A bit slow. I'm wondering how anyone actually sees what I'm writing on here. It seems it's all about building an email list, which is hard for a recluse. lol
Exactly. This ain’t Medium. There are no friendly algorithms to carry shoals of unwary readers past the tentacles of our prose, there to be ensnared, hopefully. You gotta go out and catch them.
So before I started publishing here I spent a month publicising the launch on Facebook. Also shoehorned it into several Medium pieces, as you know 😊. However, Substack is more social-networky now than it was back at the start of 2022. So you could adopt a strategy of reciprocity like on Medium. Maybe. My feeling is that Substack is still all about long-term writer-reader relationships, and fishing for fellow writers is a waste of time. A lot of folk here are purely readers, and don’t give a damn about the Substack ecosystem as a whole. They’re not here to network. Personally I just treat it as a place to park my storyletter, knowing that I’ll have to do all the marketing myself.
And there’s no real culture of follow-for-follow here. I see it creeping in now and tbh I don’t like it. I want real, committed readers, not fake ones to boost my stats. I want to know who wants to read my stuff, what my readership demographic is, so fake subscribers are just noise.
Exactly. If my work can't stand on its own then I don't want props. I am not behind a pay wall because I assume you need to have some readership going before doing that.
G'day mate
G’day! How’s it going?
A bit slow. I'm wondering how anyone actually sees what I'm writing on here. It seems it's all about building an email list, which is hard for a recluse. lol
Exactly. This ain’t Medium. There are no friendly algorithms to carry shoals of unwary readers past the tentacles of our prose, there to be ensnared, hopefully. You gotta go out and catch them.
So before I started publishing here I spent a month publicising the launch on Facebook. Also shoehorned it into several Medium pieces, as you know 😊. However, Substack is more social-networky now than it was back at the start of 2022. So you could adopt a strategy of reciprocity like on Medium. Maybe. My feeling is that Substack is still all about long-term writer-reader relationships, and fishing for fellow writers is a waste of time. A lot of folk here are purely readers, and don’t give a damn about the Substack ecosystem as a whole. They’re not here to network. Personally I just treat it as a place to park my storyletter, knowing that I’ll have to do all the marketing myself.
The Medium method of following writers would work if I had about a million dollars to spend on subscriptions. lol
And there’s no real culture of follow-for-follow here. I see it creeping in now and tbh I don’t like it. I want real, committed readers, not fake ones to boost my stats. I want to know who wants to read my stuff, what my readership demographic is, so fake subscribers are just noise.
Exactly. If my work can't stand on its own then I don't want props. I am not behind a pay wall because I assume you need to have some readership going before doing that.
Recommends from other Substack writers will bring you some subscribers. It takes time though.
Think of your personal Substack as an e-zine. Substack will do the layout and the distribution for you, that’s all.
Is it considered gauche to put your posts in Notes?
I’ve not used notes. As far as I’m concerned, they’re clutter which might scare off my subscribers.
I thought they might be a way to get subscribers.