly promotional (what your newsletter is about), others can be about content (pull quotes from issues) and others can be lead magnets (a bonus piece of content you can create just for subscribers). Set yourself up with a social media management platform (Publer, Hootsuite, Buffer) so you can set these as an calendar that will post to multiple sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) in automated and recurring fashion so you've got a constant stream of exposure. Don't worry about doing "too much": the constant news stream on any platform means you need repetition to get noticed, even by your followers. 2. Don't be afraid to ask your social network to share to their followers. 3. Look for podcasts in your area and reach out to be booked as a guest, this is both a great way to get the name of your newsletter out there, a transcript can be new content for your newsletter and/or promotions.
A thing I was reminded of from yesterday's session, from a talk by the excellently-brained Mason Currey: (https://masoncurrey.substack.com/): if you're not achieving "balance" with your work routine, maybe that's a feature and not a bug.
I've been a f/t writer for ten years and I have never overcome my tendency to attack my work like a dog: 100% mad work-related zoomies for a certain period, and then collapse in a heap and feel self-indulgently sorry for myself for a while. And now I'm starting to realise that lurching from flat-out activity to totally self-indulgent laziness & back again isn't necessarily a sign I'm maniacally writing myself off a cliff...
What works, works. If it looks crazy and scatterbrained to other people, that's their problem. If it feels sustainable (and exciting) to you, nuts to more "sensible" methods. You've found what you need. If it's not broken, don't persuade yourself you need to fix it.
I participated in the Substack Grow programme to learn more about Substack, how to use it and get the best out of the process and system. What I have taken from the process is that a routine, publishing regularly and keep evolving are important.
I found the 6 weeks of late night Zooms (midnight!) were incredibly useful and I came away with at least one nugget every session. My goal is now to mould that experience and learning into a plan and a newsletter that add value to the audience I want to attract.
A good example of a nugget was to promote the newsletter wherever you can. I have it on every page of my website, I have in my email signature, it goes out on social media (FB, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) every time I post. It did not take long to do all that. Next goal is to find a format that I like for the newsletter. Work in progress.
My thoughts and reactions to the process are:
be honest and share your thoughts and ideas freely. Get started and you will learn how to create your own style, format and creativity. The more you share people will find their way to you, word of mouth is the best way of finding your own audience. It will take time and it will have its moments. Be determined and do not take criticism personally, I know that we do but it is part of the apprenticeship of writing. Time is the key factor and that is one I have not yet fully mastered but I hope that I will get into my routine for writing soon! Good luck to all on the Grow programme. It has been a fun time and I have learnt many useful things from the Substack team and the group of writers involved!
Thank you to everyone.
Having serialised my fiction online since 2015, my advice is less Substack-specific, and focuses more on looking after yourself as a writer, because you have to be in this for the long haul for it to work -
Be ambitious, but look after your health.
Being creative can be a struggle, but you don't have to suffer.
Set clear goals but make them achievable; don't set yourself up for failure.
Remember why you're doing this; don't get lost in the woods.
Readers are giving part of their life to your writing.
One reader is amazing. You'll get more.
Are there any plans to build a referral system within Substack? This would be a great way for writers to grow their audience
After Substack Grow, I made an effort to reach out to pre-existing groups on Facebook that focus on the same subject as my newsletter (in this case, the Moon). I've also joined FB groups where fellow Substack writers congregate to share tips and ask for advice. So far that's been really helpful for finding interested subscribers.
My advice for growth? Resilience. It is a slow process, a sisyphean task. But you must do it! You must constantly share, promote, and deliver great content. No one will do this for you. There is no easy hack or service. There is just you and your desire to make it happen. Write great content. Share on socials. Interact with your audience. Rely on yourself and not paid advertising as it rarely works. And never give up!
Question: I have both free and paid subscribers (about 3000 free and 60 paid), but when I go to Substack's main page, I'm do not see my newsletter "discovered" in my main topics. I promote the newsletters on various appropriate social media platforms, too. How do I get more Substack visibility?
I'm looking for someone to act as a substack mentor!!
I am debilitated by a chronic illness, and would really appreciate some guidance. My plan is to use all the revenue generated by my paid subscriptions to fund my ongoing medical expenses. THANK YOU to anyone who has the interest and bandwidth to help - x
Some thoughts about keeping going and motivation based on my experience of sending a weekdaily newsletter for the past 13 months. A big part of building a loyal audience is showing up consistently.
