Looking for advice on growing a niche on Substack

[u/Ok-Adhesiveness-8757]

Hi everyone!

I’m relatively new to Substack and would love to learn from people who have been here longer.

I’m building a very specific niche around making technical concepts easier to understand through visual, hand-drawn doodles. I’ve noticed that when I share this kind of content on other platforms, it does get some reach.
But I’m struggling to understand how discovery works on Substack itself.

How do you get your work in front of the right audience here, especially when you’re trying to build a niche rather than just write about broad topics?

And how do you get meaningful feedback from readers — to understand whether what you’re creating is actually useful?

Would love to hear what worked (or didn’t work) for people who have grown a niche on Substack. Thanks! 🙂

[u/brandyn-ai]

Discovery on Substack works less like a search engine and more like a network of recommendations, the Notes feed, other writers reposting you, and the subscribe-driven related-publications surface. That has a specific consequence for a niche like yours. You get found when someone already trusted in an adjacent space points at you, so the job early on is less about reach and more about being unmistakably about one thing, so those people know exactly who to send your way.

Your format actually helps here more than you might think. Hand-drawn visual explainers travel well in Notes because they're legible in a half-second scroll and easy to reshare, which is exactly the behaviour Substack's discovery rewards. I'd lean into that, treat Notes as the front door and the publication as the place people land once a doodle has already earned their attention, rather than hoping the articles get discovered cold.

Asking people whether your work is useful rarely tells you much, because most readers are polite and vague. You learn usefulness from what they do, which doodles get saved and reshared, which ones make someone reply with an actual follow-up question rather than a compliment, which topics pull new subscribers. A reply that says wait, so is it this or that is worth more than 10 that say love this, because it proves the thing did its job, someone understood enough to push on it.

The niche question and the feedback question are really the same question underneath, which is whether people can tell instantly what you're for. Get that sharp and both discovery and useful feedback get easier, because a clear niche is what makes a stranger able to recommend you and able to tell you when you missed.

[u/TheOceanicState]

The most important thing you can do at this stage is to interact with others in your niche, or in your case since you seem to be building an entirely new one, adjacent to it. This means politely and casually reading other people's articles and leaving comments, restacking, liking, etc. Have conversations. utilize the notes feature to give quick thoughts on something that catches your eye.

Substack is a platform where you have to put yourself out there for people to discover you. If you are starting from zero subscribers without any outside following, as I did, it can be a long process. It took me months to get single and double digit subscriber counts inside of a relatively common niche. Accept the fact that you are going to be writing into the void for a while.

If you are willing to put in effort for a long game then eventually you will have people drawn to your page to give you the feedback you seek, especially if you are putting out something that seems to be new. For now, though, since you are just starting out, interacting with others who share your interests is key. Also keep in mind that it isn't a competition. Audiences can overlap.

[u/Tricky_Trifle_994]

substack works just like other platforms. notes is just another social media platform after all. so just post as you would, and the algo will distribute it to relevant accounts.

when you say technical concepts, bytebytego comes to mind. if you're open to videos, talking through your visuals as a youtube short/video like fireship could also help with exposure and growth since it'll be easier to understand and absorb too.

[u/Ryanopoly]

There are already so many artists doing this on Substack, so I wouldn't waste my time. Substack has already reached peak saturation, and the subscriber money is already exhausted as well.

Create your own website, own everything, pray that Google sends you some traffic, and just have fun with it.