Substack Growth Framework
There are certain tweaks to the default Substack elements which set you on the road to earning a sustainable income. Doing these grow your base. I needed a list, so I made one for both of us...
Substack Growth Framework
Sometime last year, I found a nugget in a Note by Yana G.Y. .
The basics of success on Substack, and any online business, is simple:
Have a Clear Offer
Show up consistently
Build Community
When I went to build a checklist to use in updating my own Substack site, this datum started explaining things.
Yana has recently produced an excellent “getting started” post. For brevity, I’ve summarized my own version after side-checking her list with several other Substack successes. I’ve put it into checklist format so I can use it and not leave anything out.
Note: This is short and succinct. Utilize the search function for Settings to find explanations for these as needed. (Or leave comments, DM me.)
Your Offer
Before you Begin: Name Your Solution
The first assumption here is that you aren’t here on Substack as a hobby - that you want to set up a sustainable business that brings in enough income to support itself and your work at it. The first step in this is to first present and provide a solution to a common problem, one you’ve solved in a unique approach that is hard, if not impossible, for anyone else to duplicate.
____Write this in one sentence: “I help people achieve [specific outcome] without [specific frustration].”
____Work that out before you move on. Only when you have your problem-solving product to offer.
Start Off With Something To Sell
The worst advice I’ve ever seen was often repeated in the “old” days of blogging and Content Marketing. They advised getting a list of 10,000 people before you decided on what you wanted to offer. And in doing that, you wound up with a bunch of freebie-seekers who simply wanted more free stuff.
____Offer paid stuff to begin with. It seems slower, but it isn’t. You can only get income from stuff that has a price-tag on it. Start out by attracting buyers.
____Substack was built to sell newsletter subscriptions. This is where they make their money. You can also sell digital products or services, even get sponsors to pay you to advertise their products.
____If you’ve got books, offer these. We’ll go into the backend later. If all you have is a single Amazon buy link, then fine. That’s an offer you can sell right off. We’ll make that more profitable with other approaches later.
You want to set up your Substack from the get-go with something people will buy.
Show Up Consistently
Set up to Convert
The general flow is:
Readers -> Followers -> Subscribers -> Paid Subscribers and/or Buying Customers
(and later, these can become Superfans).
Substack helps you do your converting. That’s why subscribe buttons show up everywhere. But the rest of this conversion work is on you, and where most writers slog away at. I have. So I’m sharing these notes here on how I’m fixing that for myself after neglecting these up to this point..
Substack can sell paid subscriptions.
Or it can be a funnel to your other products and services.
The third approach is the hybrid - where you do both.
Regardless of your approach, there are certain common Substack setup basics:
____Name your Substack related to your solution - something memorable, not philosophical or obscure. This is where your branding begins. (See Alicia McCalla⭐️’s write up on this.)
____Profile, Bio, and About pages are all shortish sales pages. So name your problem/solution first off. This pre-selects your readers. They are first looking for, “what’s in it for me?” So tell them your solution before you say anything about yourself. Something like: “If you’re trying to [achieve outcome] without [frustration], you’re in the right place.” If this is their problem, they continue. Also, use the same wording when you communicate your benefits. Incorporate a nice picture of yourself to build trust. Most people need to hear the same thing multiple times before they buy. So that’s another way to build trust.
____Build a “Start Here” post and pin it. It should be a converting sales page. Again, write this by starting with your problem/solution first. The rest of that page should deal with how they can solve that problem by reading your various posts and, of course, buying your product. Use the Campbell “Hey! You! See? So…” format. Yes, your entire Substack is there just to promote your solution. We’ll cover converting your existing content somewhat below, and also in a later post. All we’re doing here first is filling in missing basics.
____First email - upgrade this into a sales page for your product/solution. Most conversions to paid subscriptions occur right after they first subscribe. Your first email gives them that offer again and reasons why they should.
Write to Convert
You probably already do this. But here’s some basics to review:
____Notes simply get people to check out your posts. Write them to attract, make readers curious. Always engage and answer any comment. Always.
____Posts always need a Call To Action at their end with an offer to buy. Again, write them with the classic “Hey! You! See? So…” format above.
____You send all your subscribers the paid posts - not just the free ones - because there is value in them above the paywall. Paid posts give the problem and how it’s been solved, then the work-ready, how-to details are beneath the paywall.
____Pillar your content by subject using sections and tags. This is just organizing them by their content under headings. You’ll find them under Settings on your Substack. Name them sensibly.
