Transcription
Most people who start a Substack do everything they are told. They pick a niche, they write good posts, they hit publish every single week. But most of them look at frustratingly low subscriber numbers that seem to be stuck. And it's rarely because their ideas or their writing isn't good enough.
Instead, they usually have a decision problem because there are six decisions you should make before you decide to use Substack to grow your audience and business. And if you get even just one of them wrong, growth can be painfully slow. If you get all of them right, most things will easily fall into place so that you can reach your dream readers and clients with ease.
Now, if we are meeting for the very first time, my name is Sinem Günel and over the past 2 years, I have grown my publication Write Build Scale to over 50,000 subscribers and almost 2,000 paid members. And I've helped thousands of creators to start and grow their Substack publications. And while doing that, I've been watching closely to see which differences separate the publications that take off from the ones that stay stuck.
Now, let me walk you through the six decisions that will make a real difference in your journey. The first decision is the one that almost everyone rushes. It's who you are writing for. When asked about their niche or target audience, most people answer with a topic. They say something like, "I write about productivity." Or I write about marketing. But a topic is not a person and the algorithm cannot match you with a topic. It finds people who might be interested in your work.
So, instead of a topic, I want you to pick one reader. One specific person with one specific problem that you can genuinely help them solve. When you write for that one person week after week, the Substack algorithm starts to work in your favor and find thousands of other people exactly like them who might also be interested in your work. And if you are a coach, a consultant, an entrepreneur, that one reader isn't just a reader. They are your future clients. The clearer you are about who they are, the faster you can turn your publication into the front door to your business and make more money. Getting this simple decision right makes every upcoming decision easier.
And if you're just getting started and you don't know who you could help or who your ideal client could be, don't take this as a limitation. Instead, use this prompt to have a simple and easy start. Think of one person you could help right now by sharing what you know and what you're passionate about. And maybe think of your past self because usually we have been part of our target audience in the past and that's why we understand them so well. Your topics might expand over time, but for now to get started and get the most out of the platform as quickly as possible, I want you to treat this as an opportunity to be focused and sharp.
The second decision is about what you are actually building on Substack and most people get this completely wrong. They think the publication they build is the business, but that's not true. Your Substack publication is supposed to be an entry point. It's how people discover you, they learn to trust you, and invest in your work at a deeper level, but it's not your entire monetization strategy. This is your opportunity to build deep relationships while already getting paid, but it's not supposed to be the entire business ecosystem at once. And that single shift changes what you publish and how you think about money from day one. You stop treating every post like it has to pay you directly and instead you start treating it like the beginning of a relationship.
So if you are currently in your early days, I hope that this takes some of the pressure off of you. You don't need to monetize everything you do in week one. If you already have an established expert business, maybe even a coaching business, a consulting business, this is an opportunity to treat the game differently because your free publication essentially becomes the one thing that can fill your coaching offers, cohorts, and any other products or services you are offering. A lot [clears throat] of new Substack creators just start publishing, and they even create a paywall to put out some paid content, but they lack direction and clarity, which is why they end up in a content hamster wheel, publishing endless amounts of articles and notes, but not reaching enough of the right people.
Now, before we get into the decisions that actually grow your publication, I want to hand you something that makes all of this a lot easier. We put together a completely free resource called the five Substack secrets for fast growth. It walks you through the exact things the fastest growing publications get right, so you can speed up your own growth and skip a lot of the frustration most people run into in those first few months. You can grab it through the link in the description box below.
Now, the third decision is what you actually publish first, and this is where perfectionism kills more publications than bad writing ever could. So many people wait for good timing instead of just moving forward. They redesign their logo, they rewrite their about page for the fifth time, they keep telling themselves they will launch once everything feels ready. But the truth is, if you have high expectations of yourself and maybe you're even a little bit of a perfectionist, you're never going to feel ready. But all that waiting does is keep your best ideas hidden from the people who might actually need them the most.
And here's what I want you to remember. Your first few posts don't need to be your best work. They just need to do one job. Quickly show a new reader that you understand their problem and you can genuinely help them solve it. A handful of articles that each one specific thing will always do more for you than one perfect piece that nobody ever finds. [music] And if you are already an established expert, this one can actually be harder for you because you have a reputation and you don't want to put out anything that feels less than perfect. But the same rule applies to you. Your readers don't need perfection. They need to feel understood and they need proof that you can help them. So, publish the posts that show people you are worth subscribing to even if your publication doesn't feel perfect in your terms yet.
