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As you settle into the new year, here are some resources to consider revisiting:
How to convert subscribers from free to paid. This post will guide you through the tactics available for converting free readers to paid subscriptions, including how to craft your pitch and an overview of how different publications define their free vs. paid tiers.
Grow interviews. Get inspired by other writers’ stories on getting started and growing their audience and business.
🧠 Hey, everybody. Andrei here. What I want to talk about today is patience. I’ve been writing here for about a year, having started with 10 subscribers who were all a bunch of family and friends who didn’t even open my emails. Yesterday, subscriber no. 426 joined my newsletter. The thing is, my goal for last year was to finish 2023 with 500 subscribers or more. By October, I had touched on 400. But then something happened. I got depressed. I wasn’t looking forward to writing anymore, because all I was thinking about was: “Will this post get me closer to my goal?” As a result, I couldn’t write. So I had to stop. I took a six-week break, during which I lost about 10 people, but I found I no longer cared. I rested, read and worked on other creative projects, including what I thought would be a novel. Then, Christmas came about and I got the urge to write again. So I did. I wrote a 2000 word short story that night and posted it the next day. People loved it! Then a week later, surprising even myself, I wrote another thing, an essay this time. It became my most liked post ever, with 50 likes and counting! People really, really liked it. But more importantly, writing it made me feel alive again.
What did I learn from this experience? To take it easy. To have goals, but to not cling to them so hard. To give myself time and space to relax, and just create because I love it.
I hope you have a nice week. And take it from me, the kettle can take only so much pressure before it bursts! 🤯
✏️🟧 If you could wave a magic wand and ask Substack one new/upgraded feature for writers in 2024, what would it be?
My ask is for more meaningful discovery capabilities within the Substack community — more seamless ways to find aligned writers, find essays based on the existing subset of essays we read, and more opportunities to engage with and learn from the community
I don’t really give any growth tips because there’s plenty of that happening around the platform. All of them focus on what do you have to do, but none focus on who you have to be.
🧠 I’m celebrating that my Substack has grown by nearly 400 subscribers in the past two months, from 198 to 584 and counting! 🥳 I’ve had two New York Times best-selling authors subscribe to read my writing, and I’ve gotten three new recommendations. All through engaging with the Substack platform!
I’m writing an article about what’s worked for me. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox, you can subscribe at www.lizexplores.com, where I share stories from my life about infertility, mental health, and adventure. I’m not a writing coach; I just want to answer the questions people have been asking me and help fellow newbies!
For context, I started my Substack a year ago with zero audience and zero publications to my name, so the perspective I offer is one of starting from scratch and writing for the sake of writing. I don’t sell anything to my audience other than my writing itself, with a handful of paywalled posts that are personal in nature. Most of my work, including the article I’m working on now, is free.
🧠 I experienced 100%+ increase in paid subscriber signups over the last 3 months.
With a focus on self-development, inner work, and education, I have strived to keep the majority of my content free. For a while, growth for paid subs was slow and rather stagnant. So I began testing different styles of limited paid offerings that would allow interested readers to deepen their engagement with my work.
In November, I released a recorded workshop for paid subscribers, which led to a huge jump. I was pleasantly surprised by the response. Since then, I have released 1 other recorded lecture and will be teaching a live class for paid subscribers this month. I’ve also created a section for these paid perks for easy access: https://alyssapolizzi.substack.com/s/paid-subscriber-lectures-and-workshops
The main lesson I took away was that:
- It takes time and experimentation to find the right configurations for paid offerings.
- Readers will show us (via engagement, feedback, signups) what they find most valuable.
- There’s no one way to grow your Substack (free or paid). Focus on designing a model that fits your work and readership best.
✏️ To everyone reading on here who has collaborated with other writers as guest contributors and vice versa, what was your main approach to having those conversations? A cold email? Through Notes?
🧠 For anyone who feels like they're stuck in the slog or having a hard timing with their writing and publishing practice, this is a reminder that taking a long break from sending your newsletter can be INCREDIBLE for you, your soul, your creativity, your life. Your loyal subscribers will be ready and excited to read your posts when you're ready to come back. It will show in your writing.
I haven't published in 3 weeks and have used the time to just write small things in my journal, read several books, and just live life without this added pressure. I'm now working on my next piece and it's been so dang fun and fulfilling to write.
I also decided I'm going to be more flexible with my publish schedule. I will still post on Fridays but maybe it's each week or every other week. With being a mom and wife, hosting a podcast and starting up yoga teacher training, I don't want to be in a rush or stressed out. Heck, I may publish 1x every 3 weeks if my life feels like it can only withstand that.
