How to Deal with the Dreaded Plateau

What to do when you feel like you are 'shouting into the void'

Hi,

How is your newsletter journey going? I hope it’s going well.

I’ve had two big wins this week:

• hitting $12K revenue last Friday;

• discovering a ‘best seller’ badge on my (other) Substack profile

But it’s not always like this for me. I often have weeks that feel blerrrr… weeks where I don’t see any growth in subscriber numbers or paid subscriptions.

When a period with no growth lasts for too long I call it a ‘plateau’.

How to get past a plateau

There are three things that have kept me going through my plateaus in newsletter growth. Perhaps they will work for you too:

(1) Love what you do

If you are writing about a topic that you love for an audience you love (as I do), take a moment to reconnect with the joy of that. It is this joy that will keep you writing even if you feel like no one is listening.

Write for the fun of it; write for the practice; write to learn about your topic. That way you are growing and improving, even if your subscriber numbers are not.

(2) Get one paying subscriber (who you don’t want to disappoint)

Once you have a paying subscriber you can’t stop publishing or you will disappoint them. You just have to keep writing and pressing ‘send’ no matter how crappy you feel.

Writing when you don’t feel like it will stretch your abilities, improve your endurance and widen your comfort zone, making it easier to keep going next time things get tough.

(3) Know that giving up too soon limits your $$$

The pressure to keep writing for paying subscribers is tough, for sure, but trust me, it’s definitely worth the effort to persevere. If I had stopped at the first big revenue plateau I met, which lasted for ages and made me feel dreadful, I would have walked away with less than $400.

Here’s that number again, in case you missed it:

If I had walked away during my first big revenue plateau I would have earned less than $400 for almost one year of publishing.

Reminding myself of this has helped me through subsequent plateaus.

What are your tips?

How do you keep writing when you feel like you are ‘shouting into the void’? Let me know in the comments.

And if you haven’t subscribed yet, do that now (I don’t use your email address for anything else).