Growing My Substack to 1,000 Paid Subscribers/$8,000/Month: Month 2 Update [Diary of an Author]
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ส.ค. 2023
- ✍️ I'm embarking on a journey to grow my Substack to 1,000 paid subscribers (about ~$8k/month in revenue) -- welcome to my Month 1 update!
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![Month 3: Growing My Substack to $8k/Month [Newsletter Tips!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LouPigL74bk/mqdefault.jpg)
![ภาพนี้ก็ฮาเหมือนกันนะเนี้ย #1 SS8 [ พากย์นรก MEME.EXE ] | easy boy](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ytc50m91QK8/mqdefault.jpg)
Amy, thank you for talking about design. It never would have occurred to me to experiment with colors and fonts. Big difference.
Thanks, glad you found it helpful!
Great job with increasing your paid subscribers and participation. I am going through the same route with technology and aerospace niche. Looking forward to seeing more of your videos and suggestions!
Great video. New subscriber ❤ looking forward to catching up on all the growth videos
Thanks for being here! Let me know if you have any questions you want me to explore in future videos :)
This was sooo helpful and exactly what I was looking for. Not a lot of videos out there on TH-cam about writing with substack and growing a newsletter. Appreciate it!
Glad you found it helpful!
So glad you're finding my updates helpful! Yeah, there's surprisingly not a ton out on Substack and I'm happy to share what I've been learning along the way so far.
Hi, you're super likable. Great value from the video, thank you for sharing
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the tip, Amy. I write an edtech newsletter called The Value Junction and my audience is made up of educational stakeholders. So I was worried that using emojis on my headline and other parts of the newsletter might make it to look too playful. But I'll try it out in tomorrow's edition.
Totally! I understand. As the resident emoji queen, there are a few that might read more "professional" and just serve as a way for people to identify your newsletter in their inbox. The book emoji or stack of books might be more relevant, and a lot of brands use emojis in their subject lines these days so I find most email readers are used to it!
Definitely do what works best for your readers! But I find emojis are just a natural part of Internet communication these days. You can always try it out and change later!
Really great information, please keep us updated each month it's super helpful. I'm working on my substack as we speak, food, lifestyle, and working on a book.
Thanks, I'm glad you're finding it helpful! Will absolutely post the next month's update in 2 weeks, lots going on in the Substack world that I can't wait to share with y'all!
Thanks, Jamie! Will do :) It sounds like you've got a good plate full of projects!
Great information, love substack and am in the process of growing. 💜🙏
Thanks! Good to hear you're growing your own publication :) It's a great platform!
Congrats! It's such a fun journey :)
Congratulations!
thank you!
Thanks!
Wow great work Amy. You're kicking butt!!! Hey....what theme is your personal site running? I love how it looks.
Thanks! For my personal site I built and designed it from scratch with custom designs and custom code!
Thank you! It's on squarespace and I had a designer create a theme just for me. Appreciate the compliment!
Glad I found you! I started my blog on ghost about a year ago. I also started a TH-cam channel focused on education and my diet. I’m not sure if people will ever find a blog in this market. Is most of your audience from sub stack? Should I move to sub stack? Keep the blog and double post content? Learning as I go along so I appreciate being able to pick up pointers from people ahead in the journey!
I keep my blog and post unique content to amysuto.com and to my substack, because they both feed into each other. But it really depends on your content strategy: if your blog isn't bringing in much unique organic traffic from Google, it isn't a bad idea to just focus on substack and go all-in while the algorithm is really boosting discovery of new newsletters. Hope that helps!
yes, most of my audience finds me on Substack -- I'd recommend it! SEO on google can take a long time to cultivate and grow, but so can Substack. It just depends on where your ideal readers hang out: are they on substack or browsing on google? Substacks also are findable on Google as well, so it depends if having a blog is important to you to have access to creating other pages and functionalities.
So grateful for you sharing your journey! It's totally helpful and inspiring. What tool do you use to record these videos?
So glad you're finding it helpful! I use Dropbox Capture for these, which is free I believe with a dropbox subscription. I used to use Loom but dropbox capture is better and cheaper/free!
This is great, thank you! @@sutoscience
Enjoy Costa Rica 🇨🇷! I lived there for 3 months after college. Loved it there. What platform do you use for your personal site?
Thanks! I can't wait to visit it. I use Squarespace for my website, but I'm considering switching back to Wordpress.
Thanks! I use Squarespace for my website amysuto.com and it works super well
Thank you for sharing this! Im working on building my math education Substack following, Math in the News :)
Question for you: do you suggest building following first and then starting offering for paid subscriptions? Or start paid subscription offerings now?
Hey Taylor! Congrats on your math substack! I would recommend turning on paid offerings now -- the sooner you allow people to support you, the better! I'll touch on this in my month 3 video update as well :)
Congrats -- very cool! I started paid subscriptions from day 1 and recommend other publications do the same. Give your readers a chance to support you from the start!