🟧 - I am a broken record but is there any news on fixing the error that causes photo captions to be deleted when moving an image within a post? The captions also can't be copied/or pasted out, which is a bummer.
🟧 I love that Substack is a place for me to share a fun, pretty photo as I talk about creativity and poetry. However, I really wish I could do a quick photo crop in Substack when I drop in a photo. I would love to see that functionality! Even just an option for a quick square crop would be better than nothing!
I'd love to find a forum to ask questions about Substack. Something available 24/7, not just a couple hours at random times. Yes, I get that I might not get an answer for a day or two, and that's fine. But I'm having a hard time finding a place to ask my newbie questions.
🧠 Unexpected, very welcome benefits of creating an annotated directory of Substacks focused on addiction recovery and sobriety have included genuine connections, recommendations, and subscriber growth. We're now at 98 SoberStackers and counting! An idea for others to try in other niches: https://danaleighlyons.substack.com/p/sober-substack-addiction-recovery-sobriety
I currently have 56 publications recommending my own, and this is mostly a result of creating that directory plus engaging in the wider community. So far, writer recommendations have brought 381 new subscribers to Sober Soulful and tons of good, grateful feelings.
🧠 - A feature idea. Would love if there was an option for subscribers to just subscribe to a "weekend only summary post" from all the articles of the week. Epoch Times does this when you unsubscribe from their daily emails. They ask if you'd prefer just a "weekend summary" which keeps subscription numbers while also keeping the reader happy.
I just opened up a paid option for my subscribers to start the new year! I'm very interested in patrons, not customers - folks who want to support what I'm doing and have the means to do so. I don't want a hard sell of any sort, so I've just been inserting the little "subscribe" buttons that say you can upgrade. I write every day, but I don't think I want to write a post asking folks to pay.
For folks who have offered this, what are some other things that have worked for you thus far? Substack folks, I have read the "going paid" article previously, but feel free to refer me to any pertinent sections over there.
✏️ - Perhaps others have different experiences, but even though I have reasonably good stats for engagement, I find it difficult to gather meaningful data from my readers in polls or surveys. This means that I'm perpetually guessing about my audience.
I find this odd, because for nearly twenty years I honed my sense of audience at literary magazines and was very successful at securing acceptances there. This was because my mentor, Ted Kooser, was an excellent stand-in for other discerning literary readers.
What I find lacking among the Substack resources -- including advice-for-hire -- is a way to meaningfully measure or define one's readership if a great deal of readers prefer to simply read silently. Sometimes I'll be texting with a friend or exchanging emails, and they'll casually mention really enjoying one of my posts -- but I'd never have known otherwise, because they don't comment or respond to the user-research tools.
So I'm left with anecdotal feedback, which doesn't work terribly well for defining an audience approaching 2,000 readers. There are also rumors about traffic dropping during holidays (though some say theirs increases) or through the summer. But most gurus will also tell you that there's nothing universal or standard about any of this -- it's all highly relative to each individual writer.
So my Substack audience remains an enigma.
I find that my choices are these:
* Continue studying metrics in the dashboard and drawing whatever conclusions I can from them. My readers seem to reward radical honesty and vulnerability. More of that? Even so, if feels like flying blind.
* Simply trust my own sensibility and stop worrying about intentionally trying to reach a particular reader. I don't like this approach, because I devoted nearly twenty years to teaching students to *not* write purely for themselves, but to learn craft tools that would help make their work a better "house guest" for a reader. I still believe that craft can help a writer's work become more welcoming to readers by casting a stronger narrative spell. But perhaps I need to start thinking about craft with the Substack platform in mind, specifically?
* I'm beginning to wonder if the kind of performative spontaneity that Whitman used to great effect in LEAVES OF GRASS (he revised heavily in order to make his poetry feel LESS polished) might resonate more with Substack readers than the writing I was trained to produce, in which not a word was wasted. Maybe we need a new Strunk and White for Substack?
I have noticed that many "big" Substacks have a discernible model of building community around critique, or around a social grievance of some kind. This seems to be one way of building a loyal following and driving traffic. It's not for me. That's probably OK.
The same goes for service-oriented Substacks: those that deliver a predictable product that solves a particular problem. I'm not interested in being a one-trick writer, so I'm OK with ruling this out, as well.
I am less familiar with Substacks that are driven by eclectic interests and a deep commitment to craft, but that still attract sizable followings. If anyone has suggestions for these models, I think they might be useful in helping me identify the kinds of readers I'd like to reach?
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading :).
