Inside my unconventional Substack playbook

I’ve been spending more time posting content on Substack lately. The other day, I messaged a few creators new to the platform. Surprisingly, many of them are migrating from Medium to Substack. One ex-Medium writer told me she wanted a tutorial on using Substack.

It’s a simple but intuitive platform that’s free of ads. If you’re not using Substack yet, here’s a 101 primer… followed by an explainer about my unconventional Substack strategy

Start by creating a Substack profile. Upload a photo and write a short description about who you are and what you create content about.

To grow your profile, find some creators in your niche and follow them. Leave comments on their posts and share or restack their posts.

Next, write daily notes. These read like tweets but have a much longer shelf life. Daily notes can pop off days or weeks after you publish them.

Good ones are short, pithy, and contrarian statements. You can also ask questions, photos, and videos. And don’t forget to respond to people who comment on your note.

One note per day is enough to get your account moving, but aim for 3–5. One creator who’s growing massively publishes 10 of these per day. That’s a commitment!

When ready, start a Substack publication. It’s a newsletter or blog. Naming a publication after yourself gets confusing so give it a different name. You can import subscribers from other newsletter providers if you have them.

Publish one newsletter a week. Expanding on an idea in a daily note to a newsletter can work. The Substack writing editor is intuitive to use and supports scheduling content in advance too.

After publishing a newsletter, Substack creates images of different sizes and dimensions to share on social media and drive traffic to the newsletter. You can also reshare a newsletter as a daily note with additional commentary. Last month, I gained dozens of new subscribers by following this exact strategy.

Substack regularly rolls out new features that you’ll recognize from other platforms, including live video. If you have a podcast, you can import it to Substack too. I didn’t do that for my podcast. I don’t use these… yet.

Now, a primer on paid Substack publications. Getting paid to run a newsletter is Substack’s primary value proposition. You can charge readers a monthly or annual fee and Subscriber takes a 10% cut. It’s easy for people to subscribe and cancel, so you don’t need to worry about customer service.

If that sounds great, wait!

I don’t recommend turning on paid subs if you’re new to the platform or have a smaller audience. You’re committing to publishing paid content for a relatively small amount of money. And running a paid publication means putting your best content behind a paywall. That’ll slow growth down. So grow now, earn money later. It won’t cost you anything.

Does all this sound like lots of work? Perhaps. You only need 1–2 hours per week depending on the length and complexity of your newsletter. And the reach over there exceeds any other platform right now.

If Substack doesn’t work out or you decide against it in three months time, you can hit export and take your subscribers with you.

My unconventional two-platform newsletter strategy
​A few readers asked why I’m running a Kit and Substack newsletter.

Kit links to my WordPress website and course platform. And they hook me up with advertisers. That’s not possible with Substack. If I switched to Substack, I’d have to import all my subscribers manually each week.

I also like using Substack as the platform is fun and great for creators. So I publish my newsletter in two places. It only takes an extra 5 minutes.

Not every creator has a website that gets significant traffic or subscribers from a website though, so I don’t recommend a two-newsletter approach for everyone.

Will I do this in 12 months? I can’t say, but I know I can bring my list with me wherever I write and publish content.