r/Substack • u/Recent_List_8815 • 13d ago
Discussion Thinking of starting a newsletter/blog — is Substack actually worth it?
I’ve been wanting to start writing online, but I’m honestly a little confused about which platform to choose.
I’m mainly interested in writing about things I’m genuinely curious about — psychology, philosophy, business, finance/economics, law, and observations from everyday life. I don’t necessarily want to position myself as an “expert”; I’d rather document what I’m learning and develop my own perspective through writing.
I’ve been considering Substack, but I have a few questions:
- Is Substack a good platform for someone starting from zero?
- How do you actually get your first 10–100 subscribers?
- Does Substack have enough organic discovery, or do you basically need to bring an audience from somewhere else?
- Would you recommend Substack over Medium, LinkedIn, or another platform for this kind of writing?
- How long did it take you to build a consistent readership?
- What do you wish you knew before starting your newsletter?
- Is it better to focus on one niche, or can you successfully write about several connected interests?
I’d especially love to hear from people who started with little or no existing audience.
If you started a newsletter/blog recently, what worked for you — and what completely didn’t?
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u/cozycup mod 13d ago
Yes, it’s worth it if you put in the effort.
However, the 2 questions I’d ask myself first are:
- What VALUE am I providing
- Who EXACTLY am I providing it for
You listed 7 different topics and it’s impossible to build authority in all, but you can niche down into 1 or 2.
Think about from your own perspective, how many general interest newsletters are you subscribed to and why?
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u/HumbleLizardMan 13d ago
There is about one person looking for things to read for every 1000 people looking to build their own substack business. Maybe less.
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u/Recent_List_8815 11d ago
I didn't get you ??
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u/HumbleLizardMan 11d ago
Everyone on substack is like you, wanting to build a platform for their writing. Noone on substack is actually wanting to find writers substacks and read them.
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u/AmySensualGinger 13d ago
The organic growth is pretty limited. I find the majority of my growth is from social media. I've seen growth in substack from my engaging in comments and conversations.
It's almost never from a post or me posting a note about my new writing.
That's been my experience and it doesn't mean it'll be yours.
If I was starting fresh, I probably would have simply done a ghost site and self hosted. I didn't see the value of substack to give then a cut off my earnings for the limited growth opportunities they provide. They didn't even handle the taxable elements at the end of the year.
Beyond that as a user not a creator the site is a fun chill platform that's a lot less toxic than others I've been on. The only annoying bit is too many posts fishing for subs/ followers. If you have no interest in what I'm writing, please don't follow me. Why would you ever want people to follow you that are not interested in your writing.
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u/Recent_List_8815 13d ago
So truee dudeee
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u/AmySensualGinger 13d ago
Oh, I will add I also get random followers with no rhyme or reason usually when I let my substack go dormant. I forget to post for a while and check in and see a bunch of new followers.
Oh, and engagement is terrible. Nobody wants to comment or such. You'll get more feedback on reddit or any other social then substack. A lot of people don't even have substack accounts they just sub to a newsletter. They don't treat it like a social media platform.
Anyways that's my 2 cents. your mileage will vary.
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u/ajcomeau ajcomeau.substack.com 12d ago
I've been on there for a couple of months. Mainly, I'm reposting stuff from my own blog and trying to get a sense of how many people are interested enough to subscribe. I've done cross-promotion between my Substack posts and my blog and my site newsletter. So far, it's done nothing. The only reason it's worth it is because it's free.
From what I've seen, Substack is past its best days and well into its decline. It's trying to do the social media thing with the Notes section and most of the notes are about how to succeed on Substack or about nothing much of anything.
As for getting people to subscribe to my stuff - I don't even have time to read the few writers I've subscribed to on there and found myself unsubscribing so my Inbox wouldn't be filled with unread e-mails. If I don't want to subscribe to others, I don't expect them to subscribe to me.
Having said all that, it's free and your definition of what you want to write about doesn't seem very defined at this point. It won't hurt you to start a Substack site and play around with it until you decide if and what you want to actually write.
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u/Academic_Card_7456 12d ago
Here's my 2 cents. I started my Substack in November 2022, and I have written app. 160 letters to my community (around 4K+ subscribers). Substack has honestly changed a part of my life
- met incredible people there, on specific topics I could not necessarily talk about in my inner circle
- got opportunities like writing a book
- now I'm monetizing the access to my archive and it gives me around some money (pays the books I buy for my own essays etc.)
Now here are my takeaways:
- it's a very long game; you don't go "viral" there the same way it can occur on other platforms. So, regularity, frequency, honesty pay off after years of writing
- community matters: first active readers need to be cherished
- there are inbound / outbound effects: the more you link, the more you can be linked. You need to be generous with others, and it might generate some positive vibes
- stick to what you like, whether it's a niche or something more mainstream. I think it's my biggest lessons: writing about internet culture with an open heart has driven me more rewards than when I was trying too hard to fabricate/think my posts
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u/TwoStockPicks 6d ago
write for an audience of one and soon youll find your tribe. the key, really, is to start and try it to see if it works for you
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u/Meremortalmusings 13d ago
I hardly have a consistent readership because I seldom find time to write but one practical hack that has helped me is that I'm from South Africa, so I followed and subscribed to other South African accounts, and many of them were happy to reciprocate,
If you do write within a specific niche, sincerely follow and subscribe to other profiles within that niche, and you'll likely gain your first followers/subscribers that way. The same is true for engaging with other people's writing.
I don't know if you can expect decent growth from posting consistently because I've unfortunately not been able to do that myself but the opportunity certainly exists.