✏️Hi all, enjoy reading about your writing journeys. I have been writing here for about 1.5 years on my platform called "unintended consequences" at https://profvictoria.substack.com/, while I went from zero subscribers to 300, with a few paid subscribers, and I would like to grow my list. Any advice? Thanks in advance.
🟧 Hi Katie, in the publishing settings before sending a newsletter out, I would love to have a cropping option when selecting the thumbnail. Essentially, a photo that works nicely in the body of the newsletter sometimes must be cropped to function well as a thumbnail. Any chance this will happen?
🟧 A paid subscriber disputed a charge with their bank and I “lost” the “unchallengeable dispute” before ever hearing there was a dispute. Stripe took the money out of my account to refund the subscriber AND took out an additional $10 fee for the dispute. There must be some recourse to writers who have done nothing wrong in these situations. We don’t even handle the collecting of payments. We just write! This sounds like a Substack-Stripe issue. Help?
🧠 - Before I joined Substack, I remember clicking on a link to a publication and seeing a pop-up that asked for an email address. I thought, "Is this like those news sites where they make you enter your email before reading?"
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that clicking "No, thank you" (in tiny letters under the email field) was how you got through to the publication. 🤦♀️
That was one of the first things I customised (once I finally figured out how to do it!!)
Go to your Settings, under "Publication details," look for "Opt-out message on the welcome page." (You only get 25 letters).
🧠 Just a quick shoutout for doing Video on Substack. I'm having lots of fun with this - and it 'speaks' to my theme of unleashing your wild AF authentic voice.
If I could subscribe for $1/mo, I'd happily support 50-100 writers. Why not set up a system maybe similar to a tip jar where the funds only get processed when the total ($5 or whatever) meets the Substack/Stripe arrangement?
🟧 When I post a newsletter, Substack produces some linkable images. One of them contains some of the text from the beginning of the essay. I love it but how do I control that? Is there a fixed amount of text? Is there some way I can mark up the text to control what goes in that image?
My goal is to know before the image is produced, exactly what text is going to be on it.
🧠 - Make this the keyword of your 2024 >> COLLABORATION. Collabs are what has consistently driven the strongest growth in my two Substacks. The latest collab, published just yesterday, has already driven close to 70 new subscriptions, a few of them paid.
Collaboration drives community, builds relationships (and friendships!), and gives back in multifaceted ways. But it's not enough just to write guest posts or interview people. You also need to engage with the people who comment and repost/restack your work. Collaboration is an ongoing dance, not just a single winning move.
🟧 - Hi! I appreciate that Substack is making strides to get rid of some of the harmful far-right content, because it violates existing standards that protect people from credible threats of violence. It's a great start.
I was wondering if there are any plans to further look at standards? Many of my fellow writers have decided to leave, or are wrestling with their conscience. And there's abundant evidence that we do not NEED to give far-right views a space for debate. Not only is there research showing this behavior lends those bad views legitimacy (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17447143.2020.1743296), allowing them in this space creates a social media environment that is off-putting to marginalized groups--which in the long term could result in loss of valuation for Substack itself. As an example it is easy to see that X, with its extreme position of 'free speech' has lost both legitimacy as a platform, users, and market value to an extreme degree.
I would further argue that the free speech argument is, on its face, illegitimate. Free speech is a property of governments, not of companies. Companies are free to create their own cultural and moral norms, and by allowing far-right speech to proliferate, and people who produce it to make money, Substack is stating their moral norms: that far-right speech is ok. If, as the founders note, it is NOT ok, it is up to the company to establish control over that speech.
A summary of me: In FOR MY SAKE!-THE PODCAST, I want to make sure that people's stories are heard. Especially regarding personal struggles, how we handle them (or struggle to), and, in a nutshell, what made you the person you are today. For the sake of others.
✏️ I'm seeking publications about mountain activities and would like to connect with you!
I write about my experiences in the mountains, introspectively, focusing on the why.
From my About page:
> A blog for the curious seeking more than just the summit. In this space, I share my experiences and reflections on the mental and physical aspects of being in the mountains. It's not just the how, but also the why that matters.
Here is an excerpt from my blog:
> The awe that sunsets inspire in me is only surpassed by the rare beauty of a starry sky, an experience I had the privilege of enjoying tonight. It was a magical moment that took me back to my first year of university. With cycling taking a backseat, I had the time to delve into various interests. I found myself engrossed in "The Scale of the Universe" by Salman Khan and Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." Every time I look up at the night sky, a sense of awe surrounds me, reminding me of a profound truth I once heard:The soul becomes as beautiful as what it sees.