And at this point, I quickly want to admit something. Substack can be incredibly confusing. It has so many features, options, and opportunities that it can be really hard to decide what to focus on first. We spend a lot of time with our clients making sure that their publications are set up correctly and designed effectively. This includes creating a meaningful navigation bar, a premium content library, an about page, a strong paid offer, welcome emails, and so much more. But all of that does take time, especially if you're doing it all by yourself. So, if you want to get support on that front, go to substackcoaching.com and apply to work with us in our private coaching programs. That way we can make sure that you're on the right track and you don't waste a single minute dabbling around in Substack settings and decisions that won't move your work in front of the right people.
Now, let's get back to our six decisions. Number four is how people actually find you on Substack. And this is the one most beginners are afraid of because it feels impossible when you're starting with no audience at all. But it isn't. On Substack, you have two engines you can start using right away and neither one requires an existing following. The first one is notes. Now, don't worry if you're a complete Substack newbie, I will briefly explain what notes are. Substack notes are basically the platform's short-form feed. Think of them as short posts, sometimes just a sentence or a quick idea that gets shown to people well beyond your own network and subscribers. And when someone reads a note that resonates with them, they can directly subscribe to your publication. So, notes are one of the few places on Substack where completely new readers can discover you even before you have an audience.
Now, this is basically like writing on LinkedIn, X, or on Instagram and having an instant button to get people to join your email list. It's really as good as it sounds. Now, when I say use notes, I don't mean chasing likes or trying to go viral. I mean showing up consistently with short, genuinely useful thoughts that pull the right readers back to your publication. Because a note with a thousand likes from people who will never care about your work isn't helping you in any way. What you want is the right readers, not just the big numbers.
Now, the second engine is recommendations, and this is where other publications point their readers towards yours. We reached out to other creators consistently and genuinely over time, and that has turned into over 800 publications recommending us, which has sent more than 10,000 subscribers our way. And I want to be clear about how that happened because 800 recommendations obviously sounds like a lot, and it is. But we didn't sit down and reach out to 800 creators one by one. What we did was build genuine relationships with a few dozen creators whose work we truly respect. And from there, the effect just compounded. More and more people started recommending our publication simply because they genuinely wanted to share our work with their own readers and their network. So, if you're just getting started, you can keep this really simple. Stay focused on building a handful of strong relationships with creators you truly vibe with and let it grow from there. And you don't even need both of these running perfectly from day one. You just need one of them moving deliberately every single week. So, pick the one that feels most natural to you right now, whether it's notes or recommendations, and start there. Let it compound.
The fifth decision is about money and this is the one that reframes everything else. Now, let me be honest with you. At Write Your Build Scale, our paid subscriptions are less than 10% of our total revenue. Our publication with 2,000 paid members is not the main money-maker. It's a lead generation machine. And once that clicks, the way you think about money completely changes. So, if you are just getting started, I hope that this takes a lot of pressure off. You don't need to turn on paid subscriptions in your first week or even your first month to succeed on Substack. You turn them on once you have earned real trust. And when you do, your paid tier has to feel like an actual product with a clear transformation, not just the same free content just sitting behind a paywall. People pay for a result. They don't pay for more words they receive in their inbox.
And honestly, if you already have expertise, and this is where it gets really interesting for you because your free publication becomes the top of a funnel that leads to the work you actually get paid well for. Whether that's coaching, consulting, a course, or a cohort. This is exactly what we help people do inside our Substack Accelerator. We work with ambitious creators, experts, and coaches, and we help them turn a free publication into an independent online business they can truly rely on and actually scale to six or seven figures per year. When you approach Substack with a clear intention of how it fits into your bigger picture or into your existing business model, creating a strong return on your investment becomes really easy.
The sixth decision is the one almost nobody talks about, and it might be the one that matters the most in the long run. It's deciding what you are going to refuse to do because the truth is you can build a Substack that grows and still end up completely trapped by it. Publishing consistently, chasing every new feature, running on empty, and slowly starting to resent the very thing that was supposed to give you more freedom. So, I want you to really think about what you're not willing to do or what you're not willing to give up. Think about how you're not going to push a certain publishing frequency, even if you're having a good week, or how you're not going to compare yourself to others if they've been in the game for years and you have just started. Or think of the content that you won't write just because it might go viral, even though it has nothing to do with the readers you actually want to reach. The creators who are still here and still thriving 2 years from now aren't necessarily the most talented ones. They are the ones who built something they could actually sustain, something that gave them freedom instead of taking it away from them.
And honestly, when you get these six decisions right, starting a Substack stops feeling like a gamble. It starts to feel like something completely doable, especially when you have the right system and the right support by your side. Now, imagine you have made all six decisions and your publication finally has a real foundation under it. But starting is honestly the easy part. The question everyone asks next is how the money part actually works, and it's almost never what people expect it to be. So, I broke down exactly how a complete beginner earns their first real income on Substack step-by-step, and you can watch that whole thing right here. I'll see you there.