On substack success

Success on substack won't come from posting every day and having thousands of subscribers, sorry.

Slow Days Fast Writing, or whatever Eve Babitz wrote about. Can you tell I’m deep into that Joan Didion and Eve Babitz book?

Today I want to talk about the influx of ‘how to be successful on substack’ posts, which often get a lot of views, and a lot of likes, and come from people with a lot of subscribers who have been on this app before its boom and imported their subscribers from other platforms.

I’m not some big creator here, I only have 400 subscribers and my biggest post has +300 likes. However, I’ve read all of these how to be successful posts and I’m tired. Hell, I’m exhausted.

They all tell you, to write every day, post every day, and use notes all the time, promote on your insta and twitter (as if you already have a platform that wants to read you on there) and the truth is, that’s not how you should work. You should do what works for you, write about what makes your heart zing, and please, don’t use notes to share a Carrie Bradshaw picture saying ‘me posting to my 3 subscribers’ to gain attention. Yes, you’ll gain attention and subscribers, but these people are not the type of people to read your long-form content. Let’s be frank.

I’ve learned that publishing less is better. Don’t flood your subscribers with so much content they won’t know what to do with it. Yes, write every day, but don’t push the publish button until you’ve edited and made sure your post is the best it can be. Don’t over-edit yourself though, find the fine line that works for you, this is a blog post, not a New York Times political article.

Some of my favorite creators post a newsletter a week, (thinking of

mayumi writes.

and

Janu

) on a subject they’re deeply passionate about and research extensively. The pieces are beautiful, with a carefully chosen cover edit made on Canva and you can tell they’re building themselves and their lore through every article. That’s what you should be focusing on: building your lore.

Build yourself as a writer. This is a place to exercise writing in all its forms, fictional, essays, and poetry, so try your hand at every single one of these and post those building blocks. There’s a clear difference between my first post on this app (an essay about Johanna Mason from Hunger Games) and my latest (an essay on girlhood). The writing is sharper, I have a clear vision of what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it and it’s a marvel to see the difference and the growth between all of my posts.

But most importantly, success on substack, while it cannot be defined by the amount of subscribers or likes a post gets, (let’s be real, some posts get more traction than others and that’s totally okay, you can’t expect your subscribers to mobilize equally behind all of your posts) it can be defined by the community you build on this app.

None of the articles I’ve read about success on Substack talk about this because they’re so focused on the selfish ‘take’ you can get from this app, but you can give so much, and receive in other forms than likes and subscribe. When you have the same four people who show up on all of your posts, actively engaging with your work and leaving nice comments (thinking of

Ritwik Upadhyay

and

Noyonika Banerjee 💖

) it’s a win. It’s a huge win. It’s the biggest win.

I’ve learned that to be on substack is to build a community. Yes, you need to write, but you need to reply to comments and thank people for reading you in the first place, even if you are a bigger creator. A great writer who does this all the time is

Amanda!

who has over 3k subscribers and still thanks every single one of the readers who leaves a comment, replying with genuine interest on the thing they’re commenting about.

You need to start conversations with creators you love. Support others. That’s the key to success. Give give give, read, read, read. This app doesn’t exist in a post vacuum where you can post and disappear. You need to actively engage with people here, that’s how you succeed.

Success doesn’t come from the metrics of how many subscribers you have, it comes from having a supportive community. With exposure comes hate, my most popular post had gotten me a lot of negative attention, including transphobic comments, but the positive comments and the support I get from other creators on this app outshines everything. That’s what matters.

It can be so easy to get stuck in the metrics and refresh the dashboard every couple of hours to know how many views and how many subscribers you got. But don’t get lost in the numbers game, focus on community. Be genuine.

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I used this article to shout out some of my favorite writers on here, and if you could check them out for a second it would mean the world to me as they are some of the most interesting singular thinkers I’ve ever read.

One of my favorite things about this app is how it expands your mind and your opinions, giving you new perspectives and new opinions, it’s truly a gift that keeps on giving, so please check out the creators I mentioned <3

From Marseille with love,

*vapes away*