✏️ -Greetings! So far I have made all of my Paid posts available for a 7 day trial. I think that encourages some people to do a sort of smash and grab, so I'm thinking of making all of my paid posts from now on available only to paying subscribers, ie with no free trial. I was wondering if anyone has any views or experience in these matters. Thanks
I don't mean ending my own- I mean subscribing to other people's. Some of the people who write here are more prolific than others and they don't all work on a set schedule, and it can get frustrating trying to keep up with them all.
New year. New rules. Looking to collaborate and cross promote with other writers if it makes sense so we can grow together. I have nearly 24k subscribers on my Substack with a 12-17 percent open rate.
✏️- Hey fellow writers, I have a question for someone who writes about personal growth and self awareness. Since joining in 2023, I have slowly grown my Subtack to over 120 subscribers, but the most traction I get is from when I comment on the newsletters that I love reading. Any tips for growing my audience naturally? How do I ensure that my Substack shows in recommendations for other readers who might be genuinely interested in my work?
I am considering offering a "bonus" piece of material (in my case, a guide to something my audience would be interested in) to those who sign up for my newsletter, all currently free.
For new subscribers to receive this special opt-in/sign-up/bonus material, I know I can add it to the "welcome" email all subscribers receive after they sign up.
My question is: How can I "give" this bonus material to my current subscribers WITHOUT making it publicly available to anyone who visits my Substack's URL? (Ex: If I send it out in a normal newsletter post, it will be available to all.)
Thank you for any advice in advance! With gratitude, - Via
🧠 - This is my first time participating in one of these “Writer Office Hours”, I never looked into what it really was.. I’m pleasantly surprised and kind of kicking myself for waiting so long to check it out! I guess my question is, does posting on here help elevate your interactions with other writers? Does it help you gain subscribers? Because I know my first inclination was to peep on the profiles of others commenting and I have found at LEAST 3 new newsletters I subscribed to! I can’t be the only one..
✏️ I'm BRAND new here- and will be starting sharing my Healing Letters to Self + Meditations that I'll be cross posting on Insight-Timer (audibly recorded). I feel so aligned with it and it feels intuitive, but because I've never used this platform before, I'd love tips on how to approach this (both technically and mentally/emotionally) when just starting out. Thank you! :)
✏️I’m a newbie interested in learning how to encourage people to go paid. Also, I am a therapist sharing useful insights and tools, and hope to add a paywall at tye end of posts for people to work on self improvement. Would a paywall put people off reading the post, which I intend to also be useful and nourishing?
✏️ Just set up my Substack and feeling inspired to get it started! I'm definitely overthinking this, but any tips or things to keep in mind for your first post? What would you do differently if you could go back to writing your first post?
✏️ - I wonder how a subscriber can comment on posts with ease? The process seems daunting because one has to sign up every time a subscriber needs to comment, and you need to specifically go to the comments icon to comment.
🟧 - I have gotten many subscribers who are neurodivergent, as well as many who do not have the patience to log in every time to comment on posts. Please make the process easier.
Happy New Year to all!
To help organize the conversation, please use one of the following emojis when you start a new comment.
🧠 - when sharing strategy or advice for fellow writers
✏️ - when asking questions or seeking feedback from fellow writers
🟧 - when asking a question you hope the Substack team can help answer
Use your emoji keyboard or simply copy and paste the emoji at the beginning of your comment.
🧠 Hey, everybody. Andrei here. What I want to talk about today is patience. I’ve been writing here for about a year, having started with 10 subscribers who were all a bunch of family and friends who didn’t even open my emails. Yesterday, subscriber no. 426 joined my newsletter. The thing is, my goal for last year was to finish 2023 with 500 subscribers or more. By October, I had touched on 400. But then something happened. I got depressed. I wasn’t looking forward to writing anymore, because all I was thinking about was: “Will this post get me closer to my goal?” As a result, I couldn’t write. So I had to stop. I took a six-week break, during which I lost about 10 people, but I found I no longer cared. I rested, read and worked on other creative projects, including what I thought would be a novel. Then, Christmas came about and I got the urge to write again. So I did. I wrote a 2000 word short story that night and posted it the next day. People loved it! Then a week later, surprising even myself, I wrote another thing, an essay this time. It became my most liked post ever, with 50 likes and counting! People really, really liked it. But more importantly, writing it made me feel alive again.
What did I learn from this experience? To take it easy. To have goals, but to not cling to them so hard. To give myself time and space to relax, and just create because I love it.
