My Honest Thoughts on Substack & Growth, After 3 Months

And getting about 500 subscribers--for what it's worth

Growth on Substack or any social media is not for everyone, I get that. If you don’t care about it, this post is not for you.

It’s designed for newbies who don’t come in with a shit-ton of fans from outside the platforms. It’s meant for the puzzled ones, those who don’t know where to start.

Of course, I know that I’m still an absolute Substack newbie on the scale of things, but I can still share what I’ve learned so far.

This is not really a ‘guide to success’ post. I don’t pretend to have the secret sauce to anything and I’m not a successful Substacker (yet). These are just my observations and my two cents.

It's been almost three months since I started my Substack from scratch. I came in with zero subscribers and invited maybe 3 people who didn’t use Substack to subscribe to my blog. So, all the subscribers I have now, came from the platform itself.

Is Substack that different from other social media?

Yes, and no. No, in the sense that the same rule applies as on other social media, namely reciprocity, status, traffic, and ‘picks’. Yes, in that most of the Substack crowd is creative, so it’s much more muted and quiet than X or Instagram. People are more polite, older, more contained—there is barely any toxicity on Substack, and when there is, it’s very hushed. To make a very broad generalization, let’s say that on the whole, the IQ of people on Substack is higher than on other social media.

What do I mean by reciprocity? Well, you are way more likely to get someone to look at you, engage with you, read your content, and perhaps subscribe if you do the same to them. Hence, as a starter, the number ONE factor in creating traffic on your posts and notes is to engage with people. It’s just human nature, and it works like this in every social media but also in every social environment.

I can hear objections to this, why would I follow or subscribe to someone without having made sure that I like their content, having spent all the time in the world reading their posts and making sure that yadi yada…

Well, I have a simple answer to this: Substack’s core designs basically bury newcomers. When you open the app and go ‘explore,’ the leader boards make sure to funnel everything to the top 10 accounts in each category. If you open up the rest of the leader boards, you don’t even have the simple ‘+’ button option to follow people, you must click and look through, etc. Same with posts, you can only find the ‘featured’ posts and/or recommended, staff picks. The search button is unpractical, it’s just hard to find stuff this way. There are no hashtags so no conversations or thematic to click on to see everything published under a set keyword. So, your only way to discover people is to go digging, or to follow people so you can see their activity on your note timeline (and thus find some new names).

But guess what happens then? You, like everyone else starting out, have followed the very popular accounts with ticks. Therefore, you mainly see their activity and they almost only — to a few exceptions — talk between themselves and tag each other out back and forth. In other words, you get attached to their club. Of course, you could go down the leader board, or you could look at people’s reading lists, but it’s a lot less instinctive than following these obvious accounts at first.

Yes, it’s the same on all social media, the big whale accounts will attract everyone, but here on Substack there are no hashtags, or conversations. Your only means of having someone see your note/posts at first is if someone interacts with it. Your post is not ignored because it’s bad, or uninteresting. It’s ignored because it falls like a log in the forest. There are no mechanics for people to find it, it’s as simple as that.

For people to even have an opportunity to decide whether they like your writing or not, they need see you. Hence, why my personal advice is to be wide and generous in who you follow, subscribe to, engage with and who you recommend. The more you interact, the more you give a chance to your writing to emerge onto people’s radars, for better or worse.

Now, the main advice I see left, right, and forward is to befriend big accounts and hope they will share your stuff. To go play court to the local monarchs and hope that at some point maybe some good will come of it. Sure, maybe…. I don’t know, to be honest. Personally, I have no interest in joining the legion of sycophants following the whales and spending my days gushing over absolutely anything they post. I’m not saying that all they do is this, there are plenty of genuine people out there, and not everything is about growing... But come on, there is a lot of blatant circle jerking on Substack, anyone can see this and it’s only normal. I, of course, follow, comment, and interact with people that don’t care about me in the slightest—because I like their stuff. I don’t spend my days trying to grow on Substack. But I know what a silly little coloured tick means: nothing at all ¹. So I won’t go grovelling for attention, and if I ever get my own tick, I will have zero illusions that some people will find me fantastic suddenly. For now, I'll carve my own path; I won't expect any favours from anyone, and I certainly won't change who I am for a chance at a pixel next to my name.

I think a much more rational alternative to courtship, is to create your own community, your own club.

Please understand that even the tick accounts are still trying to grow, and in fact, this is pretty much what they did to get there. People always want more + they have their own community of friends; they are a pack, and they stick together. You can of course get picked into their club, maybe—if you have the energy to play that game and get accepted. I don’t. It’s just not my personality, nor do I have time. Once again, I only have 500 subscribers and I’m already struggling to read a tenth of what I’d like to. Imagine for someone with 10,000, I don’t know how they keep reading stuff at all.

You can sit and wait a year to get two hundred subscribers organically if you like. That’s really up to you. Or you can make sure your posts and notes receive traffic and pop onto people’s radar, to give them a chance and not depend on anyone.

