Growing My Substack to 1,000 Paid Subscribers/$8,000/Month: Month 1 [Diary of an Author]
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.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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![Growing My Substack to 1,000 Paid Subscribers/$8,000/Month: Month 2 Update [Diary of an Author]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DPgmkfNGi7M/mqdefault.jpg)
I started my Substack. It’s called Climb Out of the Valley. It’s about my journey of restarting my photography career.
That’s wonderful!!
This is great stuff Amy! I was working a full-time writing job and was a digital nomad for 3 years but quit my job because I was being severely underpaid. Now I'm trying to start over everything fresh and start a newsletter, so this is extremely helpful.
That's awesome! I'm glad you're making a fresh start for yourself :) Congrats!
Great video! Started my Substack on AI usage in our daily lives about 2.5 weeks ago and I’ve already got 40 subscribers and one paid. Looking to keep growing! Thanks for the useful tips!
Amazing, congrats!!
I am started Substack today! Thank you for the video
That's awesome, congrats!!
Thank you Amy! I inspired a lot from you.
Awesome video! I love your honesty and transparency. I'm currently considering starting a newsletter and trying to get a better understanding on how others are doing it. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Thanks! I'm happy to share all the ups and downs of the journey. You should definitely start a newsletter -- it's been such a gift to me to be able to write for my community and see my revenue grow. highly recommend!
Thank you Amy!! I love your simple explanations. I’m just learning of SubStack. It intrigues me, more so on sharing of content than the financial side. Good content will bring the financial side up, slow and steady. You are the first person who popped up and this is the first video I’ve watched on the topic. I look forward to starting my journey. You’ve intrigued me now to this 😊👍
I'm so glad you're starting your journey! And thanks for all the kind words
Thank you for making this video! So helpful :)
You're so welcome!
Thank you so much. I love following your journey.
Thanks for being here!
This was awesome. Thank you!
Happy to be helpful!
Thank you!
Thank you for sharing.
Of course!
Thanks for sharing your journey on substack
Thanks for following along!
I also love the idea of adding audio. I would love to use that too. I’m subscribing ❤
Thanks for subscribing
Thanks for subscribing! Yeah, audio has helped a lot in retention and keeping my open rate high. Highly recommend!
I've just started on Substack, with articles on historic sites in the UK, starting from 0 subscribers and using Substack's automated promo images. But I'm a novelist and that's a side I want to move into - when I get my head round the possibilities. Keep up your good work.
Very cool. Keep me posted on your journey, Linda! I've been writing a novel as a fiction substack as well and that's been steadily growing this year, there's a lot of potential in this space!
Thanks, Linda!
That sounds so cool. I'm American but would love to learn more about UK history esp since we r so closely related in historical ties.
If you don't mind my asking, what is your substack name? Have you been able to make any revenue so far?
Im a small youtuber , and never heard about Substack. Not sure yet if this is something for me but thanks for the info :)
Happy to help!
If it doesn't spark for you, don't worry about it! But it's a really cool platform if you feel called to publish your writing. And it can be a nice compliment to TH-cam :)
I love this! I’m thinking about starting a newsletter and trying to learn all I can. So you write two separate newsletters? One for your free subscribers and additional content for your paid subscribers? I’m really curious which is the best way to start. I know I want to make money from my newsletter and I don’t want to rely on ads or sponsorships solely, however I’m wondering should I start out charging for subscriptions or start free and charge after I reach a certain number. Any advice would be so much appreciated.
Substack allows me to send free posts on Sunday to all of my subscribers, and then my Wednesday posts are just for paying subscribers! You can check it out here to see what I mean: diaryofanauthor.substack.com/ I would start on Substack, it's definitely the best platform. Pick a topic you love and post weekly and see how that goes, and once you've built at least 100 followers, I would then start posting some subscribers-only content and charging for that. I hope that helps!
I just jumped on the bandwagon and published my first post and I'm excited about it! Thank you for your thoughts and walk through (I am now following you Substack!). Did you stop your mailing list completely? I have over 7,000 subscribers on there and I don't think most of them use Substack so I am debating what I should do - create unique content for Substack and my mailing list (I usually send an email 1 per week) and use Substack more as a 'blog'/online diary?
Congrats!!! Welcome to the bandwagon, it's fun here :) I moved my entire mailing list to Substack (and people were like thank god you switched substack is a way better and more readable platform!) so you can just import your mailing list. I think Substack pretty easily replaces a newsletter even though it has fewer marketing features, I find my readers enjoy it more
Thank you so much for this valuable content. I noticed you have a phenomenal open rate of 49.65%. Please what do you do get such a high open rate?
