How I Got 1,000 Paid Subscribers on Substack

And how you can too

This is not the post you expect.

If you expect me to give you a five-ingredient recipe to 10x your success on Substack, this isn’t it. If you expect me to give you a five-page essay on all the things I did to get here and the hard work I put into it, this isn’t it. If you expect me to sell you a course that you’ll pay to feel better but in the end will achieve nothing for you, this isn’t it.

This is pure honesty.

And pure honesty is always bittersweet.

Expect a bittersweet post.

Here are four things I did to reach the much-dreamt 1,000-paid-sub mark on Substack. Take any notes you want; this is free advice that, in my not-so-humble opinion, shouldn’t be free.

1. I came to Substack before it was popular

The first trick in the successful person’s toolkit is to be soon to things that matter.

Substack matters. So I went there soon (mid-2022 is not that soon, but earlier than most makes it soon enough). Great move, you might think, coming here right before the takeoff. Clairvoyant even.

The truth no one knows is that it happened because Medium forced me to. It was not by choice but by…