323 Comments

A couple of things I've done:

1. As per Hamish's advice, I'm writing 85% free stuff and putting the rest behind the paywall in order to grow my free list. Because my free list converts at a high rate, growing this list is the way to go.

2. Instead of asking for "subscribers," I ask for "supporters." This seems to work a whole lot better than asking for a subscription. I pitch it as, if you enjoy this content, please support more work like it.

3. I've created special codes in Stripe for related podcasts to use and pimp to their readers. Certain podcasts will get $40 annual subscriptions instead of $60. I even do a subdomain for each podcast offer on godaddy to make it easier to advertise - such as podcastofferX.whizzered.com.

And now comes the stuff that most of you will find weird.

1. Every paying supporter gets a personal thank you letter from me. Not an auto reply, but an individually written email.

2. I also give each paying supporter my phone number and a special email address only for them. They can use these to text me or call me about gripes, complaints, feedback, etc. I find it creates a strong sense of community. So far, not one single supporter has abused it, but I have received some great feedback.

Expand full comment

I would love to see a directory of all substack newsletters (organized by category). That might be a little unwieldy for developers but I’d enjoy discovering new writers. In some little way this feels like a community and I want to poke around. :)

Expand full comment

Hey, I'm Walt I write numlock.substack.com ,

Been doing lots of experimentation when it comes to getting new readers, that's the big question these days. I see lots of folks asking about it and reliably one of the best ways has been working with other publishers you enjoy reading, are of similar size and think have similar audiences to swap a plug here and there. If you're interested, don't hesitate to say so and perhaps find other writers, maybe in this very thread here.

I try to be easy to get ahold of so if yall have any more specific questions don't hesitate to get in touch.

Expand full comment

I'm not sure what Substack intends on doing with this thread once it's closed but PLEASE ARCHIVE IT AND DON'T DELETE IT! I intened on going through it in whole when I have time.

Thank you!

Expand full comment

I'd love to check out all your Substack pages but I can't seem to get there by clicking on your avatar or name. Bug?

Want to link it in a reply?

Expand full comment

I have found that readers or at least mine anyway seem to be more interested in supporting a writer they like as opposed to gaining access to extra content but I could be completely misreading it I don't know what I'm doing and running a business sucks.

Expand full comment

Does anyone have tips for quickly building an audience or does it just take a lot of time and hard work? I’m already posting on Medium, have my own website, and have played around with ads (but the conversion rate hasn’t been worth it).

Expand full comment

This thread has been super useful! I’m brand new to substack but really enjoying the platform. I agonized about starting or not but I’m so glad I did. A few questions:

1. Anyone running multiple substacks? I have so many interests/ideas for subscription revenue models...I’m torn between “don’t spread yourself too thin,” vs. “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”

2. Is anyone running their substack as a component/lead-gen for a larger offering? I def want to monetize my subscription itself, but I’m also interested in starting a larger education/training brand eventually, with courses/video lessons/coaching. Always curious about revenue mix.

Finally, my substack is at https://proseagoge.substack.com/

I’m writing about business and mindset strategies for freelance writers. Also open to cross-promoting - my audience is meager now, but hoping to build it up the rest of the year! Thanks everybody!

Expand full comment

Do you have to pick a niche or subject matter to grow your audience? I started out sharing stuff about NYC and history, but now I generally just share content I’ve enjoyed and want to share with others. My small audience seems to enjoy the weekly letters, but I haven’t seen much growth in the past couple of weeks. Wondering if it’s because I don’t have a niche or hook...

Expand full comment

This thread is a blessing! Thank you team! I come from Medium, and most of my subscribers come from there. I'm looking for a way to develop my audience to attract readers outside of Medium, it's not easy! If you're ever interested: https://thomas.substack.com/ Having total control over your audience here is ultra powerful. And that requires a lot more rigour in what you write, which is very positive.

Expand full comment

One thing I've started to consider is keeping all new posts free, but changing my archives (anything more than a month old) to paid subscribers only. Does anyone do something like this/is it doable on the platform? About half of my content is time-sensitive and half is evergreen.

