What Happens When You Don't Quit: How Substack Saved My Writing Career
How I nearly quit 3 months in but stayed and gained 2k+ readers in six months
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What Happens When You Don't Quit: How Substack Saved My Writing Career
This is a bit of a different newsletter I am writing to you today.
Lately, I had a few changes happening in my life, which led me to reflect on my writing journey so far.
I am currently sitting in a coffee shop in Medellín, Bogota in one of those fancy digital nomad places (called Selina), where they mix a hostel-like living with co-working, overpriced coffee, and free yoga classes. You cannot scream remote working millennials louder than this. Hah, and I’m part of it.
My last year has been a crazy roller coaster. I started out the year still in my camper van that since last year I have been touring Europe with (I’m German, so I basically just started driving from Berlin, my hometown).
Mid-year, I and my Chilean partner decided that it was time to spend some time in South America as he was homesick after 8 years in Europe. So we decided to sell the camper, and travel to South America with this one:
In between all of this, my startup was not doing super well. Beginning of the year, we had to let most of the people go and basically went into survival mode until we could get the results of our clinical trials end of year.
I was down and burnt out. The pressure from everything (investors, team, and myself) was just too much.
But, this finally gave me some time to start something else in my life. Something that I always dreamt of doing. Something that would fulfill me.
My own solopreneurship and writing journey.
I truly felt that this is what kept me sane.
I started in March this year. With nothing. My note describes it quite well.
Today’s post is all about my writing journey.
I'm happy that this has piqued your interest and inspired you.
Let’s jump in.
How I Got Started
Starting Out on Medium
Six months ago, I took my first steps into the writing world by joining Medium. It was an exciting move because Medium allows writers to monetize their content relatively quickly. In my second month, I made around $100, which was a great motivator. Plus, the beauty of Medium is that you can repurpose your articles for other platforms, which I found incredibly useful. By linking my Substack newsletter to Medium, my Medium readers could easily sign up for my Substack. I imported 31 subscribers directly from Medium and gained 14 new sign-ups from my link, which is about 6% of my overall subscribers on Substack. While it’s not groundbreaking, it was a nice addition to building my community on Substack. I now have 1500 followers on Medium.
Discovering Substack
As I continued writing on Medium, I kept reading everywhere that building a newsletter business was a good idea to start building your online business. One month into my Medium writing, I decided to join Substack. My first attempt didn’t go as planned—I quit after the first try. But I didn’t stay down for long. I came back for a second try, and within three weeks, I had more subscribers on Substack than I had in months on Medium.
How I Kept Going
The real magic happened once I settled into Substack.
And look at this, I started writing in March, and it wasn’t until July—three months later—that things began to take off. I was so close to quitting, wondering why my efforts felt like they were going into a void. I am so glad I didn’t give up.
Here’s what I did to grow on Substack.
Post Newsletters Twice a Week: Consistency is key. By posting regularly, I kept my readers engaged and coming back for more. Don’t worry about perfecting your writing in the beginning. Just write and publish. That’s the best way to learn.
Post 2-3 Notes Daily (Weekdays): Daily engagement helped me to connect to more people. Also, it’s just fun to interact on notes. Have fun with it!
Engage with Inspiring Content: I actively sought out notes and posts that inspired me and followed people who created them. If you don’t know how that works, check out my post about it here.
Interact with a Variety of People: I followed a diverse range of writers and interacted with them. Building these relationships was crucial for expanding my reach.
DM Every New Subscriber: Personal connections matter.
Collaborate with Other Writers: I started collaboration posts with writers like
and . These collaborations introduced my work to their audiences and vice versa.Be Authentic: I put a lot of effort into being my true self and sharing my journey authentically.
Use Recommendations Wisely: I just recently understood how recommendations work on Substack. For about four months, I only recommended three newsletters, but I realized that to truly leverage this tool, you should recommend more and a variety of newsletters. This approach helps build relationships with other writers and expands your network. Don’t limit yourself.
Introducing Paid Offerings: After reaching 300 free subscribers, I launched paid subscriptions and quickly gained members by helping them grow their online businesses through writing.
Creating Digital Products: To further support my community, I created digital products like a Substack course. These products basically combine all the lessons that I have learned and pack them in one place to help my readers.
This is pretty much it. This is my journey so far. I plan to build more offerings around the community and more products that can help people.
As I’m also a little techie, I am currently working on tech tools that can make writing easier or just give you more insights. For example, I built a Chrome extension for Substack that lists the countries where your readers are from, it’s for free (you can find it here).
I cover more tips and tricks on Substack in this 12-lesson course. But going to them in depth now would overdo this little post. 😅 If you are starting out on Substack, it could help you to get started.
This is all the magic. The truth is, it really is about putting a lot of hours and work in.
But it can work.
I’m thankful that you are here and join me on my journey.
While I write this post, Mambo is doing what he can do best. Knowing exactly where to sit and hold on tight. Eventually, somebody will give him a cookie.
Maybe we can all learn something from Mambo.
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Thank you for the motivation! Mambo is adorable. 😍
I like the grind even on the days that it feels pointless since I'm still buried deep in the algorithm.