> Energy to keep writing:
I have started and stopped *a lot* of writing projects over the years. What I’m doing now – short daily emails with one illustration, one idea and one song (from Spotify, not my own) –is a form that fits my interests and skills better than anything I’ve done before. I love doing it! The fact that it connects with people is a bonus. Even when it’s hard work, I love it enough to keep going.
> Motivation:
I am a graphic designer in my day job. It’s a good job, but the reason I do it is to fund my real job – writing every day for my subscribers. My real job doesn’t pay yet. It’s still my real job. My boss is kind of a bastard. He insists that I show up every single day. He doesn’t give me a day off when I’m not in the mood. He expects quality when I want to phone it in.
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as a job. At least, that’s how my personality works.
> Sustainability:
I came up with a year’s worth of ideas for material before I started, so I would never be scrambling to find something to write. I’ve used less then half of that initial bundle of ideas because new stuff shows up along the way.
I keep my posts short. I’m only writing about 2000 words/week.
I usually have a guest author for one week each month.
I switched to Substack after my 95th email. I’m doing one throwback post each week until all the newsletter is on Substack.
I take a week off at Christmas and two weeks off in the summer.
I’ve streamlined my process for building the posts in Substack so they only take a few minutes.
All these things help keep it fun and not overwhelming.
Over the Substack Grow period, I tried a few different tactics and have gotten some growth out of each one. I signed up on every newsletter directory that I could find, then I did a post swap with the awesome Mahima Vashisht of Womaning in India. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I started recording my posts. I am finding that quite a few people download the recordings, so I will keep doing that as a service.
Hello, everyone. Great to join the community. I started a newsletter about album closers last month (please check it out!) and I'm really enjoying seeing my work presented in a professional and organised manner that has always put me off writing outside of someone else's website. I'd be interested in how to schedule tweets from scheduled posts!
As a growth hack, I'm working on the paid promotion side more now. I'm still in the ideation and data collection stage, but my plan is to start advertising my newsletter on relevant platforms on a fixed monthly budget. I'll try different platforms (newsletters, blogs and websites) of writers with bigger reach. Post a 3 month trial with different platforms I'll release my observation document to help other writers in the community to help them understand what might work for them and what might not depending on their subject matter and niche.
Let's see how it all pans out for Berkana 😊
how does the key words we put in our profile work. I search using them and either nothing comes up or someone else's comes up. Please respond.
John
We have a twitter pod of Substack writers who help boost each other's tweets and get new eyeballs, message me @youtopianJ on twitter and I will add you to it, I have found it helpful.
Thanks for putting on these Threads. I always get ideas on how to promote my work through different media. I was wondering what success other writers have had in translating their work and Posting it on their sub-domain at the same time as their English version. Google has a pretty good translator program though it sometimes misses the nuances, but it's a lot better than having to learn a language. I am considering making a German and French version of my monthly posts about life on the Canadian Prairies. Any comments?
How can you encourage new people to read posts and sign up when they are faced with the paywall that isn’t clear can be free signup ? The “none” option doesn’t make sense to most people. I get feedback on social media all the time that they hit paywall on free posts.
I feel like I've tapped out my social networks, but every few weeks I have a conversation with someone who follows me on multiple accounts who has never heard of my newsletter. I post about it all the time! Every time I bring it up in conversation that person then goes and signs up and loves it. Any advice here? I've tried paid advertisements on social but they don't convert at all. And really, I'm just trying to get free sign ups, I convert about 10% of my free signups to paid which I think is a pretty good rate. My newsletter is me trying out different products, hobbies, jobs, diets, and more. https://scottbedgood.substack.com/
I'd love to know what the biggest change you've made to your approach on promoting your newsletter has been, since participating in Substack Grow
i'm like someone who is
riding a marble horse
the one who has
lost the reins in a place
desolate and unknown
like a bird running in panic
to break out of a trap
i wonder where will
this horse of mine
at last be housed
-Rumi
I am a historian, and I have just finished writing a historical novel, set in World War II. With Adolf Hitler blockading Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Stalin refusing to feed or evacuate the city's population, the book is about how a group of poets, musicians, dancers and artists overcome hunger and cold by channeling their Russian cultural heritage. More broadly, it's about the triumph of human will over political totalitarianism. I have authored six books, for trade and academic presses, and would like to publish this one as a serial production on Substack. Is there someone I can talk to about the Substack book publication process?
