It wasn’t an accident. But… — Today I read a thought-provoking piece by @DavidBClear that claimed successful online creators aren’t capable of explaining how they became successful. That they shouldn’t give advice about how to succeed because they don’t know how they got there. Hmmm…. I love David’s work but I’ve got some problems with this…

Lessons learned on the way to $6.5K Update 15th July 2023: I’m now at $12K, you can read about that here I’m celebrating a newsletter milestone this week: 65 weeks of publishing, 65 paying subscribers, $6,500 in yearly revenue. It feels amazing to finally be earning ‘real’ money doing what…

Here’s where I play a tiny violin for myself — Last week’s post about Substack Recommendations prompted some discussion in my newsletter community about the quality of readers from recommendations. More specifically, how they affect conversion rates. How to Use Substack Recommendations to Get More Subscribers Is this the best feature on Substack?karen-cherry.medium.com The thinking goes that new subscribers derived from recommendations are lower quality, less likely to upgrade to paying subscribers and will therefore make…

Is this the best feature on Substack? Recommendations are a top Substack superpower and one of the main reasons that Substack absolutely wipes the floor with old-fashioned newsletter software platforms like MailChimp or ConvertKit. In this post I explain how to use Substack recommendations to get more subscribers. If you…

It too shall pass — You’re a few months into your new newsletter venture. You’ve been writing, writing, writing…. And publishing, yes that too. But no one seems to be reading. You listen for a sign that someone is out there. But all you hear is Crickets. I call this the “Is there anybody…

A recipe for calm — Newsletter creation is not for the faint-hearted. Today I consider myself a competent newsletter creator, with a two-year-old $15K newsletter and a fun free newsletter growing steadily every week. But when I first began it was a struggle. High-pressure beginnings I was super-keen when I launched my paid newsletter. I knew there…

Lessons learned while building a newsletter business — I had just one subscriber when I sent my first email; myself! Today I have a gross annual revenue of more than US$15,000 from Substack, with 155 paying subscribers and 3,251 free subscribers across three Substack publications. After one year of publishing, I was selected to join an invitation-only Substack…

Unlock the secrets of exceptional newsletters — In my years on Substack, I’ve noticed a definite pattern among people who are new to the platform. Some new creators succeed, but many are doomed to fail. According to Substack’s team, 84% of people who start a Substack don’t make it to 14 weeks. Wow. An effective Substack creator…

… a feature that’s a lil’ bit clunky… This post is all about the mysterious ‘Sections’ feature of Substack. Substack devs, we love you but hmmmm this feature is a lil’ bit clunky! Anyways… here’s my breakdown of Substack sections. Sections are sub-parts of publications. They are used for: organizing…