I’ve been using substack though I have few subscribers lols.
Anyway, is it me or do all popular substacks talk about how to do well on substack?
I’m the only one posting random stuff. lols
Anyone succeeding at substack? What’s your 5 top rules for success?
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My sister says its a great platform - but I think it is mostly because it is starting to trend back as IG/TikTok have become immensely saturated and have a lot of AI slop.
I haven’t used yet
i think it's because substack itself has become the niche lol
its not just you, and theres a real reason for it. the substacks that blow up writing about substack are basically doing the "teach people how to make money" meta-niche, their audience is other substack writers, which is a huge high-intent crowd thats already ON the platform and dead easy to reach. so it self-selects, the people who grow fastest are the ones whose whole topic is the platform itself. survivorship bias with a built-in audience
the catch is that niche has a low ceiling and its crowded, so posting "random stuff" isnt wrong exactly, you just need a reason for someone to subscribe besides "i like this person"
5 things that actually seem to matter:
honestly id niche down to one lane for like 3 months and watch if the subscriber math changes. the "random stuff" is probably the thing capping you
substack is basically a gym where everyone’s newsletter is about going to the gym, and the actual secret is having an audience somewhere else already
i manage social posts for a small skincare brand selling in a few countries. we reuse the same basic product video, but each language version turns into its own mini project. translate the script. record another voice. adjust the mouth movement. redo the subtitles. discover the timing is off. repeat. the japanese version also ends up feeling slightly different from the spanish one even though they are meant to be the same ad. is there a tool that can handle the languages, lip sync, and subtitles together?
So uh yeah over the last three months I've had 14 videos cross roughly like 500K views, a few of them even hit 2M!!!. Here is stuff that i'd probably like to share with you guys # Stop debating whether to post, just post. When you start out you have no idea what works. That's fine. Nobody does. I had 0 idea what to post but posted out whatever i felt like maybe someone would have similar humor or feelings as me!!! So just post a lot. It's okay if its not up to the mark. Nobody is watching yet and the ones who are don't matter. Atleast make a move! Once you start to get what's actually getting any traction in your niche or whatever you are posting about, then slow down and put more effort into each one. It's not a switch you flip, it's a slow shift. I used this app called Social Hunt for a bit to figure out what topics and formats are becoming popular before they peak, so I'm not just putting anything. I also remember using vidIQ for great insights for what i should imporve and a great tool called Tikmatics for catching TikTok audio trends before they got popular. But honestly none of that matters if you're not posting consistently first which I did . So yeah thats the main thing . # Relax. It's literally just numbers on a screen. Our mindset is litterally everything. You can know every trick and still lose if you let the numbers hurt your feelings. And they will try. A video will flop and it WILL feel personal. It's not guys , it happens to all of us and has happened before. Social media will beat you up. Especially early. Expect it. The only people who grow are the ones who keep going after getting punched in the face a few times. Make getting better the goal, not the numbers. I see so many popular creators who used to struggle with like 100, 57, 130 , 29 views on youtube shorts instagram . Even if i scrolled down today on them they would still show those low numbers. Expect this to take two or three years EASILY. Expect it to be harder than you think. Expect plateaus that genuinely hurt. Keep going anyway. You don't need to look at the past or feel bad about today , be yourself! # Learn to tell stories. Be interesting. Make people feel something. Doesn't matter how good your research is or how early you catch a trend if your content is boring. Learn to be charismatic on camera. Learn to entertain. Give yourself time to develop the skill but actually develop it. Like i am doing today! That's it. Go post something!!
Been running a small business for 3 months and trying to decide if I should invest in growth tools. The time it takes to grow organically is insane when you're also trying to run the business. Looking at options some cost hundreds for so called organic growth strategies that might not even work. Then there are the direct engagement services that cost almost nothing but feel like cheating. What's been your experience? Did you invest in growth and see returns?
this is the bit of client reporting i got wrong for a long time. reach is the result. watch time is a gate, it decides whether a video survives the pool its already in. neither of them tells you why one post went further than another, so a deck full of them explains nothing and every month you end up writing some version of the algorithm was quieter this month the ratio that tracks expansion better is shares over accounts reached. instagram doesnt show it, you work it out per post, and the per post bit matters because absolute share counts scale with reach and then you end up congratulating yourself for a video that just got lucky with distribution two honest caveats before you put it in a deck. the shares figure in insights isnt cleanly dm sends, so its a proxy. and theres no industry benchmark worth quoting, which means the first month you track it you cannot say this is good or bad about anything. you can only build the account its own baseline. i would tell the client that upfront rather than let them assume the first number is a verdict. what it buys you is a real answer to the question clients actually ask, which is why did that one work. if a post beat the account median on share rate you can point at it and say people passed this to someone, and then go look at what made it passable. if it didnt, the video held attention and gave nobody a reason to move it, and thats a brief problem not a distribution problem. the honest limit here is that this is one input out of several and im treating it as more load bearing than i can prove. if anyone is tracking it across a few accounts id like to know whether it holds up or whether its just the metric of the month
Hey everyone. I'm cross posting this in a few different subs since I know a lot of you probably overlap, so sorry if you see it more than once. Figured it's better to ask in a few places instead of blowing up one sub with a giant thread. Little bit about me. I'm 18 and just decided to skip college. I'm trying to figure out how to actually build a remote career that has real flexible hours and pays decent, not just "remote" on paper while I'm still stuck to a strict schedule or working 60 hour weeks. I'd honestly rather take it slow and build something sustainable than rush into something that burns me out before I even get going. I'm leaning toward stuff like freelance editing, marketing, or other service based online work. Not really trying to get into cold calls or heavy sales, more interested in something where I can actually build a skill, work with clients, and have control over my own time. That said I'm not dead set on freelancing specifically, I'm also totally open to just landing a remote job with an actual company if that ends up being the better path. I don't have a portfolio or any real experience yet so I'm not expecting anyone to just hand me clients or a job. Mostly I just want to talk to people who've actually done this, either side. What worked for you, what didn't, how'd you land your first few clients or your first remote job, how long did it realistically take before it started paying real money, and what do you wish someone had told you at 18 before you started. If anyone's cool with answering a few questions or just chatting for a bit I'd really appreciate it. Not trying to find some shortcut or get rich quick, just want to actually learn from people who've done it instead of guessing my way through everything. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. ps im from the usa
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