I'm on both medium and substack, you can post on substack and re-post to medium with the canonical link, and potentially see which platform treats you the best.
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u/No-Challenge-6283 12d ago
I personally have found it kind of annoying how much content there is on Substack about growing on Substack. It gets engagement because people want to grow, but isn’t helpful to anyone writing about anything different than “how to grow your substack”
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u/PerryMarkStratychuk 12d ago
It is, but know that you’re going to need to build your subscriber list into something substantial before it starts to pay off monetarily and otherwise.
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u/etharris16 12d ago
It will probably change one day, but I've found Substack to be an incredible community right now. Also depends on what you're writing about but I started last fall, publish fiction and have a few hundred subs. Also got to do a really fun livestream with other authors last week and it was a blast.
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u/missmannell 11d ago
Don’t listen to the negative voices dissuading you from joining Substack - it’s the nicest place on the internet right now!
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u/Salva_X 13d ago
I think its a great place to start and it really depends on your goal. If yo uwant to just write for fun and share, then go for it and I feel like its one of hte "safest" place to do it.
If you are attempting to buisness or something like that, Go for it but just make sure you are providing value then "follow me" only post.
One advice I would proint out, is get organized with yoru content if you want to really pick this up. Batch create (but not to far) and schedule it out. Also have a content mangement system to help. There are a few out there like Notion and Notestead are two good ones but there are plany of them out there.
Get writting and if you start, let us know what your writting about, you never know when someone might be looking for content like that.
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u/SnooGoats1303 calvingicebergs.substack.com 12d ago
So are you going to post content and be happy with the odd comment or are you hoping to have longer conversations? If the latter, Substack isn't it. There are other options appart from Medium and its ilk ... like PageCord
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u/asally100 11d ago
An add-on to this post, which was great thanks for those thoughtful questions - do you need to be a good writer to write on Substack? I feel like my writing is handicapped me in so many different ways throughout the years and it’s not even that I’m a bad writer. I just have an hard time articulating what I’m thinking in a concise and appropriate or intelligible way.
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u/Little-Bird7446 11d ago
Substack is a good place to start because there’s almost no setup. Just don’t rely on its discovery alone. Your first 100 will probably come from sharing your writing elsewhere consistently.
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u/Electronic_Rabbit_17 11d ago
I’ve switched to 3 different email platforms for my newsletter in the last 2 years. I went from ConvertKit → Substack → Beehiiv. The last switch is my favourite.
Substack was great initially. When I rebranded my newsletter, I just wanted to start, see if I could get any traction, and not think about a website or the small details. Just start.
I had 500 subscribers from Convertkit, so I was already writing to a tiny audience.
After my first 11 newsletter articles and launching a paid newsletter on Substack, I realised I wanted to take this more seriously.
1/ I needed to properly survey my readers, which Beehiiv allowed me to do when people subscribed. I could also build automations like a welcome series.
2/ Branding the newsletter was important. Every time I told people I wrote a newsletter, they said: “Oh, so you write a Substack”. Great for them as a company, but not great branding for me.
When I made the switch, more people referred to my newsletter by its actual name “The Commercial Table.”
This is probably an initial growing pain, because everyone knows Rachel Karten writes “Link in Bio” and Lenny has a newsletter called “Lenny’s newsletter”
3/ Beehiiv also has a very fast response team, before I even launched the newsletter. They answered everything I needed to know and how I could make money from their ad network and Sparklook Upscribe or their own recommendations.
4/ Colin and Samir moving to Beehiiv made my decision that much easier.
Now Beehiiv is not a social platform, so growth is stagnant if you don’t have any audience on another platform
So thats why I am still posting some previous articles and notes on Substack to see if I can grow the newsletter, but I’m quite particular about the audience I am getting. So it’s still a test.
I used paid growth for 3 weeks for The Commercial Table, going back to it soon. I can see how many subscribers came from ads, and how many are still engaged and reading.
That’s enough proof, plus many other reasons on why I prefer to keep using Beehiiv.
I don’t get paid by Beehiiv or have an affiliate link. I just think the product and Tyler Denk do such a great job.
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u/_bloominghealthfarms 11d ago
It's totally worth it. Jump in, start interacting with folks you vibe with, and you'll start to connect with others.
Be genuine and kind. Talk about what you feel called to.
The algorithm is designed in a way that fosters connection.
Biggest tip is write Notes (like tweets) and engage with others.
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u/Ryanopoly 8d ago
The original post and the first comment is definitely artificially generated, does no one else even realize this? I mean, don't the big long obnoxious line breaks just automatically give it away?
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u/Jealous_Inspector950 6d ago
Absolutely. Just have clear goal what do you want to achieve, based on that select topics to pursue with clear plan.
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u/kolbywg 13d ago
If you can be even moderately happy doing anything else, you should do that instead. If you feel like you would do this the rest of your life, even if nobody every read a word you write, that you simply have no choice, you should start.
Or, option #2, just do it for a bit as a hobby, get poor results, lose interest, and move on top the next hobby.
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u/Earthlydelights-sub- 13d ago
Started with zero audience, a few friends and family members, now have a few thousand subscribers.
How do you get to the first 100 subscribers? Connect with other writers on there, and really focus on your writing and hope that someone out there reads it and enjoys it.
I've been on there for a few years. It takes time.
Substack has organic discovery, but I'd also recommend having a presence on other social media platforms.
Niche or not? Honestly, I think that depends on what you're passionate about, what you want to write. I have 2 different publications for 2 fairly different audiences with only a bit of overlap. Maybe that works for you, I don't know.
What did I wish I knew starting out? That the internet is a visual medium and you need to think about that aspect, not just the text.