Why is this hard?
You want to succeed and become a paid writer but you’re not sure what to write about or why people aren’t subscribing.
You’ve done a few Substack newsletter posts and it’s not quite working - you have very few subscribers and each issue’s topic and voice is slightly different than the last.
You work hard on your post and when you send it out: Nada. Zilch. Crickets.
What it’s supposed to be like!
What if you could snap your fingers and have not only a strong clear voice but also an audience who was ready to hear from you.
You would open a new draft and have the confidence and knowledge of what to write about and how to write it.
Your open rate would be through the roof and you’d get new paid subscribers daily.
Good news - you can do it
It takes roughly 100 Substack posts for you to find your voice and around another 100 posts to find your audience.
That’s 200 in total to find your voice and audience to really gain traction.
You can do it, it’ll just take time.
What if there was a way to speed things up?
There is - you’ve got to experiment like your Substack newsletter’s life depends on it. (Because it does)
After all, writing 200 posts with very little feedback is going to be hard and disheartening.
It’ll take a very long-term view to stick to it to figure it out.
Experiment wide and deep
So what you should be trying is a combination of voice, style, and tempo.
Since nobody is paying attention, you want to try as many things as possible to be able to get to a place where you start to develop your voice and rhythm.
Read other Substack publications both popular and not to see what people are doing and do a post in that other publication’s style.
Then ask yourself
Did it bring joy (Marie Kondo!)?
Do I want to try to write another post like this?
What worked and what didn’t?
This reflection is where you can start to cut down “200” number to something smaller.
After all - by doing big experiments you get to cover more possibilities for what will work for you and your audience.
And once you figure that out, you too will have the confidence and knowledge of what to write about and how to write it.
So the next time you are writing a Substack post, try a new experiment and see how you feel and how it resonates with your subscribers.
Try it out and let me now how it goes!
Good luck :)
Until next time!
All the best,
Sebastian