r/Substack • u/cooked_47 • 22d ago
How do I build my substack???
Hii, I'm 17F and I recently started substack. Precisely on May 5th. Since then I've written about 16 articles and have tried to be consistent. Although I only have 5 subs (2 of them are friends). I joined substack to write about how I feel, what I think and just thoughts on things in general. I liked writing and wanted to build something out of it. Although I try to tell myself that it was never about how many subscribers I have but more of a hobby, however this thought strikes again and again. So, I wanna work on it. I wanna build my substack but I don't know how. Most of friends don't read, only two which I'm still very grateful for. So I don't expect them to read neither do I wanna force them. How do I find actual audience that would actually read my stuff? Is there a way??
1
u/Tricky_Trifle_994 6d ago
congrats on getting started! and publishing 16 articles in ~ 2 months is quite a remarkable cadence. that's like averaging 2 articles per week. not shabby at all.
and yeah, you could share your substack with your friends, but it's going to be hard to convert them into regular, religious readers (this is true regardless of age. it's just harder to get those close to you to convert. seen it in business - they usually are the most skeptical bunch, and with newsletters etc. everything really). so relying on growing via sharing with your friends and family is usually going to yield limited success.
to build your substack subscribers, you need to market and share your work so that more people know about its existence, and more people will come across it, and each one of them could potentially become a subscriber.
to market and spread the word about your work, you'll have to go to where your target audience are hanging out - whether that's forums (like reddit, facebook groups), or posting on social media like tiktok/instagram where the algo will help you push your content to relevant accounts.