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Has anyone started blogging with Substack successfully?

I have my own blog and signed myself up to Substack to build members for free. Currently, I manually copy/paste all my content from my Blog to SubStack and have the widget on my website. At the end of my blog posts, I say "Join the discussion" with a link to the post on SubStack, but I haven't had anyone sign up yet.

How many have managed to build an audience, and what did you do in order to kickstart it?

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    I am enjoying Substack actually for case is just perfect.

    More click through and more openings. Like they tripled..

    Colorsandfonts.substack.com

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    Umm... I can't really give you any advice cuz I'm still a noob.
    But I've found someone from Twitter that doing it so well ($100k ARR).

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          To be fair, Lenny's newsletter is like the top 1% of the category. He has one of the most famous email newsletters in marketing. Easily top 3

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    I got to 50 subscribers pretty fast but the growth is much slower since.

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    Hi Michael, I'm just starting testing SubStack and also Sendfox (the new-ish product from Sumo). So far I think I am digging Sendfox a little more...

    If there was traffic coming from WITHIN Substack, then that would be an advantage. (i.e. people browsing SubStack for newsletters) but I'm not sure that happens so much. You still need to promote your newsletter off-substack...

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      SendFox does look good, but it's very different from Substack. Substack to me is an integrated blogging, memberships and newsletter platform.

      I think with all these platforms, you still need to promote elsewhere in order to get email subs.

      SendFox is definitely a smart email service though, I love the fact it can auto-generate content based on your RSS and social media.

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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      Hey, figured I’d chime in here since you mentioned you’ll be publishing your 1st book this year. Would love for you to sign up for the waitlist for JemSplash.com to provide us some feedback during beta. It’s a alternative to both GumRoad and Payhip

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        This comment was deleted a year ago.

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          Thank you so much! Definitely got me there!

          Our platform will have lower transaction fees throughout each tier, more upsell features, and ability to select themes if you choose to use landing pages off the site, (and more post-MVP)

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            This comment was deleted a year ago.

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      Thank you so much for your insight, that's really helpful. My plan would probably be to migrate over to Ghost as well since they offer a lot more flexibility than Substack, but are more expensive if you go for their Pro hosting (which I would choose for worry-free hosting). I also love the fact Ghost doesn't take a percentage cost either.

      I've followed you on Twitter (MBrooksUK) and would love to chat with you on how you got started and gained your first handful of subs and more q's.

      Thanks so much, PayHip are very similar to Gumroad, but are UK based. Good luck on publishing your book and I hope it goes well for you.

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        FWIW - You can find much cheaper Ghost hosting that offers similar support/services as pro. Been using them for a couple months now and love it. (The small cost was worth the saved headache of managing it myself).

        https://getmidnight.com/

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          Thanks for the mention. I made the decision to stick with Substack and have just switched on paid subscriptions. 😬

          I'm time poor and I found that I was struggling to maintain substack, my Notion resource and Ghost.

          So I made Notion my website as I already had that habit of maintaining and adding to it and people seem to like it.

          But...I'm going to make the majority of my Notion stuff as part of a knowledge base for my Substack subscribers. I have other things I'm going to add to the Notion too, which I've been struggling to decide where to put as I didn't want to fall into the trap of giving away too much for free.

          I think in an ideal world, and with a bit more time, I would probably go with Ghost.

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