I Know You Hate Substack Lives. Do Them Anyway.
I avoided going live for months. Then I tried it once and my engagement changed overnight.
I stared at the “Go Live” button for 14 minutes before I actually pressed it.
I know because I checked the timestamp on my screenshot afterward. 14 minutes of sitting there, water glass filled, notes open, telling myself I’d click it “in a sec.” My heart was doing that fast shallow thing. I had 4 bullet points written on a sticky note next to my laptop and I kept rearranging them like the order mattered.
When I finally hit the button, 3 people showed up.
Three.
One of them was someone I recognized from the Chat. The other two I’d never seen before. I talked for maybe 12 minutes, stumbled over my words twice, forgot one of my bullet points entirely, and ended it feeling like I’d just done a bad podcast episode to an empty room.
And then something weird happened.
Within an hour, one of those 3 people subscribed to paid. She told me why afterward: “I’ve been reading your posts for weeks but hearing you talk made it feel real. Like you’re an actual person.”
That one sentence rewired how I think about Lives.
Why we all avoid them
I get it. Trust me, I get it.
Lives feel like the most exposed thing you can do on Substack. Writing is safe. You can edit, rewrite, delete a paragraph, sleep on it, come back tomorrow. Going live is the opposite of all of that. You press the button and whatever comes out of your mouth is just... out there.
And the attendance numbers feel brutal at first. When you’re used to seeing 2,000 people open your email and then 6 show up to your Live, your brain does this cruel math where it calculates a percentage and makes you feel terrible about it.
I talked to a writer friend who has 8,000 subscribers and she told me she’d never done a single Live because, and I quote, “I don’t want to go live and have nobody show up.” She’d rather not try than see a low number.
I understood that completely. And I think she’s wrong.
The math that actually matters
Those 6 people who show up to your Live are your most engaged readers. Nobody else even comes close.
Clicking into a Live means being on Substack at that exact moment, seeing your notification, deciding to stop whatever else they’re doing, and sitting there listening to you talk. That’s a level of commitment that makes opening an email look like nothing.
In the 12 months since I started doing Lives regularly, here’s what I’ve tracked:
Readers who attend at least one Live convert to paid at roughly 3x the rate of readers who only engage with posts
My Chat activity jumped noticeably after I started doing Lives. People who watched me talk felt more comfortable typing in Chat afterward, like they already knew me
I’ve gotten multiple collaboration DMs directly from people who first found me through a Live
The quality of connection is completely different from anything else on the platform.
What actually happens during a Live
I want to be honest about what these look like in practice, because I think a lot of writers imagine they need to run a polished webinar with slides and a Q&A structure and a strong close.
My Lives are messy.
I usually have 3 to 4 topics I want to cover. I talk about them in whatever order feels natural. Sometimes I go on tangents. Sometimes someone asks a question in the comments and I spend 5 minutes on it and completely lose my original thread.
And that’s fine. That’s kind of the whole reason they work. Your readers already have your polished writing in their inbox. The Live gives them the unpolished version. The version where you say “um” and pause to think and occasionally say something you didn’t plan.
That contrast between your written voice and your spoken voice creates trust faster than anything I’ve found on this platform.
How I structure mine (loosely)
I do a Live roughly every two weeks. Here’s my loose format:
Before: I post a Note the day before saying “Going live tomorrow at [time], talking about [topic].” That’s it. No fancy graphics, no countdown. Just a heads up.
The first 2 minutes: I say hi, wait for a few people to trickle in, and give a quick “here’s what we’re talking about today” overview. I keep this casual. “Hey, thanks for being here. Today I want to talk about [thing] because [specific reason it’s on my mind].”
The middle 15 to 20 minutes: I talk through my topic. I share what I’ve tried, what worked, what didn’t. I check comments every few minutes and respond to them out loud.
The last 5 minutes: I ask if anyone has questions. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Both are fine.
Total time commitment: maybe 45 minutes including prep. That’s less time than I spend writing most of my posts.
Start smaller than you think
If the idea of going live makes your stomach drop, start with this:
Pick one topic you’ve already written about. Something you know well enough to talk about without notes. Set your Live for 10 minutes. Tell yourself you’re going to talk for 10 minutes and then stop, no matter what.
Don’t promote it heavily the first time. Just post a casual Note an hour before. “Going live in an hour to chat about [topic], come hang out if you want.”
The low-pressure framing matters. You’re not hosting an event. You’re just talking.
And if only 2 people show up? Those 2 people are about to become your most loyal readers. Treat them like gold, because that’s what they are.
What I wish someone had told me
I wasted months avoiding Lives because I was measuring them wrong.
I kept comparing Live attendance to my email open numbers and feeling deflated. That comparison makes zero sense. An email open takes half a second. Showing up to a Live takes real time and real attention.
When I stopped counting heads and started paying attention to what happened after my Lives, everything clicked. Chat got busier. People started replying to my posts who never had before. Paid upgrades ticked up. I got collaboration requests from writers I admired.
The Live itself is 20 minutes. The impact stretches out for weeks.
So yeah. I know you hate the idea of going live. I hated it too. I still get nervous every time I press that button. But I press it anyway, because 14 minutes of staring at a button turned into one of the best growth decisions I’ve made on this platform.
Your turn. 10 minutes, one topic, low pressure. You can do this.
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This analysis is awesome! I would love to see if you would be willing to become an advisor for the website I am building to help with note analytics!
I love Substack Lives, even though I was a little nervous at first. Yesterday’s live was blurry unfortunately, but it was a fun topic- Croatia 🇭🇷, Calisthenics & Community!