Here’s a quick Saturday story of how I grew from 0 to 1000+ subscribers in 2 months with no following on other social media platforms. 👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼
When I started writing on substack some 75 days ago, I had 0 followers. I didn’t have (and still don’t have) any following on X, LinkedIn or other social platforms.
After setting up my account and writing my first post, I sent out a note on LinkedIn and Substack Notes asking people to check out my newsletter. I got 10 subscribers, which included old work colleagues and my dad.
And then that was it. For the next 2 weeks, I would get 1 new subscriber a day. And when I would get that email notification, I would celebrate my baby-step success, send out a thank you note to my new subscriber and then get back to writing.
In the afternoons, I would browse through other writer’s substacks to get inspiration on their journey. But more often than not, I would see the sheer size of their audience of 1k+, 10k+ and sometimes even 100k+ and I would wonder how on earth did they amass such a following. My subscriber count stood at 34 at that time.
And then, I started to strategize. Instead of getting overwhelmed by looking at the size of other substack writers’ impressive audience base, I decided to own my journey and put my best effort in it.
I continued producing high quality posts every week. No compromise on that front.
But that’s not all. I started coming up with a list of 10-15 substack writers (big, small and medium), who I would follow and meaningfully engage with. That means, reading their posts and leaving meaning comments that allow for further conversation to take place. I did that at scale for the next month or so. When I would subscribe to their newsletter, I would also send an email back asking if they would like to check my newsletter and provided links to my posts, which were growing.
In the meantime, I also started getting active on Substack Notes, where I could not only openly share, comment and provide my POV on others’ posts, but also bring out my authentic personality and showcase who I am through my notes. And as every day passed, I realized more and more people were engaging with me on my notes and converting to subscribers on my newsletter.
From Day 1 of starting my substack project, I have held on to my subscribers very close to my heart. Whether I was growing by 1 subscriber every day to 5 , then 10, then 30 and so on, I made it a point to reach out to them personally to thank them for their support and interact with them on every relevant occassion. This has allowed me to actually build a network/community of writers and readers who are not only supportive, but also open to critical feedback.
One day at a time, as I kept watering my substack project, my newsletter grew and it turned from a seed to a seedling as I have now surpassed by 1000 subscribers.
The rule of the game: It is easy to get overwhelmed by others’ journey and how far they have come. But, as long as you control your emotions, and focus on giving your best possible effort every single day, you will quickly see how far you have come and continue building with meaning and purpose.
Hope this story inspires budding substack writers to keep up their great work and hustle and for bigger substack accounts to take notice of us promising writers and provide us the necessary feedback and support.