Expand full comment

Any advice for folks wanting to do something like a fiction serial via substack?

Expand full comment

Just went back to full time teaching and finding time to write while single momming/caregiving is hard. Also, worried that my content is a little edgy for public employee

Expand full comment

Post the "audio" version of your written content as podcasts? What is your perspective?

Expand full comment

Interested to find anyone writing about music. I'm less than a month young over here: https://happinessjournal.substack.com/ I review music for other publications but wanted a spot where I could casually journal about whatever music had my attention for the moment and not be restricted by editorial or press cycle constraints. hmu! would love to see how others might be making this work!

Expand full comment

Add me to the “for the love of god how do I get more readers?” group. What has actually worked for people?

Expand full comment

Anybody doing podcasts with Substack? I'd love to check out some links.

Expand full comment

Hi, I'm Danica. I publish a newsletter about a niche genre of electronic music: dark ambient. I'm on a brief hiatus at the moment for health reasons, but am working on my next issue. http://endarkenment.substack.com/

If there are any other electronic music writers publishing here whose audiences might overlap with mine - ambient, drone, industrial, gothic, etc. - feel free to contact me about cross-promotion possibilities. I did an in-depth cross-interview with another dark ambient music writer back in January, and that was my most popular post ever.

I love Substack, and I'm here for the long haul!

Expand full comment

If anyone else writing about business/personal finance would be interested in working together to increase our audiences (by guest posting/ cross-promoting), let me know!

Expand full comment

What medium is best to take a risk on at this stage in the game?

E-book, revisit my blog, try for paperback, newsletter, something else?

I’m looking to publish something for a quick impact with minimal financial payoff to start. I just need some perspective in order to move forward with discipline, intention, and confidence!

Any input? :)

Expand full comment

What have you found to be most successful in terms of driving new subscribers + traffic to your newsletter when starting out fresh? (No existing audience on other platforms)

Expand full comment

Anyone got advice on how to best use the analytics? Do you supplement with any other tools? Also: hi! (Booksongif.substack.com)

Expand full comment

I'm not a FB user but am constantly told I need to dabble there in order to grow my subscriber base. Anyone ignoring facebook and doing fine?

Expand full comment

Anyone else writing fiction on Substack?

Expand full comment

I'm convinced that people are finding me directly off Substack, rather than through Medium as I'd initially intended. I don't understand how that's happening?

Expand full comment

I wonder how much time writers spend per week on their newsletters. What's a minimum number of

posts per week that would keep interest of readers?

Expand full comment

Very keen on learning more from other Substackers. My newsletter is about book marketing and a little demystifying of the book business. https://empoweredauthor.substack.com/publish?utm_source=menu

Expand full comment

I'm killing two birds with one stone this week, both building my new substack list (ams.substack.com) while also doing hygiene on my years-old, poorly maintained Mailchimp email lists associated with my established blogs (offbeatbride.com, offbeathome.com)

I did a re-engagement campaign sent only to my most inactive Mailchimp subscribers, with a subject line essentially saying "Are you over this blog? (me too)." The email then explained that I'd started a new publication on substack, and invited them to follow me here.

Of course open rates were terrible, but a few folks ported over... and now I have a clear conscience for deleting the remaining inactive folks on the Mailchimp list, because they're truly not interested in what I'm up to these days.

(Mailchimp raising their rates AGAIN is part of what prompted me to take the leap with substack. I was going to be paying $180/mo to send RSS-to-email newsletters? NO THANKS.)

Expand full comment

Hi, I'm struggling a bit with what direction I should be taking with my letter; should I narrow my focus and be less general, or should I continue with the current format and try to refine it?

I'd appreciate some advice.

Oh yeah, I'm always late; maybe I should embrace randomness?

https://hackett.substack.com/

Expand full comment

how do I integrate Substack in my already existing blog? Basically, I am planning to switch to it from Mailchimp, but I want to keep Mailchimp and Substack synced to be able to keep sending automation to the readers that signup on certain pages.

Expand full comment

I think its really enjoyable to intereact with likeminded people and read their perspective and ideas and in the process write your own, than to just an arbitriary subscribers numbers.