I'm still struggling to get set up and running before I even attempt audience. Where can I get set up help
Melanie and Jackie...huge thank you. That's really helpful and I appreciate it. I'll definitely check this out.
Here are some things that I posed to Nishant that I would love to get responses to!
1: I will take notes on your excellent piece here and make sure to incorporate those insights into my Substack! https://www.sneakyartist.com/blog/short-attention-span
2: You said something tonight about regular calls to action, regular "hooks" to hook the reader, and regular "reminders" about the "story"? Did I write that down correctly? If that doesn't ring any bells, then I will need to ask Katie and others if they remember this advice!
3: I will make a "Welcome" thing like you have and link to my best pieces in it.
4: I will hire a graphic designer (someone with an aesthetic similar to your own, actually) and get them to make some personalized art for my Substack and put that art on the "Welcome" thing and also on my "About".
5: I got some advice to establish a presence in communities relevant to my Substack, but that's maybe impossible when I constantly rotate between a wild range of topics. Maybe I shouldn't be pessimistic about that, though, and it should be possible to first identify where my highly-viewed pieces have been posted and then visit those communities.
6: One of the first things that the Grow people asked me when I said that I had 8000 views and only 7 sign-ups was something about "headers" and "footers". I'll have to check with Katie if she remembers what they said. It must have been important because they brought it up right away I think (or maybe it was the second thing that they asked after first establishing that I had the "Subscribe Now" buttons in place).
7: Do you know if it's possible to write a short "blurb" for each piece that will grab people, rather than just having a title (like "Will Semantics Inspire You?") and then the subtitle (like "An interview with Paul Pietroski")? In my piece here (https://join.substack.com/p/will-semantics-inspire-you) that got 7 out of 8000 people to join, I think a blurb might be useful to give a sense of what the piece is all about!
And here are some questions that I posed and that Katie generously responded to!
Hi Katie! Just a couple things.
1: The Substack Grow celebration tonight was really great and I really enjoyed it and really benefited from it! Thanks so much for doing it!
2: Nishant did an incredible blogpost about attention span that's really useful for Substack Grow to look at: https://www.sneakyartist.com/blog/short-attention-span.
3: I noticed that you can see a "Welcome to the SneakyArt Post" thing if you go to Nishant's Substack: https://sneakyart.substack.com/. That's an important thing for me to implement.
4: Nishant's "Welcome" thing that I just mentioned—and also his "About" page—have a lot of visual stuff, so that I need to eventually implement some visual stuff too because right now my Substack only has one photo of myself and that's my only visual element.
5: I haven't implemented much stuff from Substack Grow. I get too overwhelmed by large/complex systems/machines like the system/machine of branding/promoting a Substack, and so I find it challenging to break things down into bite-sized chunks and then pursue tasks one at a time. I think that everyone experiences this barrier to doing something—the gym is a fantastic example because you just want to know what exercises to do and you get overwhelmed with the 1000s of options of different exercises—but I intend to break everything down into tasks and implement everything over time.
6: I would love to get feedback on my pieces from you or Bailey or Jasmine or others, but that's the kind of thing that you usually pay big bucks for! Nishant gave me some generous free advice, though, when he said that my piece was like a word wall that pushes people away rather than pulling people in. This is a piece that got 8000 views and only a pathetic 7 free sign-ups, which is an impressively abysmal conversion rate: https://join.substack.com/p/will-semantics-inspire-you.
Sincerely,
AVW
Hey Andrew,
1. Thanks for being part of Grow!
2. I dig this framing. Not attentions spam but consideration span.
3. A welcome post is a great use of the pin post. Unfortunately it seems the about page can be hard for some readers.
4. Based on our conversation last night and your comment here, sounds like visuals are top of mind. Session #3, building a home for your publication, might be good to revisit.
5. It’s on my mind that we could create a bite size version of all the materials we covered in Grow. It was a lot. Please lmk how it goes if you decide to break it down like that.
6. That’s awesome that you had so much traffic. This is a really robust interview and a warm intro to start. A few things come to mind.
- since this has 50 questions with all sorts of different insights, perhaps you might add a “takeaways” section of sorts that gives people the highlights at the beginning or end. This could help with the consideration span.
- consider adding buttons and perhaps using the Judd Leggum approach. Just before the button to subscribe, include some context of how interviews with people like Will fit into your greater publication. “If you liked this, I do more of this plus xyz.” https://grow.substack.com/p/grow-how-popular-information-rallies
- including images of Will and the subjects you discuss.