____Publish on one pillar per day each week. Three pillars is sensible, as people can know what content is coming which day. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays seem to give the best open rates right now. The more you post, the more your sell. But the volume of your writing has to be viable for your life style. You are no good to anyone if you burn out.
____Of course, you can schedule both Notes and posts. So a day or two of work can give you several days or weeks of usable, pre-scheduled writing. Posts can be broken down into Notes, which can show up before or after the post. And you can repost books you already have as posts, then put buy links in the CTA at each post’s end.
Note: Existing content can and should be edited to assign it to a pillar, add CTA’s, get pillared, tagged, and organized with tables of content. As time allows…
Automations and Backends
Automate everything you can. Add backends where Substack is missing a function. Warning: Treat Substack with respect to their TOS limits on automated data so you don’t get banned..
The email system for Substack is getting better. But there’s a lot of functionality missing. Kit is the second-best choice and can hold up to 10,000 subscribers for free (at this writing.)
____Set up a 5- or 10-day welcoming email sequence that starts immediately after their first email is received. This grooves the reader in to receiving emails and acting on them. They include tips and template giveaways that are relevant to your product-solution. See the Victor Schwab book for an outline of what should be in each. (His book is also a classic example of good problem-solution copywriting.)
____Your digital products (such as ebooks) can be offered via Gumroad - for over 80% royalties on every sale. They also offer “pay what you want” pricing. You can set this up parallel to your books on Amazon or (preferably) Draft2Digital.
____You may want to offer your paperbacks and hardbacks via Lulu.com. This gives you buy links for these. Later, you may want to invest in a Shopify storefront, which connects directly with Lulu.
Building Your Community
Engage often. Collaborate regularly. The object is to help others openhandedly and earn their subscription to your own site.
____Recommendations. Leave one every time you subscribe. Just good manners - and that encourages them to recommend you back. Build your karma in advance. Catch up where you’ve neglected this. Substack says this is able to result in a 25% increase in subscribers.
Your object is nurturing your subscribers into True Fans (Kevin Kelly) You don’t need tens of thousands of subscribers. You need only a few hundred regularly paying subscribers to earn a decent and sustainable income. There’s something called a Dunbar number which says the amount of people you can track and effectively help directly tops out at about 250 people. If they each were paying you $100 per year (or higher value per checkout) you’d have a regular 5-figure income. Not tens of thousands of people you don’t really know, but several hundred you know well, each paying you regularly - this is the sweet spot. So, yes, you may have a thousand or so anonymous free subscribers who may or may not ever buy something or even leave a comment - from among these are where you can nurture your few hundred True Fans. But the more you engage on Notes and Chat and comments on your posts, the more you find people who want to help you - as you’ve been helping them. This is the underlying model to success - outside of anything Amazon does or doesn’t do, for or against your book sales.
____That may require your building collectibles out of your books and selling them directly. Lulu can help you with that.
Develop a True Fan base and get your income under your own control.
Driving traffic to Substack.
Like most online services, Substack works as well as you drive traffic to it. Search engines do this best. And the two viable search engines which can be integrated into your Substack production line are Pinterest and YouTube.
____Your images can be put up on Pinterest with browser plug-ins, but is probably best done from a browser window to get the meta data right. Set up your business account (free) so you can schedule pins to show up during each week. Pinterest rewards consistency. And you can take your graphics that Substack provides as a base.
____Any audio or video can be set up as a You Tube podcast from Substack. I’m setting up a Text-to-Speech production line for my posts. Yes, it’s some extra work, but another way to deliver the same material I’ve already worked up for those posts as a different format to reach listeners and turn them into paid subscribers.
Again - build these out only as you feel you need to. Not everything all at once and get dispersed with no improved sales income to show for it.
Other Distractions
Note that I don’t mention promoting or using “social media” sites. The main reason is that those don’t send traffic anywhere. They used to, but because they fund themselves with advertisements, they now won’t send their users anywhere else. They need you to stay on their platform and keep doom-scrolling. You are the eyeballs the advertisers pay for.
My advice is to simply go all-in on Substack. Do this post as a checklist. Complete each line before you start the next.
Then keep writing more books that your readers want and sell these to them. All while building those readers up to become Super Fans - who will buy your books and bundles as fast as you can produce them (along with other merch.)
This will get us going. Print this off and fill it out. Do one step at a time, completely. Then you’ll be head and shoulders among most here on Substack - and if you lay stock in their “bestseller” statuses, this will get you on your way. Regardless, this is a foundation for building a sustainable business here.
Luck to us all!
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