Substack University
Best practices for how to grow your free and paid audience on Substack
The biggest hack on growing your list from zero on Substack, is to leverage the platform as much as possible. The Substack network is now responsible for a substantial share of new free and paid signups writers get. But you might not be leveraging all its features. Here’s a rundown of some tools Substack provides to help you grow your free and paid audience, and the best practices we recommend for using them.
Get inspired by how other writers did it:
Get to know other Substack writers
Find other Substacks that cover the same themes and topics as your publication, and subscribe to them. Provide thoughtful replies in the comments of their posts. When you comment on Substack, your username and the name of your publication show up beside your comment, and people can subscribe from there in one click.
Want to find some other Substacks in your topic area? Browse our Leaderboards, or use the search at the top-right of the Explore page to search for some relevant terms.
Read tips from Substack’s Writer Development experts:
Turn on Recommendations
For the Substacks you enjoy most, you can add them as Recommendations so they appear in the sidebar of your own Substack, and appear as suggestions after people sign up for your Substack. This cross-promotion feature provides a way for writers to promote and discover each other on their own terms.
Recommendations helps you network with the other writers as you grow on the platform. When other publishers get new subscribers from being recommended by you, they get notified, and may opt to subscribe to your publication or recommend you back.
More on recommendations and how writers are using them:
Introducing recommendations: simple cross-promotion for writers
Your favorite writer’s favorite writers: Our new recommendations feature
Download the Substack app, and join the conversation on Notes
You can download the Substack app from the Apple or Android app store, depending on your device. The app has a short-form posting feature called Notes. You’ll automatically see Notes from people whose Substacks you're subscribed to, people they recommend, and people they "restack" (share).
You can follow additional people and reply to their Notes. From there, they can opt to follow you back, and subscribe to your publication. Many starting-out writers get a lot of their first batch of subscribers from this type of fun networking on Notes.
More on using Notes to grow your audience:
Use Direct Messages
You can send direct messages to other writers and readers on Substack. This highly-requested feature allows you to start private, one-to-one conversations with anyone in the Substack network.
Direct messages live in the Chat tab on the Substack website and app, and appear alongside chats from your subscribed publications. You can start a DM from any writer or reader’s profile page, from the Chat tab, or by hitting “Share” on a post or a note. When you receive a DM, you’ll be notified in the app and by email.
By default, you’ll only receive DMs from users you’re connected to. Other messages will go to a Requests folder for you to accept or reject. DMs make it easier to build relationships with other writers on Substack.
More on Direct Messages:
Highlight and collaborate with other writers
Substack offers many ways to collaborate and interact with other writers. You can reach out to another writer to offer to write a guest post on their Substack, or invite them to write a guest post on yours. You can cross-post another writer’s post, sharing it with your audience along with your commentary.
You can embed other writers’ posts, or embed notes and chat threads, in your own posts. And you can mention other writers by tagging them in a post. Using the collaboration, sharing, and tagging features of Substack lets you leverage the broader Substack ecosystem, so new readers can discover your work on the platform.
More on collaboration on Substack:
Dive into Substack Grow
For more tactics on how to grow your audience and help new readers discover you, check out Substack Grow. It's an online curriculum covering developing a strategy for your Substack, growing your readership, turning on a paywall, and more. Explore more on Substack Grow
Tips and tricks on marketing and promotion tactics to grow your audience, from Substack Grow:
Is the explore section being worked on? So far it's hard to find other comedy writers
So many great resources shared here! I found Substack to be such a great place for growth, networking and community building and managed to grow my newsletter from zero to (almost) 1k subscribers in 6 months with all subscribers apart from around 20 coming from the Substack network.