It's almost been a year since I started my Substack. I have been posting consistently since the beginning but in the first 7 months, I managed to get 9 subscribers. It was heartbreaking to be honest. I was like, seriously 9 after like 25 posts which in total was a work of at least a hundred hours. Then in December my numbers suddenly started growing. I still see people getting like 300 subs in a few months and think about the relative success of my Substack, but then to comfort myself I pull up the graph to see a line going up.
People subscribing because of some incentive like you subscribed so they're subscribing back won't be valuable. I don't show who I've subscribed to on my profile nor I subscribe to people because they have commented on my post. I subscribe to people if I'm actually gonna read their work, and I want that from my subscribers too. There's a comfort when I see the number of likes in my small Substack is higher than some which have 5k subs. Focus on making a list of people who read your work, not just the numbers.
It's almost been a year since I started my Substack. I have been posting consistently since the beginning but in the first 7 months, I managed to get 9 subscribers. It was heartbreaking to be honest. I was like, seriously 9 after like 25 posts which in total was a work of at least a hundred hours. Then in December my numbers suddenly started growing. I still see people getting like 300 subs in a few months and think about the relative success of my Substack, but then to comfort myself I pull up the graph to see a line going up.
People subscribing because of some incentive like you subscribed so they're subscribing back won't be valuable. I don't show who I've subscribed to on my profile nor I subscribe to people because they have commented on my post. I subscribe to people if I'm actually gonna read their work, and I want that from my subscribers too. There's a comfort when I see the number of likes in my small Substack is higher than some which have 5k subs. Focus on making a list of people who read your work, not just the numbers.
It is very hard on any platform. The trick is to just keep working.