Thanks for the compliment! Yes, I cover what I think contributes to this in my Month 2 update: th-cam.com/video/DPgmkfNGi7M/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=FromtheDeskofAmySuto
One thing I noticed in the email newsletter sent from substack, the profile image in the Gmail app on Android mobile is not shown. Trying to find a solution for this, that will make the email in the inbox look a little more professional.
Interesting. Lmk if you find a solution!
Amy! Love your content. Question. When do you think it is most wise to put up a pay wall ? Woud love your feedback
Thanks! I think it's best to put up a paywall right away -- let your subscribers show you love from the start :)
Consider it done!
I really enjoy substack on a client project but I wish they would add more design features. The slow pace of feature release feels like old Twitter. Beehiiv has grown exponentially in the last year and shipped massive amount of features. I think discoverability and podcast and video features are winners.
Yeah, design seems to be something lots of people think about, but part of their appeal is the minimalist readership experience too, I think. As a reader, the Beehiv newsletters are annoying to read on my iPhone because their design features almost never load right/don't look great on smaller screens.
I hadn't considered substack until I heard an interview on a financial podcast with a writer who does a newsletter through substack on short sale stocks.
How far ahead do you plan your publications?
It's a great platform for sure! I only plan about 1-2 weeks ahead at the moment. Furthest ahead I've been is 3 weeks, but I feel like a 1-2 week cushion is plenty for me!
@@sutoscience cool, thank you!
Wondering how to personalize the newsletter itself… I’ve seen people with different fonts & formats. Are there resources for this?
Great question. I haven't seen a lot of tools in the Substack editor for personalizing, but I'll do some research for you and cover it in my next video update which will be out in about a week!
@@sutoscience Excellent! I'll watch for it! Just subscribed. Thanks! :))
Hi Amy, thank you so much to generously share your journey! I do have a question: how did you grow your original 600 email subscribers?
I believe that is the hard question for really newbie writers like me😶
I had a newsletter on convertkit (unpaid) that I wrote and grew to 600 followers across like 5 years that I didn't really commit to writing regularly. It's only when I started writing on substack did I see real, continuous growth! You need incoming traffic to build your newsletter, and you can do that through a blog (like I started with at amysuto.com) or social media -- or both!
Substack is also great because it's a rare platform that brings you organic growth. i cover this topic a bit in my substack newsletter as well!
How do you go from $481.00 to $8,000???
Which screensharing software did you use to record this video?
Dropbox Capture! It's great.
Looks like you haven't told anything related to how to grow from 0. Any advice pls?
Yep, I'll cover this in my next video update!
Mam how do you promote your newsletter thats a main part too
I cover this topic in my newsletter and in some of my future videos! But yes, that's a big part of it. Social media is one way, but some substack authors don't even use social media. Substack has a lot of organic growth so I highly recommend taking advantage of Substack notes!
Hi, how to reseach for topic to make newsletter?
Starting new.
Find a niche you're passionate about that you can write about for years at a time! Newsletters require insane consistency so it's best to find something you're super passionate about.
Have you started from 0 ?
I started from 0 on ConvertKit, where I used a website form to build up to 600 subscribers before switching to Substack. I'll cover tips on starting from 0 in my next video update coming out soon!
Do you have paid and unpaid subscribers?
Yep! Free subscribers have to upgrade to get access to my paid posts. I recommend having both so people can sample your publication before subscribing.
What I don't understand, is why would anyone want to read novel written by an AI???
Why wouldn't you? It just depends if the story is good and well written in my opinion. Why would you read a boring story just because it is written by a human? Or skip a good story because it is written with a.i. ?
@@om6418 because I want to read something written by a human being a human experience it would have more value even whne it's boring
@@Onajourney519 that's a valid point and I have not yet read the article or novel writing process which is referred in the video, but generally speaking, it is almost impossible at least for now to just put a button and the a.i. writes a good novel. But I think a.i. can help in areas like breaking writers block, revising, coming up with ideas etc. It can be a writing partner, but yeah the soul and experience I guess should be personal and human.
@@Onajourney519 Moving forward in this world of ever-increasing AI, that’s what human creators are going to have to focus on - actual human experience & what value that brings to art, writing, etc, except that there will be many who don’t care whether AI replicates that (for example, by writing a “memoir” based on info it found online)
Are you worried about AI dominating the internet content by 2025?
Not at the moment. I love using AI tools (my fave is Wondercraft AI for text-to-speech which I have a walkthrough and a demo on my channel!) and right now they're empowering creators, not replacing them. Curation and discovering high-quality content in a sea of AI-generated content will be a future challenge for sure, but I see AI as an equivalent of how the camera allowed artists a new medium, but didn't replace painters. Hope that helps, I have a deep dive on my Substack about writers vs. AI as well!
@@sutoscience that does help, thankyou