Can You Start a Substack With No Subscribers?

No list? No worries!

Someone asked me the other day if you can start a Substack with no subscribers. Well yes, you can of course. But that’s not the whole question, is it?

The real question is:

It is easy to get new subscribers on Substack?

I’ve been Substacking for 18 months, I have thousands of subscribers and make thousands of dollars per year on Substack. Here’s my perspective on Substack + subscribers… the good news and the bad.

The good news

You can definitely start a Substack publication without an existing following.

My Pubstack Success publication started from zero, with no followers and no list. It’s growing slowly but steadily, I get a few new subscribers per week. All my new subscribers are from Medium. I know this because I don’t promote it elsewhere (not enough hours in the day!).

My ‘main’ Substack (published under a pseudonym) has thousands of subscribers and grows by 20 to 30 people per week. It also started with zero subscribers, but in that niche I had an existing audience and social media following. My pre-Substack email list in that niche also started from zero.