Unleash Your Full Potential on Substack
Why wait?
I recently read the On Substack Grow interview series, which featured writer Jørgen Veisdal and his publication Privatdozent. Being someone who has just left Medium and looking for avenues to grow my presence on Substack, I found Jørgen’s story relatable. He started a publication called Cantor’s Paradise on Medium two years before, which was doing well. However, he was unsatisfied with the direction that platform was headed and decided to move over to Substack, where he found his audience and success.
Substack has given him more ownership of his writing and a space to nurture his creativity and community. Since launching Privatdozent three years ago, Jørgen now has over nine thousand free subscribers. He only launched his paid subscription in Mar 2021 and reached 200 paid subscribers as of July 2022.
Jørgen writes mainly long-form essays on historical topics. His articles are essentially evergreen; they never grow old. Jørgen has a viable model to make every newsletter free to receive and read via the website for seven days. After that, it goes into the archive exclusive to paid subscribers. The incentive for new readers to go paid increases over time as the archive grows.
I enjoy reading the Substack’s Grow interview series because it gives valuable information to help new writers understand their writing journey on Substack. And for people looking for examples of fast-growing accounts, here is another one that would interest many writers to get you to fire up to write on Substack.
The next Substack writer I would like to bring to your attention is Noah Smith, who writes Noahpinion to share insights about economics and other interesting topics to help readers understand their world—the things they read about in the news, the economic, financial, and political forces that determine who gets a raise and who has to pay more taxes, and so on.
Noah’s rise was pretty amazing, he started only in November 2020 with paid subscription right from day one, and he has since amassed a whopping 70K+ subscribers on Substack with 6K+ paid subscribers.
With a subscription of $9.99/month, having 6K+ paid subscribers would mean Noah is taking in well over $60K a month. That is the dream for many aspiring writers. Who in the world can make so much money writing on Medium? But here on Substack, everything is possible. The good thing is the paid subscription you get on Substack is not only stable, but it will also grow every month so long as you continue to generate relevant content for your readers.
Takeaway
There are some valuable takeaways from both Jørgen’s and Noah’s experiences if you are considering starting your own journey here on Substack.
Any writer can find and nurture her own audience on Substack.
Be niche and, most importantly, be consistent in creating your content.
Focus on your topics, and write articles that won’t go out of fashion so that readers will pay to access your archive.
Do not neglect free subscribers, they are your engine of growth.
Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you have enjoyed it.
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Winston thanks for the information yes all growth ideas help all to grow
Grow series is really very helpful. Thanks for writing this, Winston:)