How to test the waters on Substack
Not all writers who start a Substack treat it as their full-time job at the outset. Many choose instead to start slow, devoting a few hours to their publications each week or month to see if there’s an audience for their writing.
We recently launched a few features that make it easier than ever for writers to test the waters. If you’re considering one day launching a Substack of your own, you can start collecting email addresses and receiving pledges for future paid subscriptions today with minimal time investment.
Create a publication and begin receiving pledges
Even if you’re not ready to post regularly, it’s a smart strategy to simply open a publication on Substack. Once you have a publication—which takes just 5 minutes to create—readers can begin to both sign up for your email list and make subscription pledges. That means that you will have reliable audience, and perhaps some recurring payments, if you one day choose to take your Substack seriously and enable paid subscriptions.
Pledges have already helped many writers build confidence that there’s a market for their writing. You can use pledges without publishing regularly or aggressively promoting your Substacks. You just need to open a publication.
If you don’t want to encourage pledges, you can turn the feature off at any time in your dashboard.
Not ready to go public?
If you aren’t comfortable creating a public Substack, you still have a few ways to start building momentum here.
Open a private publication.
A private Substack is a publication that requires readers to request to subscribe to see your posts. As a writer, you can choose to approve or decline each subscription request.
Readers who discover your private publication via your Substack profile can pledge their financial support, just like with a public Substack, but the articles you publish won’t be visible non-subscribers.
Collect “pre-subscribes” as a reader
If you’re not ready to open a publication, you can still start building your audience as a reader. People who discover you via the comments, your guest posts, or Substack Notes can easily subscribe to your future work.
When someone subscribes to you as a reader, you'll be notified via email. If you open a publication, you’ll be able to email those readers your posts.
Need more help getting started? Explore one of our comprehensive guides.
The starting waters are too deep! How to get to more shallow waters ?
I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the emails, telling that I have no readers or subscribers this week either. And a lot of spam about ‘How to get more readers or how to something else’.
I feel like I am from another planet or something who is thinking: ‘Hey! Come on! I am happy to just be allowed to be me and share my stories. That is still huge for me. I can’t even think about how it could feel if I got subscribers or more clients.
Do you need to wait until you're ready to devote significant time to a Substack before opening it? Is there a temporary period when the algorithm gives new writers a leg up by giving them more favorable publication placement in discovery areas? Thinking about starting a "throwaway" publication before launching my long-term one. Any advice? https://wordletoday.io/
I can’t find how to do this. Any help would be appreciated. I want free readers to get half-way through my public post and bump into a “please subscribe FOR FREE to read the rest of this post”… I don’t want to charge $. I just want them to subscribe for free to keep reading the rest. Thanks.
Gang, how can we reduce or eliminate direct emails being sent to our inbox? This is actually driving me away from subscribing to new publications because I am overwhelmed from receiving 100 emails per day! What's the secret to streamline? For me, using the app allows me to pick up the posts quite easily with a fast daily scan.
SOS!
You can go into your settings and switch to just reading in the app. That way the only email you get is from Substack with news about your own publication.
Awesome! Thanks, I just found it.
SOS ! I agree and thank you.
I decided to minimise the time I am online. And I realised that I freely get the biggest news from my friends. News from around the globe, which is more up to date than news from just one country or from one writer’s point of view. Where my focus goes, there is where I create my reality. And everything which is opposite, I easily sort out as less important or not interesting. So I ask myself, where is my focus today/this week/this month? Does it serves my life?
My take on it, is to unsubscribe and sort it. Plus I have several email addresses (Protonmail) and some addresses I only check like once a week/month.
Me parece muy acertada la estrategia de Substack para facilitar que los escritores prueben su audiencia antes de comprometerse por completo. Es cierto que muchos no pueden permitirse dejar todo y dedicarse al 100% a escribir desde el primer día, por lo que herramientas como la recopilación de correos y los compromisos de suscripción son un gran incentivo.
Este enfoque de crecimiento gradual también es clave en otras industrias digitales. En plataformas de entretenimiento como https://joefortune-au.com/ , por ejemplo, la planificación estratégica y la acumulación progresiva de usuarios son esenciales para el éxito a largo plazo.
Además, el simple hecho de abrir una publicación puede ser un primer paso clave. Construir una audiencia con tiempo y sin presión permite a los creadores entender mejor qué tipo de contenido funciona y qué espera su comunidad. Esta flexibilidad es lo que hace que plataformas como esta sean atractivas para nuevos talentos.
¿Qué opinan los demás sobre esta estrategia? ¿Alguien ha probado lanzar su Substack de manera gradual?
Es interesante que muchos escritores que comienzan en la plataforma Substack no lo hacen a tiempo completo desde el principio. Muchos prefieren empezar poco a poco, dedicando unas horas a la semana o al mes para ver si hay interés por su contenido. Esto les permite adaptarse y probar cómo su trabajo es recibido por la audiencia.
Además, las nuevas funciones de la plataforma hacen que el proceso sea mucho más sencillo. Si alguna vez planeas crear tu propio Substack, puedes empezar a recolectar direcciones de correo electrónico y recibir promesas de suscripciones hoy mismo sin mucho esfuerzo.
Es una excelente estrategia para empezar y ver el potencial de tu contenido antes de pasar a suscripciones de pago. Al igual que en otros campos, como en el mundo del entretenimiento en línea, plataformas como https://mi-casino-ve.net permiten encontrar fuentes confiables para el desarrollo.
Estos pasos pueden ser útiles para quienes quieren comenzar con calma y desarrollar sus ideas poco a poco.
If you’re considering one day launching a Substack of your own https://fineoutsolar.com
Hi - similarly to Fran below, we would like to not charge our subscribers $ but also only want subscribers to see our posts (in order to incentivise people to subscribe, otherwise they can just read the content and we sometimes do not get the follower). When you put your account on private mode then it looks like you have not published any posts, which we also do not want. We just want the content visible for subscribers and that non-subscribers can then also find it in order to subscribe.
Does it matter if you open a Substack months ahead of when you plan to really start focusing on it? For example, does the algorithm favor new publications in discovery areas for a bit to help new writers? Wondering if I should first start a "throwaway" publication and then create my long-term publication closer to launch date?
I simply wanted to mention how wonderful your article is. I could tell you are an authority on this subject based on how well-written your post is. https://elastic-man.com
This has been very helpful. Thanks