My First 3 Weeks on Substack: 1053 Subscribers and a Big Relief!

This is what I did to grow my subscribers list on Substack.

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I started my Substack about three weeks ago. 

During that time, we were getting to know each other. 

Honestly, it felt as if I was just messing around with it and watching the stats. 

Until it started happening: my list started growing! Organically! 

No pressure. 

No writing 1–2–3 times daily. 

No reading and engagement daily. 

No answering to tens of comments daily. 

I can tell you: I did not expect it! I’ve read about it, and I’ve watched Tim Denning preaching about it, but I never believed it! 

Until I saw it with my own two eyes. 

At the beginning, it grew with just a few subscribers per day. 

But I was thrilled! And relieved! 

I finally found a place where I could grow at my own pace. 

What did I do to gain new subscribers?

Full disclosure: I didn’t start from zero. I already had 993 subscribers from Medium and some lead magnets. 

So the first things I did were:

• I imported my subscriber list 

• I set-up my newsletter

• I introduced myself in my first post

• I posted several Notes

• I started publishing my Medium stories for free

• I published a few posts for paid subscribers — basically, things I didn’t want to share on Medium or I didn’t want to share for free.

Over a year and a half of writing online, I’ve learned some stuff I could easily pack for paid subscribers. 

Next, I started watching the stats. 

And it started happening! 

I was like “OMG, they’re all right!” I had to see it to believe it. 

For the three weeks, I grew new 47 subscribers to 1040. And 6 of them are now paid! 

That’s an average of 2–3 subscribers daily. 2 paid subscribers came from Substack organically, 1 from Medium, and the rest 3 from my imported list. 

Organic growth!

Not only free but also paid subscribers!

Substack makes money when you make money. 

They help you earn more. That’s what I love about this platform. But I also know you can’t count only on that. You have to help yourself. 

So I started doing this to push even further my growth:

• I started sharing every Substack story on Notes, X, Quora and Pinterest. Even those who were also on Medium. I stopped sharing my Medium stories. 

• I added a link to my newsletter on every online profile I have 

• I changed my CTAs on Medium to lead to a subscription.

When I share on X, I make sure I add my substack link in the comments, not on the main post. Elon doesn’t like posts with external links, if you do that you risk being shadow-banned. So far it works. 

I introduced my newsletter on X, pinned the post on my profile, and ran traffic ads with a budget of $2 per day. So far this post has 1.3m views and just 1 new subscriber, but I started gaining more followers on Twitter. You can see the post here @yana_g_y 

I also started using my Substack instead of a Friend link at the beginning of my stories. This way I get a chance to monetize Medium non-member views. Or at least I get an email — it’s an asset! So far I have 8 new subscribers from Medium. I wrote more about it here.

This works even better! 

Yesterday I had 10 new subscribers mostly coming from Substack:

credit: author

So this is what I did to start growing my subscriber list on Substack. 

I love this platform. It’s the first time I say something like this about a platform. It’s a thrill. And I great relief. 

I love being here!