I hope you have a nice week. And take it from me, the kettle can take only so much pressure before it bursts! 🤯
✏️🟧 If you could wave a magic wand and ask Substack one new/upgraded feature for writers in 2024, what would it be?
My ask is for more meaningful discovery capabilities within the Substack community — more seamless ways to find aligned writers, find essays based on the existing subset of essays we read, and more opportunities to engage with and learn from the community
🧠
I don’t really give any growth tips because there’s plenty of that happening around the platform. All of them focus on what do you have to do, but none focus on who you have to be.
Be kind.
Be open.
Be yourself.
Your work is enough,
because you are enough.
🧠 I’m celebrating that my Substack has grown by nearly 400 subscribers in the past two months, from 198 to 584 and counting! 🥳 I’ve had two New York Times best-selling authors subscribe to read my writing, and I’ve gotten three new recommendations. All through engaging with the Substack platform!
I’m writing an article about what’s worked for me. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox, you can subscribe at www.lizexplores.com, where I share stories from my life about infertility, mental health, and adventure. I’m not a writing coach; I just want to answer the questions people have been asking me and help fellow newbies!
For context, I started my Substack a year ago with zero audience and zero publications to my name, so the perspective I offer is one of starting from scratch and writing for the sake of writing. I don’t sell anything to my audience other than my writing itself, with a handful of paywalled posts that are personal in nature. Most of my work, including the article I’m working on now, is free.
🧠 I experienced 100%+ increase in paid subscriber signups over the last 3 months.
With a focus on self-development, inner work, and education, I have strived to keep the majority of my content free. For a while, growth for paid subs was slow and rather stagnant. So I began testing different styles of limited paid offerings that would allow interested readers to deepen their engagement with my work.
In November, I released a recorded workshop for paid subscribers, which led to a huge jump. I was pleasantly surprised by the response. Since then, I have released 1 other recorded lecture and will be teaching a live class for paid subscribers this month. I’ve also created a section for these paid perks for easy access: https://alyssapolizzi.substack.com/s/paid-subscriber-lectures-and-workshops
The main lesson I took away was that:
- It takes time and experimentation to find the right configurations for paid offerings.
- Readers will show us (via engagement, feedback, signups) what they find most valuable.
- There’s no one way to grow your Substack (free or paid). Focus on designing a model that fits your work and readership best.
✏️ To everyone reading on here who has collaborated with other writers as guest contributors and vice versa, what was your main approach to having those conversations? A cold email? Through Notes?
Thank you.
🧠 For anyone who feels like they're stuck in the slog or having a hard timing with their writing and publishing practice, this is a reminder that taking a long break from sending your newsletter can be INCREDIBLE for you, your soul, your creativity, your life. Your loyal subscribers will be ready and excited to read your posts when you're ready to come back. It will show in your writing.
I haven't published in 3 weeks and have used the time to just write small things in my journal, read several books, and just live life without this added pressure. I'm now working on my next piece and it's been so dang fun and fulfilling to write.
I also decided I'm going to be more flexible with my publish schedule. I will still post on Fridays but maybe it's each week or every other week. With being a mom and wife, hosting a podcast and starting up yoga teacher training, I don't want to be in a rush or stressed out. Heck, I may publish 1x every 3 weeks if my life feels like it can only withstand that.
GO AHEAD AND TAKE A DAMN BREAK, WRITERS!
✏️ Happy 2024, everyone! Would love to hear what intentions y'all are putting out into the world this year :)
- What are your intentions for your writing and Substack in 2024?
- What new experiments do you hope to run? What do you hope to learn?
🧠✏️ Dropping by to let people know that I'm seeking collaboration (interviews, guest posts, more) in the niche of where art meets mental health.
Details: https://createmefree.substack.com/p/opportunities-for-create-collaboration
And also a shoutout this week to @therobinreardon and @perfectlight for their interviews with me this week
🟧 - I am a broken record but is there any news on fixing the error that causes photo captions to be deleted when moving an image within a post? The captions also can't be copied/or pasted out, which is a bummer.
🟧 I love that Substack is a place for me to share a fun, pretty photo as I talk about creativity and poetry. However, I really wish I could do a quick photo crop in Substack when I drop in a photo. I would love to see that functionality! Even just an option for a quick square crop would be better than nothing!
✏️ I'm just curious to hear from other Stackers:
- How many Substacks do you subscribe to?
- On average, about how many posts by other Stackers do you read per week?
- Do you have any sort of system you follow to keep yourself from getting totally overwhelmed by all the great content out there?