Whoa I didn’t know the AI tool read it in your own voice! That’s legit. Your mic sounds good 🎙️ what kind are you using? Do you just go straight usb or use a pre amp/equalizer?
Thanks! I currently don't use a mic. I have a Bluetooth one I'm testing but currently no mic at the moment that I'm using consistently.
For my newsletter voiceovers I didn't use any mic -- just my iPhone to record a sample and then I type everything now and it does text-to-voice for me! For my TH-cam videos it's mostly just my laptop sound but I just got a little lav mic that's wireless that I'll start using more soon.
This was pretty helpful, thank you ❤
I'm new on substack and posted once so far and my second post will be out in 2 days. I need to ask you if there's other ways to attract audience to my posts other than sharing on social media, I did everything possible but still got no visiters.
Have you tried posting on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, IG reels, Pinterest, substack notes, and YT shorts as well? you can use a tool like wondercraft Ai to turn your newsletter into a voiceover and put it over videos to repurpose it for short-form video as well. I would recommend putting out more content across multiple platforms consistently in order to grow!
Consistency is key! It helps boost you in the Substack algorithm. As you can probably see from my videos it takes quite a bit of time to build up your subscriber base, so stay patient and keep writing on a weekly basis.
😊Thank you for your helpful video. I have a question that I haven’t found a definitive answer for yet and I will greatly appreciate your insight. Can I submit work to SubStack and other sites like Medium? Do dual submissions become problematic?
I'm not familiar with the Medium terms of service, but on Substack some people do republish work. However, you don't want to duplicate too much content because I believe Google and other search engines will ding you for it. It's best to just pick one platform and stick with it!
I’m not techie. I’m a writer but not in the digital age. Learning as I go. How would you recommend I immerse myself in all these platforms?
I post tips regularly on my newsletter -- fromthedeskofamysuto.substack.com/ -- teaching my readers how to use various AI tools as well as the platform Substack for their own newsletters. There isn't a ton of info out there (esp on TH-cam) about Substack, which is why it's important to follow authors you admire to get a sense of how other people approach it. I also offer one-on-one coaching start at $375 for a 30-minute consult, feel free to email me if you're wanting more hands-on help: www.amysuto.com/contact-amy
Thank you for sharing your Substack experience. I’ve been a paid subscriber to Bari Weiss’ Substack The Free Press since the beginning. Originally it was called Common Sense with Bari Weiss, then it became The Free Press, or The FP for short.
I like the format of Bari’s Substack and I’m wondering which template she uses.
I’m thinking of starting my own Substack. I have many interests and I want to focus on a few that I have so it remains consistent and within the same area of interest. Art, music, books, film, museums, concerts, and theater reviews and critiques. That’s what I’m thinking. Also, I’d have to start from zero. I haven’t been thinking of getting followers for the sake of doing a Substack and I’d need to start with basically nobody even remotely interested in reading, much less paying for, what I have to write. You offer me some encouragement.
I love Bari Weiss and FP! Starting from 0 isn't that bad, it just takes a bit of time and energy to scale but it's definitely worth it. I'll be discussing more about how to pick a niche in my month 3 update!
@@sutoscience thank you. Looking forward to it.
Why having a blog if you already have a Substack? Or viceversa?
Substack is kind of like TH-cam -- a discovery channel and its own platform. My blog and substack cover different topics in different styles, and I primarily use my blog to acquire new freelance clients, whereas my substack is more about the art of writing. It depends on what your goals are: some people should just start a blog or just start a substack, but not both. Because I write for a living, it makes sense for me to have both in terms of SEO + client acquisition for my blog and community building and passive income for my substack. Hope that helps!
Great question. For most people, it's doubling up and you should just pick one or the other. For me, my blog is more about my freelance writing services and for my clients, and my Substack is for writers.
Can you write a story with substack. Will it work?
Yes, there are authors who have found success publishing fiction on Substack! Google "the elysium" -- that author made about $20k if I remember correctly on her serialized book.
How often would you suggest to post on Substack?
Once per week minimum -- 2x a week if you want to grow more aggressively. Anything less than once per week and you won't stay top-of-mind in your audience's eyes (and their inbox!) so I would say shorter, sweeter content more frequently is best.
I post twice per week, but once per week works great for most writers. I would say once per month is not enough because then your readers forget about you.
Im curious how 12 paid subs at $9 = $1.2k. Where is the rest of the $ coming from?
Hey Kathy! That's ARR -- so, annual recurring revenue, not monthly. ($9 x 12 subscribers x 12 months = $1,296, and some subscribers pledge more than the base # as well)
That number is Annual Recurring Revenue, so it's the monthly fee times twelve months!