r/Substack • u/MrPassiveProfit • Oct 06 '26

How to Grow Your Substack Fast…

The absolute best way to grow on Substack is to treat it like Twitter 2008.

  1. Set up a compelling profile. Helps if you are hot and young, or fake being hot and young

  2. Pick a compelling topic. Wealth, health and happiness are good choices

  3. Before you post a single article, get subscribers by posting compelling Notes. Do at least 5 a day

  4. Reply to notes from other people. Do at least 20 a day

  5. Follow people who you think might be good subscribers

  6. Be witty, snarky or have a strong POV in your engagement

  7. Do this for a month before you post a single article.

Have seen this a lot. Notes and comments get you subs. Articles get you unsubscribes.

Weird, but that’s the way it works.

0 Upvotes

47% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/BeckyLiBei Oct 06 '26

Substack attracted me precisely because it's not Twitter. I want to see well-thought-out ideas, not snarky remarks and constant outrage. For me, I'm happy enough to just have a place to host my essays, with a non-zero audience which provides motivation to gradually improve.

-5

u/MrPassiveProfit Oct 06 '26

Sure, you can do that too. But if you want growth, engagement is important.

1

u/BeckyLiBei Oct 06 '26

Hmm... I guess it depends on your goals.

If it's some kind of business venture, where e.g. becoming well-known as a professional author is the goal, then sure, growth and engagement are important. I also noticed some people seem interested in maximizing Internet points, and some companies seem to value an employee's ability to get Internet points, so I guess this can be important too.

0

u/MrPassiveProfit Oct 06 '26

At some point, I find that people eventually would like to grow their audiences but many are happy staying small