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19 Comments

How Did You Grow Your Substack Newsletter?

I am not new to newsletters but I am new to Substack. I started a newsletter with my brother thinktiny.substack.com about Unique/Tiny Living. Wow, does it make it so much easier. What I am curious about is how people have grown their Substack newsletters?

Where did the greatest amount of your growth come from? I have a feeling for something like our niche it would be through partnerships with Youtube channels and other blogs but I could be wrong about that.

  1. 5

    I wrote an IndieHackers post about the tactics I used for my first 250 subscribers for Remotely Inclined.

    Here's the short list:

    • Quora
    • Mix.com
    • My Twitter
    • Substack analytics
    • Guest posting / syndication
    • Asking friends to share
    • Publishing-consistency-as-growth (PCAG?)

    I'm now over 630 subscribers in the month since I published that article. I'm writing a deep-dive on the 20 platforms and 18 tactics I tried to grow ~400 subscribers in a month, but here's the highlights:

    • Reddit
    • Product Hunt
    • "Building out loud"
    • Respond to every single comment / conversation opportunity I can
    • Join conversations with popular folks online where relevant
    • Continuing the initial tactics above
    1. 2

      Oh wow, thank you very much for this. This is very help ful!

    2. 1

      Hey @StefanAllDay how do you manage posting on places like Quora and Reddit without being overly self-promotional? That balance is something I've personally struggled with.

      Personally, I try to write interesting questions or write meaningful comments and then try and put links in there subtly. For example, I had a decent post on Reddit with 104 upvotes and 154 comments (mostly me responding to folks though haha) but got barely any traffic and just 1 subscriber from it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/hkj8lv/better_burgers/

      I'm a small newsletter of 54 subscribers right now - so I'll definitely take the 1 subscriber :) It's just not as sustainable based on the work I put into that post.

      1. 2

        Hey @LucianoVizza basically I do five things.

        1 - I spend a lot of time reading the policies / descriptions of the thread or subreddit so I make sure all my answers are as tight to that description as possible and don't break any rules. That also means I tend to shy away from subreddits that ban links.

        2 - I only answer if I have a genuine experience or reason to. I avoid trying to answer everything just to build karma or link building opportunities.

        3 - On quora, I put "Publisher of RemotelyInclined.com" as my bio, so it shows up on every answer I give. That way I don't have to link out in every answer to get some branding out of it.

        4 - I link out maybe 25% of the time. When I do, it's usually a direct call out at the end "I talk about this topic more on my newsletter" or "Here's an article from my newsletter about this topic"

        5 - I'll share whole posts or TLDRs of my posts, and link to it at the beginning but then say I put all the useful info in the post so you don't have to click out if you don't want to.

        This strategy has gotten me ~250 clicks from Quora (and around 7 subscribers). It worked much better on reddit - over ~1.5k clicks and ~100 subscribers.

        1. 1

          Thanks for such a thorough response @StefanAllDay! Super helpful. I've done some similar things so far but not quite as thoughtful as you laid it out. Maybe I just need to keep at it and trust the process. And have faith that if I'm genuine in contributing, good will come from it :)

          Thanks again!

          1. 1

            My pleasure, and I hope it helps! I'd also love to hear what you try that ultimately works for you -- I don't pretend to know everything haha

            1. 1

              Will do for sure. And you're at least getting more traction doing what you're doing than I am. So you know more than I do at least! :)

  2. 4

    Thanks for the tag @MichaelBrooks

    People check out any content, imho, on whether it is interesting to them or whether they stumbleupon it within their activities.

    So, best advice I can give is be interesting, useful and unique.

    Then along side that, hang out where your people hang out.

    I get the best conversions with where I regularly hang out.

    I spotted that I got mentioned on Reddit, for example, but I don't hang out and there and no one actually signed up.

    I get much better conversions from Twitter, Indie Hackers and direct visitors.

    Here's my top traffic sources for the past month.

    https://i.imgur.com/cpUymPq.png

  3. 2

    Twitter has attracted most of my subscribers. Constantly tweet about your content and ask for new sign-ups. I also post screenshots of my numbers and say I'm at x, can I make it to y?

    E.g. https://twitter.com/MBrooksUK/status/1281959822330658816 and https://twitter.com/MBrooksUK/status/1282228911800233985

    As you can see on the last tweet, I was at 14 subs and would like to make it to 15 before the weekend. I gained an extra 2 subs and made it to 16. 😁

    1. 2

      Also, take a look at @rosiesherry and her Twitter page, you'll learn a lot from her.

  4. 2

    Hey @schnetzlerjoe - most of my substack comes from launch campaign and regularly communication on LinkedIn and Twitter. Sometimes here too.

    I will make sure to repurpose my content to let non-subscribers know how’s the newsletter looks like.

    Would be awesome to exchange ideas with you!

  5. 1

    I just started my newsletter so I'm still in the "do things that don't scale" stage but I think asking friends, coworkers, and family to join is an underrated way of getting followers. If you know people that will find your content interesting, reach out to them directly and tell them about it. They also tend to be your biggest fans and promote you the most.

    It feels a bit like direct sales haha but not as bad since they are people you know :)

  6. 1
    • A lot from twitter. Both myself promoting my content, and others reposting it
    • Word of mouth from people sharing w/ each other or in their own newsletter
    • The rare thread that succeeds on HackerNews (extremely low chance)
    • And lastly, writing (what I hope is ) good content

    I have not tried Reddit or Linkedin yet; they're on the to do list.

  7. 1

    SO far I'm almost at 70 subscribers, six episodes in. Mainly just using daily Twitter threads, dming people here and there for direct feedback and posting on my IG story once a week. Answering Quora questions and posting here once a week. Gonna pick up Linkedin soon.

    1. 1

      Sounds like a similar strategy to me :) I haven't had much luck with Quora. Have you? And have you tried Reddit at all? Both Quora and that haven't had as much of an ROI for me.

      Oh, and what Newsletter Facebook groups are there? Didn't know that was a think!

    2. 1
      • newsletter facebook groups.
      1. 1

        There's a newsletter nerds and newsletter creator and substack writer facebook groups I've joined but haven't really got much from those other than the sort of crowd source advice you find here. As for quora, I get tons of views but not really much traffic. I've been advised to try Reddit but it's overwhelming pandora's box especially if my newsletter doesn't have an obvious subject for me to mine.

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