Important Lessons You Don't Want To Learn Too Early

5 things I’m glad I didn’t know when I first started on Substack

Hey lovely readers,

Hope you’re doing well.

This post was inspired by a participant in my upcoming workshop who is feeling completely overwhelmed by everything they think they should be doing to ‘make it’ on Substack.

I’m here to tell you nope. Nope nope nope. There is almost nothing you have to do to grow a Substack publication into something meaningful.

Don’t believe me? Read on and I’ll show you how I got to 8,488 subscribers and 173 weekly issues by not doing most of the stuff the Substack gurus yibber on about.

Stuff they say you have to do

I’ll be honest, there are absolutely a few must-dos for creators who an enjoyable and productive Substack adventure. The other stuff? You can safely skip it.

You can skip posting to social media multiple times per day, pimping for podcast interviews and mindlessly ‘engaging’ with dozens of other publications in the hope you will get noticed.

You can also skip lead magnets, SEO optimization and community-building if that’s not your happy place.

Stuff you actually have to do

What you can’t skip is this:

• You must consistently publish high-quality posts that deliver what you promised to your subscribers when they signed up.

• You must get your work in front of new readers and ask them to subscribe.

That’s pretty much it.

If you do those two things, you are 80 percent there - job (almost) done.

Doing all the things can be a bit much at times. Image: by AI with Canva (check out the feet!)

Important lessons for an extra 10 percent

The two points I just described will get you 80 percent of your Substack wins.

People love high-quality content. If you show it to them they will sign up to get more of it. If you send it to them week after week they will love you for it. And they will share it and bring you more readers. This is my unsexy secret to success.

But. But, I hear you say. But surely there’s more to it than that. Well yes, there’s more. There are extra things you can do to take an average-performing Substack publication up a notch.

But these extra things add complexity which can be a bit much if you’re just starting out. I am glad I didn’t know about them when I was beginning.

These are lessons you don’t want to learn too early.

Warning: You don’t want to know too much too early in your Substack journey

In this post I share 5 lessons I learned the hard way, as I muddled my way through my first years on Substack.

Back then there were no gurus offering premium communities, Zoom calls or Chats full of advice. It was just me and my trusty desktop browsing the interwebs, collecting and dissecting newsletters that were doing well, teasing out their secrets and testing them out on my unsuspecting readers, learning what works and what doesn’t.

It didn’t always go well.

Some of what I learned seems ridiculously obvious in hindsight. Other things still surprise me.

I’m glad I didn’t know a lot when I first started because it would have stressed me out trying to do all the things while I was still learning the platform and finding my writing rhythm. In fact, it probably would have made the whole project too overwhelming, and I might have burnt out before I got to week 10.

As I sit down to write this post, with a summer rainstorm bucketing down outside my window, having just published the 173rd weekly post in my paid publication, I am not even sure I should be sharing this information here, because I don’t want you to feel like you need to implement any of these lessons for yourself.

So if you’re new to Substack and still finding your feet, look away now.

But if you’re ready for the extra 10 percent, read on.

Lesson 1│Almost everything is out of your control

When you start getting serious about Substack, paying attention to subscriber growth or paid conversions, you expect to find a winning formula that will get you where you want to be in a predictable way. But you soon realise that there is no logic to any of it.

You think if you do more promotion you’ll get more readers. Not so.

You think that if you offer more to paid subscribers you’ll get more conversions. Nope.

You think if you spend all day on a finely-researched, magnificently nuanced essay readers will bash down your door begging to become paying subscribers. Doesn’t happen.

When I started, I expected to find a predictable ‘system’ for getting ahead, but the world of online writing doesn’t work like that. You can write a cracking post - your best ever - and hear crickets. But throw out a poorly structured bunch of nothingness in five minutes and it could end up topping the charts. Why? No idea.

It’s frustrating but I’ve learned to focus on what I can control, which is showing up consistently and doing the best work I can.

Lesson 2 │Paid subscribers come in different flavours

Some readers are looking for an excuse to give you money, and others will never, ever pay you even if they are raving fans of your work.

When I first activated payments on my publication a bunch of people paid straight away but then conversions plateaued. Badly. I had to find ways to encourage different types of readers to upgrade to paid and I learned (the hard way) that what works for one type of subscriber doesn’t work for another.

Lesson 3 │Infographics = revenue

Weirdly, posts with infographics do incredibly well in my paid publication. Problem is, infographics are time-consuming to make.

These days I understand the value of a colorful infographic, so I make infographics often. But in the early days, it just would have been too much for me to create custom-made infographics while trying to learn Substack and meet my weekly deadline.

Lesson 4 │Social preview images matter

For the first 18 weeks my posts had no social preview images, unless you count a homemade logo. I didn’t even put an image inside a post until week 50.

Okay, so it’s totally not a surprise that more people started to click on my posts when I added social preview pics. But in the early days, it was such a huge effort for me to finish a post that I simply had no energy left to find suitable images.

These days I have the headspace to choose images with care, and I know that the time is well spent because a good image will get me dozens of new subscribers. But I’m glad I didn’t understand the value of images back then.

Lesson 5 │Headlines (really) matter

When I started on Substack I envisioned a periodical-like newsletter with each week’s email called simply Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3.

Using a simple title (Issue 1, Issue 2) solved two problems for me: the first was that each email included three or four sub-posts on different topics, making it hard to write a meaningful headline. Second, I already had online writing experience and knew how hard it was to come up with clickable headlines.

My goal was to make life easy for myself. The no-brainer post titles (Issue 1, Issue 2), and using no images or infographics in my early posts certainly helped.

I’m glad I didn’t know that writing a meaningful headline for each post would skyrocket the reach of my publication.

Final thoughts

Every time I hop into Substack Notes I see swathes of advice for creators. It seems like there is so much we are supposed to do if we want to succeed on Substack. No wonder some of us feel overwhelmed.

If that’s you - feeling lost and overwhelmed - then just know that I did almost none of the things you’re supposed to do in my first months and years on Substack, and I’ve still been able to make a real impact with my publications.

Stick to the basics (consistently publish high-quality posts that deliver on your promise to your subscribers and get your work in front of new people every week) and you really can’t go wrong.

Sure, you might not grow as fast as the hustle-porn crew, but at least you’ll still be writing 20 weeks from now, not curled under your desk in a soggy mess of overwhelm and anxiety.

And if you want

• a supportive crew around you, plus

• direct access to my expertise, and

• a peek behind the scenes of my publications,

Join my 4-session workshop for a thriving, impactful, income-generating publication in less than 4 hours per week. DM me for details.

Hurry, there are only 2 spots left!

Karen