So you want to start a Substack?

The Dos and Don'ts to help you succeed

So you want to start a Substack? Great, let me help you by sharing what I’ve learned so far, what I’ve gotten right and what I’ve gotten wrong, as well as how I’ve advised others who have recently joined. I’ve been sending private messages to fellow writers, interested but somewhat unsure of how to make it work and I figured it’s a better use of my time to jot it all down here. Work smarter, not harder, so we can spend more time in bed, yadda yadda. Admittedly, I’m not long in the Substack game, however, I became a ‘bestseller’ within 24 hours and having spoken with the head honchos at Substack, I’m told my growth and my ratio of paid to unpaid subscribers is quite a lot more than they’d expect to see. So I must be doing something right, slowly but surely converting those just curious into those invested month by month. 

Substack is a super successful self-publishing platform that has now become one of the cornerstones of my career. I’m very grateful for it. It’s easy, and intuitive and has given me so much more confidence as a writer than I had when I first signed up. It helps you find your voice and go all in on it. It allows you to experiment and expand your creative comfort zone. It has allowed me to gather my tribe - not just people who are interested in following you to keep tabs but those who appreciate your voice and are experiencing a lot of the same stuff. Writing here anchors my week, replacing the traditional deadlines of print and online journalism (which was precarious at the best of times) with the accountability I now have to honour my subscribers. It’s incredibly motivating to see your subscribers ticking up - you are doing this for yourself - but of course, it can be a bit disheartening when you see you’ve lost a few. Basing my success on the ebb and flow of subscribers is something I’m trying to move away from however; it’s the reason why (well, one of) I wanted to move away from social media. My value is not based on the number of people following me because they like my kitchen tiles or my latest Levis (but on that note, the 501 Crop style is a winner). Before this turns into a Substack jizzfest, let me get down to it. 

1. Having a large following on social media does not automatically mean you will do well here without putting in the work. I see a lot of influencers moving over, thinking they can convert their hundreds of thousands of followers into paying subscribers but it’s a different beast. Your social media following is used to getting what you give in that format and for free. There will be a cohort of followers who will no doubt jump off a bridge if you do, but for the rest, you’ll need to have something different, something premium, something with more bite that they’re not getting from your socials. 

2. Do not try to write what you think your readers will want. I very often fall into this trap. I know exactly what to write if I want to sky-rocket and bring in a wave of new paid subscribers, in the same way, I knew how to drive up link clicks when I worked in online media. More sensationalist, more gossipy, more dramatic, misery porn, honesty overload etc etc. But here’s what will happen if you write with your metrics alone in mind: you’ll bring them in, hook line and sinker, and as soon as you’ve finished your happy dancing at seeing your numbers rise, they’ll have left again. These people are not your tribe. 

3. Write exactly what you want to write and imagine that you are the target audience. Write for yourself and nobody else. What would you like to hear about, if you were where you were a few years ago, for example? What would help your career that you now know about? What would make you feel more validated and seen? What do you feel compelled to write about that you feel you can’t necessarily say elsewhere? What do you love to write about or have deep conversations about? What can’t you say on social media for fear of too many opinions and things being taken out of context? What questions are you constantly asking yourself about human behaviour or a particular part of your lived experience? When I wrote my first book, Owning It, I had no concept of what an audience would want or need from me and it was so much easier to fulfil the job because I wrote entirely for myself. I wrote exactly the kind of thing that I, as a 24-year-old, riddled with anxiety, would have wanted to read. It only became tricky, after that book did exceptionally well when I was tasked with writing my second book; both I and my publishers were hoping lightning would strike a second time, meaning we were thinking too much about pandering to the audience as opposed to what I felt needed to be written. 

4. When you’re starting, don’t expect people to sign up just because you announce that you’ve started a Substack. Give them the goods. Share quotes and examples of content you might have archived (when you build out your archive maybe don’t send all of them out as an email; fatten your back catalogue up first before you start sharing so as not to overwhelm inboxes and piss them off) to give them a taster. I’ve spoken with people who have had big followings, announced their Substack and then been disappointed when they didn’t get a big influx of subscribers. It’s not enough to say you have one, give them a reason to click through and subscribe. What’s different about your Substack? What are people getting here that they’re not getting elsewhere or from your socials or your podcast? What is your commitment, what sets you apart, what is your editorial manifesto? What do you hope to achieve? Who are you looking to connect with? And while we all tend to start with a ‘welcome to my Substack’ generic headline, opt for a more editorialised headline or subheading. Mine was ‘why I no longer feel safe on social media’, as that was the biggest driver of my setting up camp here. 