I'd love to find a forum to ask questions about Substack. Something available 24/7, not just a couple hours at random times. Yes, I get that I might not get an answer for a day or two, and that's fine. But I'm having a hard time finding a place to ask my newbie questions.
🧠 Unexpected, very welcome benefits of creating an annotated directory of Substacks focused on addiction recovery and sobriety have included genuine connections, recommendations, and subscriber growth. We're now at 98 SoberStackers and counting! An idea for others to try in other niches: https://danaleighlyons.substack.com/p/sober-substack-addiction-recovery-sobriety
I currently have 56 publications recommending my own, and this is mostly a result of creating that directory plus engaging in the wider community. So far, writer recommendations have brought 381 new subscribers to Sober Soulful and tons of good, grateful feelings.
🧠 - A feature idea. Would love if there was an option for subscribers to just subscribe to a "weekend only summary post" from all the articles of the week. Epoch Times does this when you unsubscribe from their daily emails. They ask if you'd prefer just a "weekend summary" which keeps subscription numbers while also keeping the reader happy.
✏️Is it all right to ask other newsletters to recommend you? What are some guidelines in doing so?
✏️ and kinda a little bit of 🟧 -
I just opened up a paid option for my subscribers to start the new year! I'm very interested in patrons, not customers - folks who want to support what I'm doing and have the means to do so. I don't want a hard sell of any sort, so I've just been inserting the little "subscribe" buttons that say you can upgrade. I write every day, but I don't think I want to write a post asking folks to pay.
For folks who have offered this, what are some other things that have worked for you thus far? Substack folks, I have read the "going paid" article previously, but feel free to refer me to any pertinent sections over there.
And, thank you all!
✏️ - Perhaps others have different experiences, but even though I have reasonably good stats for engagement, I find it difficult to gather meaningful data from my readers in polls or surveys. This means that I'm perpetually guessing about my audience.
I find this odd, because for nearly twenty years I honed my sense of audience at literary magazines and was very successful at securing acceptances there. This was because my mentor, Ted Kooser, was an excellent stand-in for other discerning literary readers.
What I find lacking among the Substack resources -- including advice-for-hire -- is a way to meaningfully measure or define one's readership if a great deal of readers prefer to simply read silently. Sometimes I'll be texting with a friend or exchanging emails, and they'll casually mention really enjoying one of my posts -- but I'd never have known otherwise, because they don't comment or respond to the user-research tools.
So I'm left with anecdotal feedback, which doesn't work terribly well for defining an audience approaching 2,000 readers. There are also rumors about traffic dropping during holidays (though some say theirs increases) or through the summer. But most gurus will also tell you that there's nothing universal or standard about any of this -- it's all highly relative to each individual writer.
So my Substack audience remains an enigma.
I find that my choices are these:
* Continue studying metrics in the dashboard and drawing whatever conclusions I can from them. My readers seem to reward radical honesty and vulnerability. More of that? Even so, if feels like flying blind.
* Simply trust my own sensibility and stop worrying about intentionally trying to reach a particular reader. I don't like this approach, because I devoted nearly twenty years to teaching students to *not* write purely for themselves, but to learn craft tools that would help make their work a better "house guest" for a reader. I still believe that craft can help a writer's work become more welcoming to readers by casting a stronger narrative spell. But perhaps I need to start thinking about craft with the Substack platform in mind, specifically?
* I'm beginning to wonder if the kind of performative spontaneity that Whitman used to great effect in LEAVES OF GRASS (he revised heavily in order to make his poetry feel LESS polished) might resonate more with Substack readers than the writing I was trained to produce, in which not a word was wasted. Maybe we need a new Strunk and White for Substack?
I have noticed that many "big" Substacks have a discernible model of building community around critique, or around a social grievance of some kind. This seems to be one way of building a loyal following and driving traffic. It's not for me. That's probably OK.
The same goes for service-oriented Substacks: those that deliver a predictable product that solves a particular problem. I'm not interested in being a one-trick writer, so I'm OK with ruling this out, as well.
I am less familiar with Substacks that are driven by eclectic interests and a deep commitment to craft, but that still attract sizable followings. If anyone has suggestions for these models, I think they might be useful in helping me identify the kinds of readers I'd like to reach?
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading :).
✏️Hi all, enjoy reading about your writing journeys. I have been writing here for about 1.5 years on my platform called "unintended consequences" at https://profvictoria.substack.com/, while I went from zero subscribers to 300, with a few paid subscribers, and I would like to grow my list. Any advice? Thanks in advance.
🟧 What is the difference between “seen” and “open” within a subscriber’s profile please?