Expand full comment

Hey, umm, the developers, please decline the offers from big tech (especially Facebook), just like Snapchat did.

Actually I am pretty confident about your policy of "Principles over principal". :)

Thank you for making this independent newsletter possible.

Expand full comment

Hello, I am Chetneet, I write at https://lifelonglearner.substack.com where I am planning to share book recommendations and currently it has some book insights. Anyone intrested can join it. I also share thought experiments and mental models. Feedbacks are most welcome :)

Expand full comment

How important do you think it is to do, like, a proper newsletter-newsletter, a la Politico/Axios/Reliable Sources/etc alongside the more original content you do? I've thought about it but I dunno if it's something I need to do, unless I can do it in a way that'll grow the free email subscriber-base at least.

Expand full comment

This was a great idea. Thank you!

Expand full comment

This is great! I write a *very* niche newsletter on Zen, meditation and being a Stanford biz school grad living at a Zen temple in Hawaii: https://cmoon.substack.com. I'd love some benchmarks for different kinds of newsletters to compare myself against. M&R creates one for nonprofit email performance every year segmented by sector (environment, politics, lgbtq, etc) and types (advocacy, service, etc). Maybe we can crowdsource this info, since Substack is still a pretty small team?

Expand full comment

Tips on growing subscribers? I just started publishing and I’m keeping it free. Already reached out to fam and friends.

Expand full comment

I've been having trouble being consistent with the newsletter. Do you find consistency is key or is having something of better quality come out not as consistently better? I recently moved from California to Colorado so it threw off a lot of my normal routine.

Also, are there any other pop culture writers here? I host two podcasts in addition to writing the newsletter and would love to connect! I recently moved over from Revue, but all of my issues wouldn't import so there are only a handful available at the moment. https://welcometogeekdom.substack.com

Expand full comment

Any tips on growing your audience? I have a free, weekly newsletter and I had great signups when I started and no one new in three months. I promote the newsletter on Twitter and I'm happy with the readers I have, I'm just curious.

Expand full comment

Does post/email frequency have much or any connection to free and paid signups?

Expand full comment

Anyone doing newsletter in languages other than English?

Expand full comment

I wish I could scale my images and gifs in my Substack editor :(

Expand full comment

Quick question - any of you have experience with affiliate offers? Example - my newsletter is geared towards Youth Baseball Parents and Coaches...it's FREE for now, and I'm up to 450 free subscribers. At some point I plan to offer a paid version, but not yet. In the meantime, I'd love to be able to suggest certain products, however it's my understanding Amazon Affiliates doesn't allow affiliate links in emails. Since it's the winter time, I'm about to send an email about offseason training. It would be a great opportunity to link to a product if I'm going to be mentioning it. Any ideas?

Expand full comment

How many times a week or month do writers post on substack for their subscribers on average

Expand full comment

https://erlenddahlen.substack.com

How a Robotics student understands the world.

Expand full comment

not sure what i’m doing here yet...but i’m doing it at deej.substack.com

“i’m like forest gump if he was from Queens” is how i describe what it will be. come, run beside me across country.

Expand full comment

On the Substack search page (https://substack.com/search) when I enter either of the key words in the title of my newsletter — "tech" and "talk" — my newsletter does not show in the results. Other newsletters with the same words in their title DO show up in the results, however.

Can you explain how your search engine works so I can be assured that keywords like this cause my newsletter to be shown in critical searches?

My newsletter, by the way, is: https://techtalk.substack.com

Expand full comment

Hi Substack, sorry if this is repetitive and already covered in the past but ... will there ever be the capability to (a) list article title only and (b) tag articles? I don't have a major issue as my newsletter is new but I can see that as articles pile up (on the website) readers will want to be able to quickly navigate through a list of articles and/or be able to sort by tags? If this is on your radar, what is the general timeframe (weeks vs months vs quarters) for roll out? If it's not on your radar, can you briefly share the thoughts behind it? Realize the platform in heavily email disty centric but it seems like the website is still pretty important. Thanks in advance for this great platform for writers. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Expand full comment