Over the years, I’ve started and stopped a few Substack publications. I even interviewed co-founder Hamish McKenzie for my podcast. For a while, I figured Substack was more suitable for journalists and politics bloggers.

Now, I’m more bullish on the platform than ever. I love reading stats about how other creators are finding success on it.

I recently read a report from Ciler Demiralp of The Newsletter Circle. Her team analyzed 75,000 Substack publications. Here are a few findings that stood out:

• A single creator writes 95% of active Substack newsletters
• 24% of creators publish monthly newsletters, while 21% publish weekly
• 82% of publications have less than 10k subscribers

The takeaway here? You’re not too late to start and grow a newsletter on Substack. And you can grow one yourself using a few tactics that successful Substack newsletters employ.

Write and send a weekly newsletter.
​That’ll put you ahead of 21% of active publications on Substack, to say nothing about inactive publications. Think of each newsletter as a brick in your content mansion - the more you add, the more impressive your estate becomes.

By practicing in public, the quality of your work improves. You’ll build a library of content you can use for social media. Subscribers expect to see you in their inboxes and growth compounds. Those are a few reasons why I write a daily newsletter.

Browse your feed, find creators you like, and recommend them.
​After recommending another publication, they’ll get a notification, and a few will recommend you. This tactic is more effective if you find creators within the same niche or similar size.

I use a similar tactic on the Kit Creator Network, and my newsletter grows on autopilot, so now I’m doing the same on Substack.

Publish daily notes.
​Daily notes appear in people’s feeds. They have a longer half-life than tweets, too. And the feed is far less noisy than X or Insta.

It takes about five minutes to write a daily note. Either repurpose parts of your newsletter or test ideas for future newsletters. One daily note is good, two is better, and three is best.

I’m writing one note daily, but I intend to publish more daily notes in 2025.

Repurpose your Substack newsletters.
After publishing a newsletter, Substack creates shareable assets or images for Instagram, Pinterest, and X.

I was surprised to read that many newsletter operators share these on X over other networks. A while ago, Musk, in all his trolling wisdom, limited the reach of Substack links on X. Pinterest can drive lots of juicy organic traffic, so, depending on your niche, it’s a viable option.

You can also use AI on Substack to turn extracts into YouTube shorts. Use these assets to drive traffic to your publication.

Remember, even if Substack doesn’t work out. You can click export, download a CSV file of your subscribers, and upload it to another email marketing tool. That’s not possible on other social media networks.

(If you’re wondering why I write a daily newsletter on Kit and Substack, I explained why a few days ago. In short, I use Kit forms and landing pages on my website to grow my email list. I also rework my content for Substack.)

You can follow me on Substack here​

And you can read that report for yourself here​