🟧 Hi Katie, in the publishing settings before sending a newsletter out, I would love to have a cropping option when selecting the thumbnail. Essentially, a photo that works nicely in the body of the newsletter sometimes must be cropped to function well as a thumbnail. Any chance this will happen?
🟧 A paid subscriber disputed a charge with their bank and I “lost” the “unchallengeable dispute” before ever hearing there was a dispute. Stripe took the money out of my account to refund the subscriber AND took out an additional $10 fee for the dispute. There must be some recourse to writers who have done nothing wrong in these situations. We don’t even handle the collecting of payments. We just write! This sounds like a Substack-Stripe issue. Help?
🧠 - Before I joined Substack, I remember clicking on a link to a publication and seeing a pop-up that asked for an email address. I thought, "Is this like those news sites where they make you enter your email before reading?"
It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out that clicking "No, thank you" (in tiny letters under the email field) was how you got through to the publication. 🤦♀️
That was one of the first things I customised (once I finally figured out how to do it!!)
Go to your Settings, under "Publication details," look for "Opt-out message on the welcome page." (You only get 25 letters).
Feel free to check out mine if you're interested.
https://musingsbymika.substack.com/
I recently changed it, and I might change it again. 😊
🧠 Just a quick shoutout for doing Video on Substack. I'm having lots of fun with this - and it 'speaks' to my theme of unleashing your wild AF authentic voice.
Happy New Year to all! Great comments and advice today!
🟧 - any chance we will get the ability to sort our posts by number of views?
If I could subscribe for $1/mo, I'd happily support 50-100 writers. Why not set up a system maybe similar to a tip jar where the funds only get processed when the total ($5 or whatever) meets the Substack/Stripe arrangement?
🟧 When I post a newsletter, Substack produces some linkable images. One of them contains some of the text from the beginning of the essay. I love it but how do I control that? Is there a fixed amount of text? Is there some way I can mark up the text to control what goes in that image?
My goal is to know before the image is produced, exactly what text is going to be on it.
Thanks for your help!
🧠 - Make this the keyword of your 2024 >> COLLABORATION. Collabs are what has consistently driven the strongest growth in my two Substacks. The latest collab, published just yesterday, has already driven close to 70 new subscriptions, a few of them paid.
On my brand new Chocolate substack (cacaomuse.substack.com) I did a 25-day Holiday Tour pairing writers with craft chocolate, which drove a lot of engagement & subscriptions (including paid). Here's a look >> https://cacaomuse.substack.com/s/holiday-tour-2023
Collaboration drives community, builds relationships (and friendships!), and gives back in multifaceted ways. But it's not enough just to write guest posts or interview people. You also need to engage with the people who comment and repost/restack your work. Collaboration is an ongoing dance, not just a single winning move.
🟧 - Hi! I appreciate that Substack is making strides to get rid of some of the harmful far-right content, because it violates existing standards that protect people from credible threats of violence. It's a great start.
I was wondering if there are any plans to further look at standards? Many of my fellow writers have decided to leave, or are wrestling with their conscience. And there's abundant evidence that we do not NEED to give far-right views a space for debate. Not only is there research showing this behavior lends those bad views legitimacy (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17447143.2020.1743296), allowing them in this space creates a social media environment that is off-putting to marginalized groups--which in the long term could result in loss of valuation for Substack itself. As an example it is easy to see that X, with its extreme position of 'free speech' has lost both legitimacy as a platform, users, and market value to an extreme degree.
I would further argue that the free speech argument is, on its face, illegitimate. Free speech is a property of governments, not of companies. Companies are free to create their own cultural and moral norms, and by allowing far-right speech to proliferate, and people who produce it to make money, Substack is stating their moral norms: that far-right speech is ok. If, as the founders note, it is NOT ok, it is up to the company to establish control over that speech.
We wrote a 55,000 word guide to growing on Substack that's free to read even without a sub. https://www.theauthorstack.com/p/substack
🟧 Hey Substack, can we please have the option to post polls in the Notes section?
✏️ My publication, FOR MY SAKE!, is looking for fellow publications to collaborate with.
I, Katrin, and looking for stories to share on my podcast.
A 3-minute summary of my publication: https://formysake.substack.com/p/for-your-sake-the-simplified-version
A summary of me: In FOR MY SAKE!-THE PODCAST, I want to make sure that people's stories are heard. Especially regarding personal struggles, how we handle them (or struggle to), and, in a nutshell, what made you the person you are today. For the sake of others.
Eternally grateful,
Katrin and FOR MY SAKE.
✏️ I'm seeking publications about mountain activities and would like to connect with you!
