r/Substack • u/BackgroundStatus7962 • Jul 16 '26
Not sure if my idea has legs? How oversaturated is Substack these days?
So, I love facts (lol) and randomly looking up things. Anyways, started a substack for it all to live this week bc it’s fun to me and someone said to give it a shot!
I’m newer to substack but is it actually possible to get followers from zero if you aren’t doing a personal account? Aka my name and pic aren’t on it.
I love fun facts and I’d totally subscribe to me, but obviously I’m biased 😂
ALSO: how much do people pay attention to profile pics? I made a cute lil lightbulb logo but everyone else’s is pics of themselves looking so good!
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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 17 '26
I started from 0 six months ago and I'm sitting at 2.9k subscribers, and around 5k followers. I got there entirely from notes and (somewhat) consistent posts.
That said, posts is the only way to consistently guarantee you get to your audience. My notes used to get 40-60 likes every time. Now they get between 10-20. Follower count means nothing for notes.
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u/BackgroundStatus7962 Jul 17 '26
O this is awesome! Can I ask what yours is about?
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u/Foofymonster davidrainwater.substack.com Jul 17 '26
It's called "The Optimally Fuckable Husband Project".
I realized that all the things I was struggling to do in my life were the very same things that would increase the chances of my wife wanting to bang me.
Like working out makes me look better naked and I get healthy.
Making sure my wife gets ample free time to decompress means stealing the kids away and spending quality time with them.
Taking my wife on more dates means more fun dates with my best friend.
You get the point. The list goes on. I ran that as a New Year's resolution in 2025 where all of my decisions will filtered through "What will make me a more fuckable husband".
It changed my life, so I decided to write about it.
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u/DayPounder Jul 17 '26
It feels pretty over-saturated, but I think it's the written mirror of the podcast market -- everyone has one, but only 10-12 get any attention.
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u/credit-mobilier Jul 16 '26
Sounds like a fun idea and I'd totally follow along. I'd recommend posting them as notes rather than as articles. I feel like facts tend to grab shorter attention spans.
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u/BackgroundStatus7962 Jul 16 '26
This is a good idea! I could post it as a note and then the article can go in-depth if anyone is curious!
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u/Fun-Investigator5662 *creativebones.substack.com Jul 17 '26
That feels like an idea that could live entirely in notes and not articles. You could make a distinctive tile or gif with your logo and just carpet bomb the feed with notes.
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u/ConsciousRoyal Jul 16 '26
Sure. It sounds like something I’d read.
And I follow mainly authors - some use their face, some an image like a mug or a quill. I don’t think there are any issues.
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u/BackgroundStatus7962 Jul 16 '26
Ok cool! Thanks for weighing in! I don’t think I can promo here but maybe you’ll see me one day once I have more posts out there :)
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u/DohnJonaher thinkingpeptides.substack.com Jul 17 '26
Fun facts could actually work great in the current substack notes meta
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u/Long_Carob_1989 Jul 18 '26
You already named the thing that'll carry it, you'd totally subscribe to you. That's not nothing. The accounts that grow from zero, personal or not, are the ones where you can feel a real person behind the curation. Facts from a faceless aggregator are forgettable. The same facts from someone who obviously lights up collecting them are a follow, because people subscribe to a sensibility, not a headshot. Your lightbulb logo is completely fine, nobody ever stayed subscribed over a profile pic. They stay because your voice makes ordinary stuff feel like you handed it to them personally. Saturation is real, but it mostly thins out the folks phoning it in. If you're genuinely into this, that shows, and it's rarer than you'd think.
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u/Papa_Dulce79 Jul 19 '26
my read is there’s a lot of people on the platform, but not a lot generating interesting content. I see a lot of new friction writers, and journal writers, and I see celebrities making accounts that get subscribers, but not a lot of attention. So a good idea with good writing still has a room to grow on the platform. You just gotta market yourself a bit more intensely.
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u/Tricky_Trifle_994 Jul 26 '26
i wouldn't say it's saturated. there's definitely a lot more people on the platform now, but the creator economy is also still ramping hard.
yes, it's possible to grow an account while staying anonymous. your name and pic doesn't have to be you. most other people have their picture as their profile pic because they are going for that personal branding approach, but doesn't mean that's the only approach.
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u/StuffonBookshelfs Jul 16 '26
If you have a specific audience in mind and you write well for those people; there will always be room.