5. Be bold, be brave and be willing to experiment. The post you think might fly might flop. The post you think might be a bit of filler (we all have those) might become one of your most read. But again, keep going back to what it is you want to write, as opposed to succumbing entirely to the numbers game. I had a massive surge at first after writing about our decision to take our son out of Montessori. I framed it as how we had ‘made a very big decision’, and of course people were interested. A staggering amount of people paid to read it and then they were gone. But the people who stayed, and stayed for the next article and the next - they are my audience. It might peak and trough but those core readers are going to stick with you and while they might have first come for the more juicy article, they will stay for you, for your voice, for your writing. When that first piece did so well, I thought oh now I’m going to have to make sure every piece is about parenting because that’s what people want from me, but there is so much more I want to write about, namely work and personal development and, as is the theme of all of my books to date, anxiety and vulnerability. Week to week my numbers bounce around the place, but if I zoom out I can see the overall trend of those core readers is slowly and steadily rising. 

6. Play the long game. Be invested in doing this as consistently as you first commit to. The people who stay the course, focusing on the content as opposed to the numbers, will eventually reap the rewards. Don’t think of Substack as a quick win - that’s what social media was for. Your McDonalds box of chicken nuggets. This is slower, more digestible and more nutritious. This is your homemade chicken and broccoli pie (you wouldn’t believe how long I’ve spent trying to think of a good example of a hearty meal here and now I’m ravenous). 

7. Turn on paid from day one. Do not make the mistake of thinking you can reel your readers in and then one day expect them to cough up. When we are used to getting something for free, there is then a cognitive dissonance of now having to pay for it - it’s too much of a leap for our busy, distracted minds to make, so we don’t bother. Before you even start your Substack, really ask yourself if you believe that what you have to share is of value. If you think you have something important to say, something worth knowing or learning or reading, then put a monetary value on it. It’s like that age-old behavioural psychology thing: if we see something as free, we think of it as having less value, even if it’s brilliant. If we see something - even something mediocre - with a higher price tag, we assume and accept that it MUST be of higher value. Believe that about your Substack and then, crucially, make sure you follow through on delivering that value. 

8. This one might sound a bit arsey but here goes: In a world where print and online magazines are shutting down at a rapid rate (which is very disappointing but also understandable), we must hold onto our respect for a well-crafted sentence. Just because you have a thought or an idea or a following doesn’t mean you can write. But you can always improve and learn. Read a lot. Read what’s left of print and you’ll see how economical you have to be with your wording and how much better that makes things. Find your writing style. My advice would be not to just word vomit through a post and then share it. Do that at first, if that’s your process, but then go back and refine it as though it was going to appear in your favourite glossy magazine. Do it the honour - as well as your subscribers - of making sure you’re at least making an effort with grammar and the very basics of English. This doesn’t mean you have to adopt a voice that isn’t yours, it’s just about ensuring you are giving a more premium, worthy-of-paying-for experience to your subscribers. (In writing this point I am sure I will miss a shit load of mistakes before I publish). Do yourself a favour and download Grammarly. It’s free.

9. Be vulnerable. Don’t put out a version of yourself that isn’t real. That just breeds imposter syndrome. Remember that being vulnerable doesn’t mean being negative or listing off all the things you’re scared of. Sometimes vulnerability is allowing yourself to be confident when you worry about how you’ll be perceived (more on that here). Sometimes it’s backing yourself all the way and saying ‘This is worth subscribing to and here’s fucking why!’ Of course it’s sometimes about talking about the things you’re struggling with, but in no way does this have to negate your professionalism, your skill or what you have to offer. The more willing you are to be vulnerable - in a way that is authentic and not forced - the more you will connect with your subscribers, the longer they’ll stick with you and the more value you as the creator will derive from the Substack experience. 

10. If you want to go all in on yourself, get some professional photos done. It might feel a bit ‘cart before the horse’, but it’s giving an air of ‘okay, she means business here’, which I mostly certainly do. I just did this yesterday and the confidence boost was delightful, as well as giving me more motivation to treat this Substack not as a little fluffy side indulgence, but as a long-term, lucrative career commitment. I haven’t got the pics back yet but here is an example. They advised against doing photos in my oversized Snoodie, with a greasy bun and a double chin - which is how I almost always look while writing.

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