I write about my experiences in the mountains, introspectively, focusing on the why.
From my About page:
> A blog for the curious seeking more than just the summit. In this space, I share my experiences and reflections on the mental and physical aspects of being in the mountains. It's not just the how, but also the why that matters.
Here is an excerpt from my blog:
> The awe that sunsets inspire in me is only surpassed by the rare beauty of a starry sky, an experience I had the privilege of enjoying tonight. It was a magical moment that took me back to my first year of university. With cycling taking a backseat, I had the time to delve into various interests. I found myself engrossed in "The Scale of the Universe" by Salman Khan and Carl Sagan's "Cosmos." Every time I look up at the night sky, a sense of awe surrounds me, reminding me of a profound truth I once heard:The soul becomes as beautiful as what it sees.
🟧 - Where can I find upcoming Substack meetups?
🟧 Is there a way to have readers make a one-time paid contribution? I'd rather do that than link them to a monthly or annual subscription fee.
Edit: specifically something in Substack versus an external service like Buy Me a Coffee, Wishtender, et al.
🧠 I was discouraged that there was no way to DM, or any that I had found, so I invented my own way of doing it :) Feel free to ask for details.
✏️ -Greetings! So far I have made all of my Paid posts available for a 7 day trial. I think that encourages some people to do a sort of smash and grab, so I'm thinking of making all of my paid posts from now on available only to paying subscribers, ie with no free trial. I was wondering if anyone has any views or experience in these matters. Thanks
I don't mean ending my own- I mean subscribing to other people's. Some of the people who write here are more prolific than others and they don't all work on a set schedule, and it can get frustrating trying to keep up with them all.
New year. New rules. Looking to collaborate and cross promote with other writers if it makes sense so we can grow together. I have nearly 24k subscribers on my Substack with a 12-17 percent open rate.
✏️- Hey fellow writers, I have a question for someone who writes about personal growth and self awareness. Since joining in 2023, I have slowly grown my Subtack to over 120 subscribers, but the most traction I get is from when I comment on the newsletters that I love reading. Any tips for growing my audience naturally? How do I ensure that my Substack shows in recommendations for other readers who might be genuinely interested in my work?
✏️ 🟧 Hello fellow writers + Substack team!
I am considering offering a "bonus" piece of material (in my case, a guide to something my audience would be interested in) to those who sign up for my newsletter, all currently free.
For new subscribers to receive this special opt-in/sign-up/bonus material, I know I can add it to the "welcome" email all subscribers receive after they sign up.
My question is: How can I "give" this bonus material to my current subscribers WITHOUT making it publicly available to anyone who visits my Substack's URL? (Ex: If I send it out in a normal newsletter post, it will be available to all.)
Thank you for any advice in advance! With gratitude, - Via
🧠 - This is my first time participating in one of these “Writer Office Hours”, I never looked into what it really was.. I’m pleasantly surprised and kind of kicking myself for waiting so long to check it out! I guess my question is, does posting on here help elevate your interactions with other writers? Does it help you gain subscribers? Because I know my first inclination was to peep on the profiles of others commenting and I have found at LEAST 3 new newsletters I subscribed to! I can’t be the only one..
✏️✏️ How do I ask current subscribers to go paid when I inly have 120 subscribers?
✏️ How do I paywall old posts and how do I make them into archive so that I can paywall archive?
✏️ How do I get featured on Substack being a small account?
Thank you in advance
✏️ I'm BRAND new here- and will be starting sharing my Healing Letters to Self + Meditations that I'll be cross posting on Insight-Timer (audibly recorded). I feel so aligned with it and it feels intuitive, but because I've never used this platform before, I'd love tips on how to approach this (both technically and mentally/emotionally) when just starting out. Thank you! :)
How do I create a separate tab/link for a 30 day series?
✏️I’m a newbie interested in learning how to encourage people to go paid. Also, I am a therapist sharing useful insights and tools, and hope to add a paywall at tye end of posts for people to work on self improvement. Would a paywall put people off reading the post, which I intend to also be useful and nourishing?
✏️ Just set up my Substack and feeling inspired to get it started! I'm definitely overthinking this, but any tips or things to keep in mind for your first post? What would you do differently if you could go back to writing your first post?
✏️ - I wonder how a subscriber can comment on posts with ease? The process seems daunting because one has to sign up every time a subscriber needs to comment, and you need to specifically go to the comments icon to comment.
🟧 - I have gotten many subscribers who are neurodivergent, as well as many who do not have the patience to log in every time to comment on posts. Please make the process easier.