Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
Inside my unconventional Substack playbook
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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 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.
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Letters From the Desk of Bryan Collins
Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
Some writers and creators love using AI to write and create content. Others hate it. One newsletter reader even wrote in to tell me she hit the unsubscribe button because of my “blatant support of AI.” The last time I checked, OpenAI didn’t invite me into their seed round. That said, here’s my take: AI isn’t going anywhere, so I could pretend it doesn’t exist and get left behind or start using it for my business. I develop ideas for my content without AI and write what AI can’t generate....
I set up a live chat with some Substack subscribers the other day. I asked subscribers: What’s your number one question about writing online? The responses were variations of this conundrum: “How can I find the right audience?” Niche and audience selection kept me up at night for a few years, but I don’t worry so much about it anymore. Creating niche-specific content is a smart approach if you’re building a website. I ran a food and drinks website (not under my personal brand) for a few...
They often can’t afford what you sell or will try it once and move on. Instead, create content for your ideal client instead, one can afford your offer and will do the work. I wrote blog posts and articles for new authors and writers for a few years. Two examples come to mind. I wrote a several thousand-word guide to using Scrivener for blogging, packed with pics, examples, and templates. I also published a huge step-by-step breakdown about how to crowdsource great book covers over at...