Hope that helps!
Hi Katie, Wondering if Substack will be offering another "Grow" opportunity? I was put on a waiting list for the first one, but didn't get called in. Since then I have actually started my Substack. Thanks!
Happy Thursday from St. Louis, aka 'the Lou.'
I started my Substack in July and progress has been slow. I try to network with other writers, promote, and have been done a guest series, but not much yet. I’m hopefully that staying the course, putting out good work, and looking for new opportunity will help grow my subscribers. I think I’m on the right track so far.
I think it’s worth reminding myself that every success story is based on perspective and a different timeline. Some pop off right away, get a viral article, or have a previous audience. Some are wading in with virtually nothing, so to have a few free sign ups is success.
1. How are people using other platforms to network and promote?
2. How do you talk about yourself?
3. Have collaborations been helpful?
4. Any new strategies for growth I haven’t considered?
How comes there is no app to use the site.
Hey everyone :) literally just started my Substack this past week, writing about funny houseplant fails, successes, offering a plant advice column etc... if you are into that you can check it out here: https://jnihmeyvasdi.substack.com/
Hi all. Looking forward to call. 2 technical Qs: is there a way to embed video in my blog posts? And why so few options in the “share” feature? Thx
I've seen a number of comic creators do big launch drives. They are known quantities, so people (myself included) were excited to sign up as paid subscribers immediately. But for my own Substack, it seems like doing a big paid launch push right at the start (without any free content up) would not work as well. Do you recommend doing a soft launch and then a proper paid launch once you had a good amount of free posts up?
I’m curious—how are other writers promoting their work on Reddit or Hacker?
I know you don't like marketing. I know you don't like promoting, especially self-promotion, but it is needed. Promote the hell out of your work, persistence always overcomes resistance. Keep going no matter what, happy to do shout outs and help you where I can.
Is it possible to add audio to a pre-existing post?
Hi. I write about the convergence of legacy media, audio, gaming, e-commerce, and the Creator’s Economy. My audience is primarily investors and C-suite executives. It is small, but concentrated with leaders.
I posted a thread on tips I've learned about how to write on Substack on Twitter in ways that leads to more sharing and growth: https://twitter.com/aagave/status/1448494121396707329
I'll post them here, too:
The overall one is, Be cynical about the audience's attention span.
1. That means you have basically your first three sentences to grab their attention (five, if you include header and sub-header).
2. Write those first three sentences with the assumption someone is half-looking at their smartphone, every time. You do it, we all do it, so you know what catches your attention. Write those first three sentences to *that*.
3. When editing, think about how the reader would summarize your mailing to a stranger in the shortest number of words, or with the least amount of logical statements (e.g., "they wrote A is true but B is not and look out for C").
The clearer you are in holding someone's hand through your thinking, the clearer they will be in telling someone else why they should read you.
4. If you can't summarize it in your head simply, assume your reader can't either. So, revise towards the simplest summary possible but which still reads compelling.
5. Set constraints around your word count. You won't always hit those constraints, but it will force you to tighten your writing and serve #3 better.
6. What's more efficient for you to write is also more efficient for your audience to read.
So, borrow tactics from other writers who you find easier to read. I like using simple sentences followed by long quotes to build logical arguments, which I like in Ben Thompson's Stratechery.
7. Make sure you you talk to and/or email with engaged readers regularly. They will help you evolve your thinking and iterate your value proposition.
8. Yes, you will need to push beyond your comfort zone, but don't do it alone. Ask readers in #7 if the idea sounds directionally right. If they push back, fine-tune the idea and come back to them once, maybe twice, but no more.
9. Growth in awareness is also growth, but it isn't directly measurable on Substack. It will be evident in other areas like podcast appearances and invites to be quoted in articles.
10. (NOTE: my favorite) Your value proposition is going to evolve. That's ok. Ruthlessly refine it into the simplest possible, two-to-three word statement each time it evolves.
That process is awful to go through (truly), but the outcome will clarify what to prioritize next.
11. Less is more. Write about what you know & think about what *logically* relates to that or can be easily researched.
Write to educate (or to entertain), not to impress.
Your subscribers want to be educated. They are subscribers b/c they've already been impressed.
They're not hard rules (I violate #5 regularly), but they have led to better outcomes.
Hope these help!
Good Morning!