How I Got My First 100 Substack Subscribers
A short, step-by-step guide for new writers.
Most Substack success stories make my head spin.
Hundreds of thousands of subscribers, 6–7 figures in revenue.
It’s super inspirational but also overwhelming.
If you’re new, these stories sound lightyears ahead of you.
So, let me share my 0–100 subscribers story.
How to Start on Substack
At the beginning of this year, I finally decided to start an e-mail list (after 10 years of postponing).
I had 5K followers on Medium at the time, but few of them were “true fans”.
Other than that, I had no audience.
The first thing I did…
…Was to listen to the big guys and create a few freebies. I started writing on Medium again and ended each article with a link to a freebie leading to a Mailchimp subscription form. I did this for two months.
And I got 0 subscribers.
Not ideal.
So I stopped.
I rethought my strategy. Freebies are great, but how many times have I downloaded a freebie that sounded interesting and then…