Popping, in itself, is not enough of course. That’s where your writing matters. If people don’t like your profile, your texts, then they will just pass. That’s clear. So while I do engage with people a lot, I manage to convert them into subscribers because, along with reciprocity, they see something they like. So with bad writing, nothing will happen. I won’t, however, sit there and do the usual ‘coaching’ about writing itself that you see in ‘life changing’ ‘how to’ posts and tell you to ‘be sincere’, to ‘write well’, and to ‘be original’. No shit, you know that already. What I’m saying is that the way the MECHANICS work on Substack are stacked against you, therefore you need to spark that interest, hook up with people at your own level and stop being naïve/passive.

The ticks, the class system

I recently saw

Cydney Hayes

use the term techno-feudalism ² about Substack, and I thought that was spot on. The tick system is, of course, a feudal system of lords and peasants. It’s a snowball mechanic aimed at separating the bad from the good. Or at least seemingly so, as plenty of ticked accounts are not very good and there are true gems with no ticks. Everyone wants a tick, but no one will want to come across like they do. It’s one of those things. Once you have it you can be nonchalant about it, but you’ve been grinding like an animal to get there. Converting someone from a free to a paid subscriber is a different story, which I won’t delve into today; simply because I don’t know how to do it yet.

What I can say, however, is that ticks are just another mechanic making it harder for newbies to emerge and helping whales to bulk up—which is fine by the way. Life is hard, no problem on my end with that fact.

Based on this, one might think that after all, the only thing that matters are paid subscribers? Why care about the sheer numbers of free subscribers in the first place? Because traffic. Without traffic on your post/notes, you have less chance of people reading your stuff, becoming free subscribers and thus paid subscribers. Your posts need traffic.

I personally disagree with the general advice to ‘go paid at 100 subscribers’. I don’t think that’s nearly enough to get traffic on posts to grow organically. I would wait for 500, if not 1000, before thinking of putting anything behind a paywall. At least that’s my plan, if I end up doing it at all.

I’m a bit amused that some folks reading this might think I’m good at marketing, or I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m literally the one guy with zero social media. I’m an introvert who spent the past almost ten years without an account anywhere. I hate social media and the behaviours it generates in people, including reciprocity—especially reciprocity. The only difference is that I’ve reached a stage in my life where I don’t really care anymore. I care more about my work being read than about my ego and pride. One might even say that I’ve grown cynical about the whole thing. I have. I think there is very little genuine interactions on social media, but that’s it’s a necessary evil. I also see a lot of people trying to milk up people’s hunger for attention and success and proposing their expertise, for a price. So I feel like speaking my mind as well.

I just see this whole thing as a big silly game of vanities to distract ourselves from the fact that in a bunch of decades we’ll all be dead.

Writing and creating matters to me, it’s sacred, almost religious. I don’t, however, have grand principles for getting it out there. I’ll do what it takes, life’s too short. Substack might look like a cute little pony land where everyone loves each other, and no one says anything wrong, but that’s complete fiction. This is the art world, people are ferociously ambitious and despite the appearances, creative industries are the most individualistic of all. One has to find their own path. Me, I have enough self-confidence at this point to start from the assumption that there is an audience for my writing, and that therefore, I won’t wait in a corner, like a puppy, for things to come my way. I will go right in, come what may.

TLDR:

• Don’t be stingy with your likes, comments, follows, and recommendations — why hold back? Just go and engage with folks. Create traffic and meet people. Who cares? Pop onto people’s radar. You’ve got to get traffic going one way or another.

• Try to create your own gang, aim at people at your own level and please, PLEASE, for goodness’ sake, don’t turn yourself into a spineless sycophant. You are an artist, for goodness’ sake. Have some pride.

• Stop worrying about being introverted or conforming to certain norms. Get your writing out there, because why not? There are plenty of dull accounts with red ticks. Learn to put the sensitive writer hat off, and turn into a bit of an exec producer.

Hey! Let me know if this was helpful in any way or compete BS. Also, what about you? What is your experience on Substack so far? Care to share?

You Cynical (But Concrete) Guide to 100 Subscribers for Substack NOOBS

Our Spa Day Fiasco

1. I’ve add quite a few convos with bestsellers who saw this part as being somewhat no acknowledging how hard it is to get a bestseller badge, and how much work it requires. Just to clarify: getting a bestseller badge is a very nice achievement (unless you bought it for yourself) and it takes a remarkable amount of effort. People who have it should feel proud, I’m not saying they shouldn’t. I’m criticising the system and if and when I get my own badge, I will still criticise a system of class and status. I think there’s enough of this and I have myself for wanting the badge—yet I want it. Hence why I dislike the system.

2. Note from

Cydney Hayes

regarding the term: “Oh hey! Thanks for linking to me 😛 To be clear, I did not originate the technofeualism concept!! I first read about it in a NY Mag article by Malcolm Harris from 2022 https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/10/what-is-technofeudalism.html. (His book Palo Alto is also worth reading!) So by technofeudalism I meant that the *platforms* (including Substack) and platform owners are the lords, and everyone who uses the platforms, check marks or not, are the serfs.

Anyway, great piece! And I very much agree w the warning about sycophantry lol”